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Upon my recent arrival in the U.S., even my most socially-conscious friends discreetly advised me on which areas of the city to avoid.
As a new arrival in Washington DC, I was immediately told to stay in my lane, never go to certain postcodes and never take the metro after sunset.
The specifics were unclear, but when a young staffer from the White House was attacked at 3 am not far from my new residence, the advice seemed justified.
Nineteen-year-old Edward Coristine, known online as “Big Balls,” made international news after being assaulted by two other teenagers in a failed carjacking attempt this month.
Due to his status as a minor celebrity associated with the Trump administration and his work with Elon Musk’s Government Efficiency Department, the incident attracted significant attention beyond being just another crime statistic in one of the world’s most perilous cities.
Donald Trump used the shocking image of the bloodied lad to call time on rampant violence at the iconic heart of America.
This week, the President took action, stating: “I’m announcing a historic initiative to save our nation’s capital from crime, chaos, and degradation, and more.
Drug-addled crazy
“Our capital city has been overtaken by dangerous gangs and violent criminals — groups of unruly youth, individuals under the influence, and homeless populations.”
He later followed up with a customary social media rant, writing: “Crime, Savagery, Filth, and Scum will DISAPPEAR. I will MAKE OUR CAPITAL GREAT AGAIN!”
Since then, the streets of DC have been swamped with federal agents, national guards and vehicles that would not look out of place on an actual battlefield.
The internet is awash with videos of raids, checkpoints and patrols that have driven the lefties, who mostly make up this city, round the bend.
Rough-sleeping encampments that have sprung up in cities across the west have been visibly dismantled, despite howls from roving protesters.
So far, so good, many normal and non-deranged residents have said.
But you know what really takes the biscuit? Those very same right-on types that have their rules about where never to stroll are the very same ones saying the President has overstepped the mark, overreacted, is playing a political game or — among the most hysterical — sliding into all-out fascism.
Better-off folk who live in nice bits of the city wax lyrical about how great things are, and how it’s all a big stunt.
Yet they are the same ones who shade out parts of the map, with warning signs, to new arrivals.
Because they personally may not have been victims of crime, everything is clearly tickety-boo.
Everyone knows someone who has witnessed something shocking, or had their own car broken into or turned a blind eye to a drug-addled crazy on their walk to work
Harry Cole
But drill down a little and everyone has a different story to tell.
Everyone knows someone who has witnessed something shocking, or had their own car broken into or turned a blind eye to a drug-addled crazy on their walk to work.
Trump’s political enemies have walked straight into another one of his traps, as they defend the rights of violent criminals and gang-fuelled youths to roam and rampage on the streets at will.
With him seizing control of the local police structures and deploying federal powers, the Democrats warn that the President’s actions in the capital are a mere overture for similar action in crime-ridden Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.
But most law-abiding residents seem either remarkably unfazed by it all, or actively welcome somebody finally getting a grip.
While the row rages on American networks over whether crime is actually falling in DC, if murder rates are down, or if the number of shootings and carjackings have in fact slumped since the pandemic, most normal people I have met are not upset to see something finally being done.
The same arguments are being had in London and Washington. Yet it’s surely time to do something about it rather than bury our heads in the sand
Harry Cole
Which got me thinking. If an American friend was landing in Britain, I would give them the exact- same briefing — which bits of town to avoid, where never to get your phone out and why it’s best not to talk to nutters on buses.
The same arguments are being had in London and Washington. Yet it’s surely time to do something about it rather than bury our heads in the sand.
People can see a marked decline in living standards due to muggings, snatchings, shoplifting, graffiti and all the rest.
All the while, coppers are either dancing in the street, for clout on TikTok, or seemingly kicking in the doors of all the wrong people.
Shovel a shelf of Greggs pastries into a bin bag in broad daylight and walk out, or tweet something daft and repent in haste . . . guess who is going to prison?
Publicly, ministers and well-off commentators point to fig-leaf statistics that overall crime is falling, while normal people use just their eyes and ears to tell a different story.
Take the princeling of woke, podcaster Lewis Goodall, who frothed this week: “London is being set up as this dystopian hellhole where you can barely walk out of your door . . . it’s a Trump import!”
Accusing anyone of calling out the noticeable rise in crime as a “far-right” goon, he went on: “London lives rent-free in their heads as it’s living proof of how completely wrong they are — they have to lie about it!”
