Today, Explained - "Roving mobs of wild youth"

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

Trump says he is taking over DC’s police to save the city from crime — it's really just another way to demonstrate power, and generate headlines. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast. US Attorney Jeanine Pirro at a press conference about crime in DC. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The deployment of hundreds of National Guard troops in Washington, D.C. started last night, and the city's cops came under direct federal control. So far, TBH, not very much has happened. On Monday, President Trump gave a wild press conference, justifying his takeover of D.C. The murder rate in Washington today is higher than that of Bogota, Mexico City, some of the places that you hear about, caravans of mass youth, rampaged through city streets, and we're getting rid of the slums to. But it was the U.S. attorney for the district, Janine Piro, who pulled focus. I see too much violent crime being committed by young punks. With allegations of extreme specificity. These kids understand that the jurisdiction is through the state attorney general Brian Schwab. What? They do not. Today on Today Explained from Vox, what's really happening in D.C.

You're listening to to Today Explained. Alex Coma, senior D.C. politics reporter at W.A.M.U. in D.C., what has happened here? This really has its roots in many ways back in 2020, you know, during the height of the protests over George Floyd's killing when Trump was in office the first time. And, you know, back then he really. really talked about, you know, maybe taking control of the police department. Washington was under good, very good control, but we're going to have it under much more control. We're pouring in. We're going to pull in thousands of people.

He did end up calling in the National Guard and sending in a bunch of federal law enforcement officers. You know, anyone in D.C. will remember, like, helicopters flying really low over protesters, like a really scary time in the city. The National Guard is now investigating its use of a helicopter to make a, quote, show of force against protesters near the White House. And he has sort of been, like, stuck in this memory of those days in so many ways since then. During the 2024 campaign, he just spent so much time talking about how. They have very good police here, but they have to be allowed to do their job.

We're going to stop it. We're going to beautify it. We're going to make it the most beautiful capital in the world. He kind of waxes and wanes with how much he pays attention to us in D.C., and really it only, you know, started up again. when this Department of Government Efficiency employee, Edward Koresstein, or as you may know him at home, Big Balls, got, like, beat up and Trump starts truth-socialing about it.

And all of a sudden, we're back in the crosshairs again. A young man who was beat up by a bunch of thugs in D.C. And either they're going to straighten their act out in the terms of government and in terms of protection and we're going to have to federalize. So Big Balls is a teenager that had a lot of main character energy very early on in the Trump administration. And then the Doge stuff kind of died down. We didn't hear so much about him anymore. What exactly did happen to him the other day? Well, you know, sadly, figuring this out has been like more complicated than you would expect. But I mean, the basic version we have from the police is that, you know, he's out and about. He's with his girlfriend. He sees her, you know, being harassed by some teenagers, you know, trying to carjack her.

He intervenes, and then he steps in and he gets beat up. And, you know, the photo that sticks in everybody's mind because it's the one that Trump hosted is of him sitting on the ground. He's covered in blood and his white t-shirt and everything. And Trump is, you know, using this as proof of look. Look at how dangerous D.C. is. Even innocent big balls can be beaten up like this. But, you know, of course, you know, I can't tell this story without pointing out that the police say that he wasn't even taken to the hospital.

And the cops kind of did, like, exactly what you would want them to do. Apparently, there were a bunch of police, like, pretty close to where all this was happening. They saw what was happening. They arrested the teenagers in question. They've already had their first court dates. Like, I really don't know what else, you know, you would be hoping for but for, like, a personal cop for each. employee of Doge. So, you know, but that doesn't matter to Trump.

I mean, what matters is him is the chance to use this as evidence is why he needs to intervene in D.C. So we know by now from listening to Mayor Bowser and a lot of social scientists that crime in Washington, D.C. is actually coming down. And we're at a 30-year violent crime low. What do the numbers tell us about what's going on in the city? Where so much of this comes from is the fact that in 2023, crime here really was up. So according to our numbers, about 12 people were shot in the past three days here in D.C.

