President Donald Trump is “tired of” marijuana and alcohol being consumed in public, a federal agent told a group of people sitting on a porch in Washington, D.C. in a video that was highlighted by Last Week Tonight’s John Oliver.
As the National Guard and multiple federal agencies—including the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)—take part in the federalization of law enforcement in the District of Columbia, there was one interaction over the weekend that caught national attention.
In the clip featured on Oliver’s HBO show Last Week Tonight, an agent approached a group, apparently on suspicion that they were publicly using cannabis outside their residence.
“We’re doing checks, keeping everybody safe down here,” the agent said, asking if they had “heard of the federal surge that Donald Trump’s putting out.”
He was referencing an executive action that activated the National Guard and other agencies to participate in policing in the nation’s Capitol, with the aim of tackling violent crime. Local officials have disputed the justification for the “surge,” pointing to lower-than-average crime rates in D.C. in recent years.
But as federal agents swept the streets of D.C.—which White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday resulted in 465 arrests over about two weeks—questions are being raised about the nature of the crimes those officers were targeting.
Oliver said that “the purest expression” of the disconnect was “this cringe-inducing encounter where a group of agents approach a man they mistakenly think is smoking marijuana on his back porch, which, by the way, is completely legal in D.C.”
(For the record, possession of limited amounts of marijuana by adults is legal in the District under a voter-approved law—but public consumption is prohibited.)
Hellbound and Down 