President Donald Trump announced Monday he is placing Washington D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department under federal control, and is deploying the National Guard in the city, insisting the action was necessary “to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.” He said this would be “Liberation Day” for D.C.

“The number of car thefts has doubled over the past five years, and the number of carjackings has more than tripled,” Trump said Monday, contradicting figures that the U.S. attorney released earlier this year showing a downward trajectory for these crimes. Car thefts were even year over year, and armed carjackings are down 53 percent.

As recently as January, the Department of Justice was touting the fact that violent crime in Washington D.C.

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