Five of them were people under the age of 18. Concerned D.C. residents asking questions and sounding off over a rising crime in Chinatown. And tempers flaring towards the end of the two and a half hour meeting. And this was abnormal. I mean, pretty much every other city of D.C. size, every major city in the U.S. was seeing, you know, violence which had, you know, spiked during COVID, during the pandemic, come back down. And D.C. really didn't. And that freaked everybody here out. Everybody sort of collectively lost their minds here in our local politics. It became like the only subject that the mayor and the D.C. Council could talk about. That was two years ago, though. I mean, things are really different. Virtually as soon as you got to the first part of 2024, the numbers started going down. And they've since continued to decline. All right. So the question is, both for people who don't want this and maybe even for people who do, how is this legal? Why is the Trump administration? Why is the president allowed to do this? Yeah. Well, the first and foremost is we are, of course, not a state here in D.C. So that means that we are fundamentally still governed by the feds, by Congress and the president. You know, we do have some degree of home rule. That was only given to us in Congress back in the 1970s. Just to say, you know, we have an elected mayor and council that can run the city, but that, you know, does include these provisions that are still, you know, very favorable to the federal government controlling the city.

Now, Mayor Muriel Bowser has stressed, look, you know, police chief Pamela Smith, she's still in charge. She's still telling everyone, you know, where to go and what to do. And they've all since met Pam Bondi and the police chief and the mayor. And, you know, they're describing it as more of a partner. Because I know people want to build upon and create division. We're here to work together with our federal partners, and that's what we're going to do. But, I mean, like, let's be clear. What the law says is that under, you know, these emergency circumstances, if the feds tell DC police to do something, they have to do it.

That's not normally how it is, and that's how it is now. What does the police union say about that? Well, they are very pro, and this should not be. They're pro-Trump's move. They like this. Oh, yeah. But I think that it's important to understand this in the context of, like, who our police union is led by in this moment to say that their Trumpy might be an understatement. Greg Pemberton, the chair of the union, has been on Fox News many times. We completely agree with the president here that crime in the district is out of control and something needs to be done about it. Basically, he's been locked in this conflict with the mayor and the council over a variety of things, but, including, including police reform that happened in the wake of the George Floyd protests, including some reforms that made it easier to fire cops accused of misconduct. And so they've sort of been in this power struggle where, you know, they've been trying to go around the council and the mayor and seek federal intervention.

So maybe, you know, many of the rank and file aren't necessarily thrilled with the fact that the same president who pardoned all the January 6th rioters who assaulted many of them back in 20. is now like overseeing the department. But the union itself is led by people who view this, I think, as part of a larger, you know, ideological struggle. In addition to the police, who else are we expecting in the streets? They've said FBI, DEA. We've been hearing a lot more about ICE and border patrol agents in the city so far. And then there's the National Guard to consider. They've actually just started arriving in the city.

You know, there should be another 800 or so of them with, I think they're saying one to 200 on the streets at any given time. And, you know, to the naked eye, you know, these just, they look like troops that are coming into the city. They're in helmets and they're armed with, you know, big guns. Oftentimes they're driving, you know, like big, heavy, you know, trucks and what appear to be, you know, sort of occupying like weapons of war kind of of hours. I mean, I lived here, you know, right after January 6th. I can remember seeing like tanks on street corners and feeling how weird that felt for, you know, what is otherwise just a perfectly safe city. And I think everyone here kind of has bad memories of that and is very apprehensive about, you know, seeing seeing that again. I'll tell you what surprised me. I thought the announcement would be made and suddenly the streets would be full of law enforcement. And I am not actually seeing that at all where I live. Do we know where the presence is supposed to be felt?

Yeah, I think we're still sussing that out. You know, the way I see it is there's like two kind of approaches that the president and his deputies could take. One of which would be to say, well, most of the crime is happening in the, you know, southeast neighborhoods that have historically been disinvested in. That's where so much of the shooting and drug dealing takes place. So if I'm. really serious about addressing crime with my new federal resources, well, that's, you know, where these people should be. But we're just not hearing that that's happening right now. That's where I live. I live there and I'm not seeing it at all. Like I really was expecting, given the neighborhood, that this would be where we would see it. And yeah, I'm shocked. I think the thing that, you know, you're more likely to see because we have been seeing a little more of this already, is, you know, more of these federal officers, you know, more of the National Guard in the areas that Trump thinks a lot about, right? Like, you know, you've already seen DEA agents

just sort of wandering around the National Mall, like, aimlessly. I'm currently walking in D.C. getting my coffee that I get at lunch every day. And why am I seeing FBI? They out here on feet. Looking like a motherfucking call of duty. Reporting live from Baghdad. Dad. Just kidding. I'm in Washington, D.C. Our president is a moron. Because as we discussed so much of this is colored by, you know, how Trump reacts to what he sees. He only sees the places around the White House. He doesn't really go to other sections of the city. So what is he likely to see? Well, you know, if he's concerned about, you know, crime or whatever, that's probably because he just sees graffiti and maybe a few homeless people downtown. And that reads to him, is disorder and it needs to be addressed.

