In Washington crackdown, making a federal case out of low-level arrests

WASHINGTON – As President Donald Trump posed triumphantly for photos with

police officers, government agents and members of the National Guard in south-east Washington

last week, lawyers across town in federal court grappled with his new brand of justice.

The stream of defendants who shuffled through a federal courtroom on the afternoon of Aug 21 illustrated the new ways in which laws are being enforced in the nation’s capital after the President’s takeover of the city’s police. They were appearing before a magistrate judge on charges that would typically be handled at the local court level, if they were filed at all.

One man had been arrested over an open container of alcohol. Another had been charged with threatening the President after delivering a drunken outburst following his arrest on vandalism.

Mr Trump has cast his crackdown on crime as a success, and suggested on Aug 22 that it was a blueprint he would seek to apply to other cities, including Chicago. To defence lawyers and even some prosecutors, though, many of the cases have raised concerns that the takeover seems intended to artificially inflate its effect because government lawyers have been instructed to file the most serious federal charges, no matter how minor the incident.

One of the recipients of Mr Trump’s show of force was Mark Bigelow, 28, a part-time delivery driver for Amazon.

After midnight on Aug 19, Bigelow was arrested on charges of possession of an open container, a misdemeanour.

As he was placed in a vehicle, the handcuffed Bigelow became belligerent, twisting his body and yelling, according to a court filing, which described how Bigelow made “physical contact” by kicking an agent in the hand and another in the leg.

As a result, Bigelow was charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding a federal officer, an offence that carries a maximum sentence of eight years in prison.

The charges follow a directive by the US Attorney, Ms Jeanine Pirro, to prosecutors to charge the most serious crimes possible and to do so in federal court, where sentences tend to run much longer.

A federal public defender representing Bigelow, Ms Elizabeth Mullin, told the US magistrate judge, Ms Moxila Upadhyaya, that he would never have been arrested, let alone charged with a federal felony, but for the President’s crackdown. “He was caught up in this federal occupation of DC,” she said. “This was a case created by federal law enforcement.” NYTIMES