Donald Trump has announced a federal takeover of Washington DC's police department and the deployment of the National Guard, following the assault on former Doge staffer Edward Coristine, known as “Big Balls”. The president described the move as “a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor”, calling it “liberation day in DC”. He also cited the June killing of Eric Tarpinian-Jachym, an intern for Republican representative Ron Estes, whose mother has backed the federal intervention.
The language evokes a dark episode from 33 years ago, when a fatal attack on a congressional staffer prompted a similar federal response. In January 1992, Tom Barnes, a 25-year-old aide to Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, was shot in the head while walking to a corner store, dying four days later. Shelby, then a conservative Democrat, introduced legislation to legalise the death penalty in the district, arguing that residents were living in a “war zone”.
Writing in The Washington Post in March 1992, Shelby said: “The terror that comes with living in a war zone has prompted many residents to reconsider the appropriateness, ethically and legally, of a death penalty.” He described people using guns to settle arguments and “bust a cap” in those they disliked. His proposed bill failed, but Congress later forced the city to hold a referendum on capital punishment.
However, the circumstances differ sharply from today. In 1991, Washington recorded 482 murders, earning it the label of the US murder capital. Last year, the city saw 187 homicides, and violent crime is at a 30-year low. Trump’s depiction of a capital in crisis has been criticised as exaggerated.
During the 1992 controversy, even some home-rule supporters backed Shelby’s push, including Leon Panetta, later Bill Clinton’s chief of staff and CIA director. Panetta said the district should handle its own affairs but acknowledged that crime remained a serious problem. That referendum went ahead, but the death penalty was not reinstated.