How is Big Balls? How is Coristine doing? Is he recovering okay? Do we know? You know, I have not checked in on him, but consider this plea to Edward that if you, you know, want to give me a call and let me know, you know, my cell phone is pretty easy to find. Thanks, Alex. Oh, thanks so much for having me. Alex Coma.

He's very good. WAMU, WAMU. support your local station coming up why are dc's kids getting such a bad rap support for the program today comes from shopify when you're creating your own business you have to juggle a lot of roles marketing sales outreach design shopify can simplify all of that shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and according to company 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S., from household names like Mattel and Jim Shark, to brands just getting started, like maybe, I don't know, yours.

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That's Shopify.com slash explained. Does anyone have a cash register handy? This week on Networth and Chill, I'm joined by Alison Stoner, the multi-talented performer and author of the upcoming book, semi-well-adjusted, despite literally everything. From backing up Missy Elliott as a kid to starring in Disney's Camp Rock and transitioning into mental health advocacy and creative direction, Allison reveals how they've navigated dealing with the finances of child stardom while staying true to their authentic self.

I uncovered that many people had been taking money in various ways since I was a child without me really knowing or understanding. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com. This is today explained. My name is Eduardo Ferrer, and I'm an associate professor at Georgetown Law, and I'm the policy director of the Georgetown Juvenile Justice Clinic and Initiative. Did you watch President Trump's press conference on Monday? I did. I thought it was really interesting that the president's root causes were kind of all over the place, bedlam, squalor, homelessness, crime.

You know, there's a lot of nouns when Trump speaks. But then his U.S. Attorney for D.C., Janine Piro, comes out, and she really hits something specific, which is juvenile crime. She says, quote, I can't arrest them. I can't prosecute them. They go to family court, and they get to do yoga and arts and cramps. What is Janine Piro talking about here? To be honest, I don't really know because it's so divorced from reality. I think there are a few things to keep in mind. Number one, violent crime overall is the lowest it's been in generations in the District of Columbia. The other piece of it is that's true of young people as well. Youth arrests finished in 2024 lower than they were pre-pandemic.

For those young people who do get into trouble, D.C. has among the highest detention and incarceration rates in the country. This is not a place where young people are being coddled. I hear what you're saying about the data. The data sometimes in the vibes are in drastic contrast to each other. D.C. implemented a curfew for young people earlier this summer. And the police department dedicated a unit to juvenile crime because they were worried about these kind of big fights, these brawls that are breaking out in parts of the city. Now, I imagine you look at that and you say, okay, well, that is the thing that's really happening.

Is that it? Is it isolated incidents that are driving the perception that juvenile crime is out of control? Like, you get one bad video and suddenly everybody thinks, uh-oh. I do think that's part of it. So isolated incidents do get played up in the media, particularly in social media. A video that went viral captures the chaos just the other night as what appears to be teenagers running through the store, one riding a scooter inside, yelling and apparently stealing whatever they want with little or no resistance. You can see fireworks were not just in the sky. They were exploding in traffic near homes, even in building lobbies. Navy Yard residents watched an alarm as the unruly crowds swarmed the streets, jumped on tables in a restaurant, and even surged past security desks at apartment buildings.

I do also think it's important to recognize that during the pandemic, while youth arrests went down overall, the types of offenses for which youth were being arrested, shifted to higher profile, more serious offenses, carjackings, shootings. And so while crime overall was going down, there is a reason why folks felt less safe. And so that kind of shift in the mix of the type of crime, even though it was going down combined with the media really focusing on these incidents, I think drove the perception that crime and particularly youth crime was out of control in the district.

Even though, so right, so your question about or your comment about vibes being different than reality, there is a difference between feeling secure and being safe. The data says that we are in fact safe in D.C.

Even while we may not feel as secure as we'd felt in the past. This is very interesting and it brings me back to the language that we were hearing from Janine Piro and that I've been seeing a lot of on Twitter since President Trump made his announcement,

people who very much support this move. And what it reminds me of is a discourse around the idea of super predators. The kinds of kids that are called super predators. No conscience, no empathy. Remind us of how in the U.S. the idea of particularly violent children has played out.