Yet these virtue-signalling types, who tell Brits they’ve never had it so good, are falling into the exact-same traps as Trump’s critics.
While no one can accuse Sir Keir Starmer of having Donald Trump’s flair, turn of phrase or gumption, the UK government could do worse than take a leaf out of the President’s playbook this week
The argument about whether sending in the heavies is mere theatrics, or will have a lasting effect, is still playing out here. But most fair-minded people, I suspect, would rather this than simply turning a blind eye to reality.
While no one can accuse Sir Keir Starmer of having Donald Trump’s flair, turn of phrase or gumption, the UK government could do worse than take a leaf out of the President’s playbook this week.
Like tough action on the US border has seen illegal immigration into the United States from Mexico grind to a halt, tough action on crime would be another no-brainer vote-winner.
Just ignore the hypocrites.
SUN TAKES WALK ON THE WILD SIDE IN BROKEN CITY
By Scarlet Howes, US Editor
THE armoured vehicles were stationed in position, troops in combat fatigues buzzed around and temperatures headed towards 33C.But this wasn’t a scene from Iraq or Afghanistan. We were standing in Washington DC, the birthplace of American democracy.
Donald Trump’s decision to send in the National Guard was met with outrage, but a tour of the capital’s streets by The Sun revealed, in just one single night, a terrifying breakdown in law and order.
Washington’s Lincoln Memorial is such a symbol of America that it features on the five-dollar bill.
But the monument now serves as a backdrop to row after row of tents where homeless people are massed in a camp which looks like the cross-Channel migrant “jungle” in Calais.
Rubbish was strewn everywhere, and the occupants were clearly in it for the long haul. One had even somehow set up a washing machine.
Under a nearby bridge, mattresses and glass beer bottles lay scattered everywhere.
Piercing scream
I have never seen so many homeless in a city.
Within 30 seconds of arriving at the world-famous Union Station, I was confronted by a woman lying on the floor, with her trousers falling down.
More rows of homeless were slumped outside a library just a street away from the White House, and they took no heed of Trump’s warning – telling me: “We are never leaving.”
Some had been smoking what they told me was super-strength cannabis, and were lying comatose on the floor unable to wake up.
A security guard at a nearby Hilton hotel said: “You think this is crazy? You should have seen it last week. There was a shooting nearby.”
He claimed that at the weekend, kids go to party and take fentanyl – a drug said to be more dangerous than heroin – on the rooftop of a nearby hotel.
Its swimming pool sits a matter of yards from the Capitol, home of America’s parliament.
One such get-together ended in a shooting – and when I left town the killer was still on the loose. Not far away was a posh restaurant where the cheapest glass of wine will set you back 15 dollars. But diners peering through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows can see the canvas of a tent and half a dozen homeless people shouting and swearing.
Locals say they are a group out of their minds on crack cocaine.
One man verbally abused me as he held a sign condemning “the human race” and another was seen shouting at a little girl that she was a “b***h”, because she didn’t give him a dollar.
Suddenly, there was a piercing scream and a woman had been knocked over by a speeding car.
Later, in scenes straight from a Hollywood disaster movie, we witnessed hundreds of FBI officers being briefed at a base near one of Washington’s most dangerous neighbourhoods, Anacostia.
One by one, their cars left the centre in dramatic fashion. That evening’s mission: A crackdown on “bloodthirsty criminals”.
We attempted to take a leaf out of the FBI’s book and venture into the neighbourhood ourselves but swiftly realised that was a bad idea, as masked gangs loitered on the streets looking for trouble.
As we cruised back to town, we spotted six blacked-out SUVs full of Drug Enforcement Administration officers armed with machine guns stopping a car and arresting a wrong ’un.
A crazed man sat in just his underpants at a bus stop he had turned into a makeshift home, and was terrifying people. A woman coming home from work was so scared she jumped on the wrong bus just to escape from him.
He had taken fentanyl and, when he saw us, put his middle finger up.
Another man was half-naked and trying to dance with scared tourists who just wanted to see the city’s famous landmarks.
It seemed the men who Trump called “drugged-out maniacs” were lurking around almost every corner.
And his plan was in full force, as nearly every street had a police car parked up, or a special agent.
There were too many of them to count.
