ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Just over three weeks ago, President Trump federalized the police department and deployed the National Guard here in Washington. The administration says it's crushing crime and cleaning up the city. NPR's Ryan Lucas has been digging through court records to find out who's being arrested and what they're being charged with. Hey, Ryan.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Hi there.
SHAPIRO: Let's jump right in. What exactly have you been looking at?
LUCAS: So because the administration hasn't provided names or case numbers for the people who have been arrested since the federal takeover here in D.C., it's something that I wanted to try to find out. Now, D.C. is unique in that the U.S. attorney's office here prosecutes both local and federal cases. The vast majority end up in Superior Court, which is basically the local courthouse for local crimes. A small sliver end up in federal court.
So I talked to the lawyers, looked at court and arrest records and other things for cases filed in federal court and Superior Court over the first two weeks of Trump's federalization of the D.C. police - so from August 11 to August 25 - to see what we could learn. And just to be clear, I didn't look at any of the immigration arrests that have happened. That's a separate bucket.
SHAPIRO: OK, so if not immigration, then what did you find? What are people being charged with?
LUCAS: So let's start with Superior Court because the vast majority of people who are arrested go there. Attorneys in that courthouse say that they are swamped. The room where defendants are arraigned has, on some days, been working until 1 in the morning, I'm told...
SHAPIRO: Wow.
LUCAS: ...Which lawyers say is basically unheard of. Now, around 1,050 people were arrested and had their cases go through superior court over those first two weeks. A little under 20% of those cases were charged as felonies, so as more serious offenses. The rest - around 80% - were a mix of misdemeanors, warrants, things like traffic offenses, or prosecutors decided to drop the case. Lawyers say the overall number of arrests is up, but the percentage of felonies is roughly in line with the norm.
SHAPIRO: You said the U.S. attorney's office drops some cases. How many have they dropped?
LUCAS: So this is really interesting. Lawyers say the percentage of cases that the U.S. attorney's office drops at this early stage varies, but it's usually in the 10- to 20% range. And the office doesn't pursue the case for a host of reasons. It could be the evidence is weak, or it could be that there's a problem with the paperwork.
Now, I obtained what's known as a no-paper list for every day of those first two weeks. It has a bunch of information, including whether the U.S. attorney's office is dropping the prosecution. In the first week of the federal takeover, the U.S. attorney's office dropped 17% of the cases. In the second week, that figure dropped to less than 1%. And that change is really striking because it's not like the issues that previously led the U.S. attorney's office to drop some cases have suddenly stopped happening.
SHAPIRO: And then what about the cases that have gone to federal court?
LUCAS: Right, there were 35 cases that have been unsealed in federal court in the first two weeks of the takeover. Of those, more than half involved gun charges or a mix of gun and drug charges. The other charge that has shown up a lot is assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers. Twelve people face that charge. Some of those involve violence. In one instance, for example, court papers say the defendant struck a federal agent with his car while fleeing an attempted arrest. But several of these are not that. In one notable case, a guy threw a sub sandwich at a federal agent, and another, a guy on a scooter allegedly spit on two National Guard troops while scooting by them.
SHAPIRO: So big picture, what do these cases tell us about Trump's takeover of the D.C. police and his arguments about crime here?
LUCAS: So the number of arrests is up. That's clear. But again, less than 20% of those are felonies. The most striking thing, though, is how judges and D.C. grand juries have pushed back on some of this. A federal judge dismissed one of the gun cases because the defendant had been subject to what the judge called, quote, "the most illegal search," unquote, that he has ever seen. And we've also seen grand juries in D.C. refuse to indict in some cases, which is very rare. One of those instances was the case against the man who threw the sub sandwich at an immigration officer. So that suggests that at least in some instances, some of these cases are being seen as overreach on the part of the Trump administration.
SHAPIRO: NPR's Ryan Lucas. Thank you.
LUCAS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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