The super predator term was really coined at the tail end of this period where we abandoned the rehabilitative notion. And it was this belief that young people, that there was going to be this cohort of young people who were not just immoral, but amoral, didn't care, were going to essentially go on a crime rampage. I've described these children in some recent writings as fatherless, godless, and jobless. But in some ways, that is an overly optimistic description of their lives. And the image that often got associated with the super predator were kids of color, and particularly poor kids of color. And so it was a way to really, it was a demonization of young people of color that really took hold in the 90s.

President Trump very much promoted the Super Predator discourse. In fact, in the famous case of the Central Park Five, President Trump took out a full-page ad, calling for them to be executed. Of course I hate these people. And let's all hate these people, because maybe hate is what we need if we're going to get something done. Calling for innocent black and brown children in New York to be executed.

And so he very much promoted this myth of the super predator, as he seems to be doing again today. The belief was that because we were on the cusp of this generation of super predators, that they were beyond rehabilitation, and so that the laws really needed to be about getting tougher on kids. We saw a lot of movement in terms of making it easier to transfer kids in adult court, for instance, which, again, is something that U.S. Attorney Piro, for instance, has floated as an idea that she would like to implement now in D.C. We saw a greater detention of young people, greater incarceration, fewer access to services. Did that do what it was meant to do? Did putting kids into the adult carcoral system? Did it lead to? to less crime? Did it lead to better outcomes for the kids when they became adults? Like, what was the good? What was the bad? The research that's studied the interventions pushed during that time period have shown that they were absolutely the wrong interventions and that they actually undermine public safety. So, for instance, there's a great CDC study from 2007 that when

it reviews the literature, the consensus is that it actually makes it more likely. that young people who get charged and tried in adult court are going to re-offend. So it actually undermines public safety. We've seen similar research with respect to the detention and incarceration of young people. So when young people are detained and incarcerated, it makes it less likely that they're going to do the, really the two things that we want them to do. We want them to finish school and we want them to not re-offend. And detaining a young person makes it less likely that they're going to get. their high school diploma and more likely that they're going to end up in the adult criminal

justice system. So again, it really undermines the things that we're trying to accomplish in terms of public safety. All right. So what should a city like Washington that does have a persistent problem with juvenile crime, even if it's not widespread? What is a city like Washington supposed to do if it doesn't return to these tough on crime policies that Janine Piro wants? The first thing a city like Washington should do is invest directly in its young people. What we want is harm not to happen in the first place. The way we do that is to give kids the services, the supports, the opportunities that they need to thrive. What does that look like specifically?

Number one, it starts with supporting their parents. And make sure that parents in the city have the economic support, the housing support, the parenting skills support. to really make sure that they are able to support their young people in growing successfully into adulthood. So that's number one. Number two is then providing the supports for young people themselves. This is a combination of community-based behavioral health supports, employment opportunities.

For those young people who get into trouble, we need to recognize that a lot of them have been victims themselves before they ever come into contact with the delinquency system. They've been through a lot of trauma, a lot of adversity. You know, everything you're saying makes a lot of sense to me. And, you know, then I have to recognize that while living in D.C., I've never been carjacked. I've never been mugged.

So you've been doing this for a long time, and I wonder, what do you say when someone says, look, I'm a victim. I'm a victim, too. I experienced violence at the hands of, you know, some kid. The first thing I'd say is I'm sorry. I'm, you know, I'm heartbroken for you that you had to experience that. Over the last 50 years, our country has first-hand experience with what doesn't work, which is the time period before the 90s, to what does work.

which is the movement that we've made over the last 25, 30 years to really focus on investing and helping people thrive, equipping them with the skills, the tools, the healing that they need in order to transition successfully into adulthood. It is really hard when we've been harmed to not let fear take over to not let that drive decision making

but at the end of the day my experience in talking to folks who have experienced harm and including the harm that I've seen firsthand myself is that what folks want is for the harm

not to happen in the first place or not to happen again and in order to make that happen we need to be smart on crime, not tough on crime. Eduardo Ferrer, he's a professor at Georgetown Law, and he's policy director of the Georgetown Juvenile Justice Clinic and Initiative. Miles Bryant produced today's episode.

Amina El Sadi edited. Laura Bullard checked the facts. Andrea Kristen's daughter and Patrick Boyd are our engineers. and I'm Newell King. It's today explained.