Kansas City Star Columnist Melinda Henneberger says if any city deserves federal intervention from the U.S. military, it would not be Washington, D.C. It would be hers — only that’s not likely to happen.
“[President] Donald Trump won’t be sending the troops into this heavily Democratic city, even though Kansas City is by the numbers one of the more dangerous places in the country,” wrote Henneberger. “How can I be so sure? Because despite ourmany gun deaths and Black mayor … we already have no control over our own police department.”
Kansas City is listed as No. 8 on a list of 25 most dangerous places for 2024-2025, but Henneberger said every member of its board of police commissioners, except the mayor, are appointed by Kansas’ Gov Laura Jeanne Kelly, a Republican.
“So, there can’t be any problem here, right?” asked Henneberger.
Henneberger said Washington doesn’t deserve personal intervention from the U.S. military just because one of Trump’s “former DOGE favorites” became a “3 AM victim of an attempted carjacking.” The carjacking, she said, wasn’t even successful. It was interrupted by D.C. police who were “already doing their job in our nation’s capital.”
“The president should have praised the Metropolitan Police Department instead of sending in the troops,” said Henneberger. “According to ABC News, ‘A police cruiser arrived as the assault was in progress’ — emphasis mine — ‘prompting the suspects to flee on foot.’”
Officers on the scene quickly collected two of the suspects — a 15-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy.
Henneberger said she used to live in Washington, and Logan Circle in the middle of the night “used to be a lot less safe.”
“The cops are so on top of it that they see what’s happening, stop what’s happening, and arrest the unarmed suspects. Yet the situation is so out of control that we need to call in the military?” Henneberger asked.
The columnist said the “federal takeover of the police in D.C. … has nothing to do with crime.” Instead, it goes back to Trump’s real “goal of complete control,” and she referenced the president pushing former Republican Missouri Rep. Billy Long out of his “brand new post running the IRS” after the agency refused to provide private information about taxpaying immigrants to the Department of Homeland Security.
“Trump is going to break this republic if we let him, and that’s the crime I worry about most,” Henneberger said.
Read the full Kansas City Star report at this link.