Veteran police officer Jeffery Carroll will take over as interim chief of Washington’s police power, Mayor Muriel Bowser stated Wednesday, after it was introduced earlier this month that the division’s chief was stepping down.
Carroll, who joined the Metropolitan Police Division in 2002, takes over as a federal legislation enforcement surge is underway within the nation’s capital, launched by President Donald Trump in August. Trump’s Republican administration says the operation is supposed to sort out crime charges that for years had been surging however had been on the decline.
In his present position as govt assistant chief of specialised operations, Carroll is answerable for managing the day-to-day operations of the division. He was appointed to the place by outgoing police Chief Pamela Smith in 2023.
Carroll’s profile has risen lately as he joined Bowser at press conferences in reference to the capturing final month of two Nationwide Guard troops as they patrolled a subway station three blocks from the White Home. Carroll supplied particulars of the capturing through the preliminary press convention, together with that the assault had been carried out by a lone gunman.
As a profession MPD officer, Carroll joins a line of different chiefs who’ve risen via the ranks of the division.
He takes over at a tumultuous time, when members of Congress and the U.S. legal professional’s workplace have questioned how the division retains its crime statistics. Members of the town council and residents, in the meantime, have questioned the MPD’s position within the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts which have rounded up a whole bunch of individuals along with legal arrests.
Smith, appointed in 2023, had been introduced in to stabilize a division going through staffing shortages and a metropolis shaken by post-coronavirus pandemic crime.
However her tenure unfolded amid a fierce battle over authority, as Trump asserted federal management over the Metropolitan Police Division and deployed Nationwide Guard troops and federal brokers alongside the town’s officers.
The 2023 spike in violence prompted congressional hearings and led metropolis leaders to broaden police authority, together with authorizing drug-free zones in areas with persistent crime. Lawmakers additionally rewrote components of the town’s legal code in an effort to stem the rise in violent offenses.
Early the following 12 months, the town started to see enchancment. Total, crime fell by about 17% within the first 10 weeks of 2024, a drop Smith attributed to the brand new legislation and to focused deployments in neighborhoods experiencing repeated hassle. She additionally imposed short-term youth curfew zones in a number of components of the district.
The change in police management comes as Bowser, a Democrat, has introduced that she received’t search reelection subsequent 12 months.
