Former Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer on Monday said both President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are making amateur errors by deploying National Guard soldiers to police the streets of the nation’s capital.
“He‘s overestimating his assessment of what those National Guard personnel can do now, and demonstrating his inexperience in policing in a complex environment,” Gainer said during a Monday appearance on CNN’s “The Source” with Kaitlan Collins.
Hundreds of soldiers were sent to the nation’s capital to crack down on crime as ordered by the president when he invoked section 704 of the Home Rule Act, placing the city under federal control.
Shortly after the declaration, Hegseth approved National Guard members to carry weapons while patrolling the streets as soldiers from Louisiana, Ohio, Mississippi and other states arrived to enact Trump’s crackdown on violent offenders.
“The National Guard as it‘s configured now, is not prepared to do this. There are good men and women there who are trained to do a particular function: warfighting or emergencies in the state or train rails and fires and flood,” Gainer told CNN.
“In this particular endeavor, arming those men and women and putting them in harm‘s way is risky and dangerous,” he continued.
Other federal officials have agreed, stating the president’s objective could be compromised by having boots on the ground.
Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe was one of the voices who cast doubt on soldiers’ ability to fight crime in Washington.
“Even the most tactically astute, highly trained FBI agents, those who serve on SWAT teams — I know this as a former SWAT team member. They don’t know. They don’t do community policing,” McCabe said during an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “They don’t walk beats the way that police officers do every day, day in and day out.”
Gainer pointed to Illinois’s educational institutions geared toward figuring out the “socioeconomic causes of crime” as an alternative to deploying soldiers for policing purposes.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
Comments