With more than 2,200 National Guard troops patrolling the streets of Washington, D.C., under President Donald Trump’s orders, Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton says if they are going to police the city, they should wear body cameras.
Norton has introduced a bill requiring all armed forces deployed in the District, including the Guard, to follow a program similar to what D.C. police already use.
That means video evidence would be stored and made accessible to the public and press. Norton says the cameras would protect both residents and the troops themselves.
Her push comes as the District, home to 700,000 mostly Black and brown residents without voting representation in Congress, finds itself under federal control.
Norton calls the deployment a raw assertion of power that politicizes the military and pulls Guardsmen from their families and jobs without the community’s consent.
The bill would apply to Trump’s current deployment and any future ones, setting up a fight over transparency in the middle of his law-and-order agenda.
Click play to listen to the report from AURN White House Correspondent Ebony McMorris. For more news, follow @E_N_McMorris & @aurnonline.
