DC native here with a ton of friends in the MPD.
He will lose in court on this and create a fuckton of confusion. He will piss of police and the FBI (whom he is assigning to night patrols). This is a waste of time, is terrible for the people of DC who live there and work there.
This is ******* wrong.
While I moved my primary residence from the DMV last year, I'm still up there most weeks for work. Some thoughts:
1. At the outset, let me just say clearly that of course there's no real "emergency" (at least in comparison to some periods of status quo over the last 35 years of my life there - watch the fantastic documentary "The Legend of Cool Disco Dan" if you want to see when things were really awful) justifying the declaration. This is just more shock and awe, with a hint of Lafayette Square redux thrown in.
2. With that said, once again, behold the power of legislative "emergency powers" grants to presidents. You can be damn sure that Steven Miller and his minions have done a westlaw search of the us code to identify every single time the word "emergency" appears, and has thought about what they can do with it. Some day, when the dust settles, that entire 'hit list' has to be examined...closely.
3. I'm not actually so sure he loses in court - the home rule act is pretty darned unqualified, the takeover authority is time limited, and if this percolates to the appellate level, most judges aren't going to (and probably shouldn't in the perfect world) take on a plausible executive action, particularly following him having notified the congressional committees per the act, which at least arguably gives congress the first bite at the apple in reviewing the executive invocation to extend the period beyond the initial 48 hours.
4. DC is such a strange animal, and doesn't deserve this one. On the one hand, the city finally figured out that they can't just build office buildings and they need the city to be a place to live and work. They've done a great job with that, Covid notwithstanding, over the last decade or so. And I don't doubt that statistically, crime (and violent crime) are probably down. Beyond that, I think the mayor has done an outstanding job walking a tough line as far as the administration goes, and she probably ought to get a little slack.
5. But on the other hand, what's maybe a little different (acknowledged speculation on my part) is the geographic footprint of that crime. A guy (3 degrees of separation) was murdered on K street in his car last year down from my office; the re-gentrified areas have yielded stuff like this most recent thing. And the reality is that in the summer, it is markedly worse with the idle youths. (And if they're not causing carjacking and related mayhem within the district, they're crossing the 14th street bridge to do so in Pentagon City, then fleeing back across the bridge into the city since they Arlington and DC cops don't chase, etc.) Beyond that, I have to say, the downtown is not that nice a place these days, between homeless people relieving themselves in the park, a greater sense of "danger to self or others" types, and the ever present smell of skunk weed. (Yes, I know some of that's probably Trump inflicted.) Definitely as hard an edge to the city as I've seen/felt in a while.\
6. I don't doubt MPD and FBI will be more than annoyed, for different reasons.