Soldiers of the National Guard, part-time reservists deployed on the streets of the US capital, are the most eye-catching part of President Donald Trump's get-tough approach to crime in Washington, DC.
But there is a lot more to it than that.
Indeed, the National Guard is just the tip of the iceberg of a bigger operation.
"If somebody kills somebody in the capital, Washington, DC, we're going to be seeking the death penalty," said President Trump at his last televised cabinet meeting, arguing for the deterrent effect of execution.
Recorded crime in the US capital surged during the Covid lockdown.
The years 2022 and 2023 saw murders spike to levels not seen this century.
Since then, the figures have been trending downwards, as the city's Metropolitan Police Force has taken a more proactive approach.
Crime has also generally fallen across the US in the post-pandemic period.
Last week, the Mayor of Washington said there had been dramatic falls in some categories of serious crime, notably murders and carjacking - the signature crime of DC in recent years, where victims have ranged from a member of congress to an NFL footballer (who was shot in the leg during the incident).
Speaking about the first twenty days of the crime clampdown, the Mayor of Washington said: "The difference between this period, this 20-day period of this federal surge and last year, represents an 87% reduction in carjackings in Washington."
The state of emergency declared by the president for DC lasts 30 days - unless it is renewed by Congress. That is the period for which the National Guard can be deployed on the capital's streets on presidential orders alone.
The real impact on DC crime figures has been from a surge of federal law enforcement personnel from agencies like the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the drugs enforcement agency, people who can actually make arrests and who are trained to deal with criminals. After three weeks, it's producing some results.
Mayor of Washington Muriel Bowser has won praise from President Trump for working with him to combat crime, but she is also drawn a clear distinction between the impact of extra police officers and the arrival of the military.
"We know that we have had fewer gun crimes, fewer homicides, and we have experienced an extreme reduction in carjackings.
"What we know is not working is a break in trust between police and community, especially with new federal partners in our community, we know having masked ICE agents in the community has not worked, and national guards from other states has not been an efficient use of those resources."
Although there have been some big drops in the most serious offences, crime figures are notoriously slippery things.
As if to prove it, there was a spike in armed robberies in the District of Columbia over the weekend, including in prominent places like Adams-Morgan and Capitol Hill.
Seven holdups were reported in a twelve-hour period. The pre-surge figures for this year show an average of four armed robberies happening every day in DC.
The Mayor has insisted crime is falling in DC.
Read more: Eight hundred National Guard troops mobilised for DC - Pentagon
Last year the district reported a 35% drop in serious crimes, followed by a 25% drop in the first half of this year.
A year to date comparison with the same period last year - which the city government published last week - shows a big drop in violent crime: 1,685 offences this year compared with 2,310 in 2025, a drop of 27%.
There were 103 homicides during the period, down from 122 the previous year, a 16% drop.
It comes after 2023 was a dreadful year for murders in DC - 274. It was the highest number since 1997.
Last year the number of murders had fallen to 187.
These are very high numbers for a city of some 670,000 people (similar to the population of Cork and Limerick combined).
There were 77 homicides recorded in Ireland (population 5.4 million) last year.
The worst years ever for homicides in DC were 1990 and 1991, when the number exceeded 470 in both years (and with a smaller population than today).
President Trump made much of the fact that one of the three weeks of his emergency deployment of troops and federal law enforcement to DC was a week without any homicides in the city.
In fact, there have been five such weeks this year (two of them back to back in early March), showing once again the slippery nature of crime statistics and their employment in political argument.
Indeed, the crime statistics in this city are contested.
There is now a congressional investigation of DC's crime statistics, and a criminal probe being led by Judge Janine Pirro, the Former Fox News personality appointed by President Trump as the Federal Prosecutor for the District.
The DC Metro Police itself is investigating one of its own senior officers for allegedly changing crime data to make it look better.
The Police Union has also disputed the somewhat rosy picture painted by the official figures over the past four years. Its chairman, Gregg Pemberton, was quoted in the Washington Post saying that while crime has come down from the post-pandemic peak, the claimed percentages are "preposterous".
"We're out on the street - we know the calls we're responding to," he said.
Mr Pemberton said he supports the Federal takeover of law enforcement in DC as a "drastic but necessary step".
The Metropolitan Police Department is short some 700 officers, and is having to spend a lot more on recruitment and retention.
The District of Columbia has a strange legal status, a small federal enclave controlled by the president and Congress, but which has had Home Rule since 1973 which leaves most day to day running of things to the mayor.
But ultimately, the president is in charge of policing the city, and he can order in National Guard troops if he wants. As the Vice President JD Vance made clear.
"Washington DC got to a point where it was having a murder more than every other day.
"The National Capital of the most powerful nation in the history of the world had a murder every other day, carjackings, armed robberies that rival literal third world countries, and the President United States said, this is America's city, and enough is enough.
"And he deployed the National Guard to fix it."
But the law also says the 50 States control their own national guard forces, and the president can only send in military forces if the governor of a state requests it.
Now attention is turning to Chicago, where the city's mayor and the governor of Illinois, both Democrats, are pushing back strongly on suggestions from the Trump regime that this week they will send in the guard there.
"Of the top 20 cities in homicide rate have Republican governors. None of these cities is Chicago. Eight of the top 10 states with the highest homicide rates are led by Republicans. None of those states is Illinois," said Governor of Illinois JB Pritzker, a billionaire who fancies himself the Democrats presidential candidate in 2028.
He claims the president's actions are all about politics and optics, not about law enforcement.
"This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city in a blue state, to try and intimidate his political rivals.
"This is about the President of the United States and his complicit lackey, Steven Miller, searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarise our cities and end elections, find a family who's enjoying today sitting on their front porch and ask If they want their neighbourhoods turned into a war zone by a wannabe dictator," he said.
The president rejected the charge: "A lot of people are saying, 'maybe we like a dictator'. I don't like a dictator. I'm not a dictator. I'm a man with great common sense and a smart person. And when I see what's happening to our cities, and then you send in troops, instead of being praised, they're saying, you're trying to take over the Republic.
"These people are sick."
Like another Democrat Governor who actually has had the National Guard federalised and deployed in his own state - California's Gavin Newsome - Governor Pritzker has taken a high profile stance against the Trump administration's use of the military in domestic settings, arguing that law enforcement should be left to law enforcement agencies.
The issue does appear to be one where prominent Democratic Party politicians, the ones often mentioned as potential Presidential candidates for the party, are attempting to take a stand against the president.
Another Governor in this group is Maryland's Wes Moore.
A charismatic former army officer who has commanded troops in combat, Mr Moore is also criticising the Trump administrations use of military forces in law enforcement, saying he knows what soldiers are trained to do, and law enforcement is not what they are trained for.
Baltimore, the big city of Maryland and a place that has long struggled with crime, is another place Mr Trump has said would benefit from a National Guard deployment.
Neither is civil disturbance, but the administration now wants every state's guard to set up a dedicated civil disturbance unit to overcome this problem.
Another step in the anti-crime plan was last week's signing of an executive order to end "cashless bail", the practice of releasing someone who has been charged a crime on bail without requiring them to lodge a cash sum in court.
Not surprisingly quite a few of them do not return to face their hearing.
The order only applies in the District of Colombia - because it is controlled by the Federal Government - but Mr Trump wants all governors in states that operate a cashless bail system to end the practice.
Next year, America celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
The country is also hosting the FIFA World Cup.
Some sort of a clampdown on crime and a clean up of the capital city was probably going to be ordered by whoever was in the White House.
Inevitably, the Trump way of doing it involves a strong element of communication and messaging - crude but short term effective.