Teenagers in Washington, D.C., say the federal police takeover makes them feel unsafe
Police officers set up a roadside checkpoint on 14th Street Northwest on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., President Trump deployed federal officers and the National Guard in order to place the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department under federal control and assist in crime prevention in the nation’s capital.
Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
WASHINGTON — Marek Deca arrived here earlier this month for his first year of college at Howard University.
Law
Tensions grow as Trump and Washington, D.C. officials fight over police authority
“It’s a new environment away from home, away from family. You’re already going to feel some type of way,” the 18-year-old said.
Deca says he expected to feel nervous about normal freshman stuff, like his classes and making friends. He did not expect to feel nervous about all the federal forces roaming the city.
He said he has seen federal police officers patrolling near Howard’s campus, and that feels unsafe.
“We’re young, we want to go outside, we want to have fun in a new area and we’re afraid to go out because we’re afraid, one wrong step, one wrong move, off the crosswalk and I’m getting flagged down for something,” he said.
Sponsor Message
That fear began Monday with President Trump’s announcement that he was sending in the National Guard and taking over the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department.
On Friday, D.C. officials fought back.
The Attorney General for the district sued the federal government, saying Trump’s actions amounted to a hostile takeover. Late Friday, after pressure from a federal judge, the Justice Department withdrew its bid to name an “emergency police chief” and said — at least for now — Washington’s police chief will keep control of the D.C. police force.
Caught in the middle of all this are the district’s young people.
At the press conference announcing the move on Monday, Trump described “roving mobs of wild youth.” The U.S. Attorney for D.C., Jeanine Pirro, spoke of “young punks” and advocated for harsher punishments.
Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and officers with the Metropolitan Police Department conduct a traffic stop near the U.S. Capitol on Thursday.
Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
But NPR spoke with youth in the district and the adults who work directly with them. They said it was the federal takeover that made them feel unsafe, not the crime in the district.
“When I found out I was worried,” says Kenneth, a 16-year-old who lives in southeast D.C., one of the areas in the city that has more violent crime than the citywide average. “Now you gotta worry about what might happen.”
Sponsor Message
NPR is not using his last name — or any other last names for the teenagers under 18 in this story — because they feared retribution from the Trump administration.
National
Trump’s purge of Washington’s homeless encampments escalates
Ali, also 16, says he was open to the idea of more policing, but didn’t feel they could be trusted to actually protect residents.
“I understand public safety is important, but they look more like they’re bullying us than being our community guardians,” Ali said. “It’s hard not to feel intimidated. And it also made me think a lot about what real safety means and whether it comes from trust or from force and fear.”
Makayla, another 16-year-old from southeast D.C., echoed the idea that some types of police work could feel helpful, particularly the juvenile curfew that went into effect in part of the city. Though she also felt like small groups of young people were making life harder for everyone else.
“As a teenager, you want to go out and enjoy yourself,” she said. “But all y’all want to do is fight.”
The district did see a violent crime spike in 2023, and youth crime was part of that. But since then, violent crime in general has been falling, and youth crime appears to be down too.
A federal agent stands at the scene of an arrest outside New York Avenue Presbyterian Church on Thursday in Washington, D.C.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
Kristin Henning, director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic and Initiative at Georgetown University Law Center, says even if the numbers were increasing, such a crackdown isn’t necessary. “We’re punishing the whole of black youth in our city for the mistakes or misdeeds of a very, very small percentage of young people who are engaged in this type of behavior,” she said.
The young people involved in D.C.’s juvenile justice system are disproportionately black boys.
Henning says her clinic has already received worried phone calls from youth this week. One girl said she was put in handcuffs because she matched a description of someone else. She was eventually released. The MPD did not respond to a request for comment on the matter.
Sponsor Message
“She called our office to say, you know, this is what they are doing to us. That’s her perspective. Whether that officer was responding to this new executive order, it does not matter,” she said.
Henning says many of the young people who do commit crimes are victims of trauma. In fact, a 2022 study by the D.C. Criminal Justice Coordinating Council said as much: Youth involved with the juvenile justice system were more likely to be homeless, to have experienced abuse or neglect, to have missed school, and to live in an area with more gun violence.
National
Mayors of Democratic cities beyond D.C. decry Trump’s takeover threats
Research shows treating violent crime like a public health problem — addressing things like housing, food insecurity, unemployment, and mental health — is effective in lowering it.
“The response is rarely, ‘What caused this? How can we change the conditions under which this person or these people made this choice?'” says Naïké Savain, co-executive director of the Black Swan Academy, which runs civic programming for Black youth in D.C.
Tyela, a 17-year-old high school senior, agrees, saying that people in her neighborhood need better mental health care, better housing, and more recreation centers.
“They would not be out here shooting people or in beef if they had somewhere to go,” said Tyela, who added that she has known people killed by gun violence.
She feels like Trump’s police takeover is not going to solve the problem of crime in her neighborhood. Normally, she’d want to protest the action.
“But at the same time, after all of these things are going on, it’s like, how is it going to change? How is the way that I advocate for myself going to change? Am I still going to be able to do it as much?” she said.
Now, she said, she’s a little afraid to.
Education department admits not enough done to stop Dubbo College Delroy aide harming children
By Gina McKeon, Catherine James and Rachel Clayton
Sat 18 OctSaturday 18 October
Link copiedShare article
WARNING: This story contains references to suicide, bullying and other details that may cause distress.
It was a cold Tuesday night in June, 11 years ago, when Kim May saw a video that would change the course of her life.
The then-45-year-old was celebrating a birthday party at a pub on the main drag of Dubbo in central New South Wales.
She was surrounded by her colleagues from Dubbo College — the regional city’s largest school — when her attention was caught by someone laughing.
“He had a phone,” Kim says, and he was showing a video to a group of people.
The video showed a student from the school’s Delroy Campus who attended the support unit — a section of the school for vulnerable children with learning difficulties or disability.
Kim worked in the unit as a support worker and recognised the boy immediately — he was a non-verbal student.
The man showing the video, Mark Prince, also worked in the unit.
Mark laughed as he showed the video of the child to his colleagues.
On the screen, Kim says the boy was walking with his pants down and his nappy started to fall down, partly exposing his bottom.
“I was so angry,” Kim says.
“I did say: ‘if you don’t put that phone away, I’ll shove it up your arse’.
“They all just looked at me like I was stupid.”
That night, Kim couldn’t sleep. Nothing about the video and Mark’s reaction to it felt right to her. She knew she had to say something.
“They pushed me,” Kim says. “And I’m pushing back now.”
“It would’ve taken just one phone call to stop this.”
What followed in the months and years after would expose a secret blacklist, a culture of silence, and cracks in the system supposed to protect children, culminating in a 14-month government investigation.
‘I was told to never talk about Mark Prince to anyone’
Kim couldn’t understand how she had such a strong reaction to the video, while other colleagues seemed unconcerned and found it funny.
She had worked with children for more than a decade, and had an uncanny ability, according to her colleagues, of gaining children’s trust.
“If something went wrong with the kids, they came to me,” she says.
Even so, Kim spent days second-guessing herself.
But a teacher who was also at the party backed her judgement, so Kim decided to report it.
She went to the then principal of Dubbo College Delroy and told them about the video. The principal told her, “Thank you very much … leave it with me”, Kim says.
But from what Kim could see, there weren’t any consequences for Mark.
Instead, Kim began to feel she was being iced out of the school community — one she had been part of for 15 years.
“I could be walking up the corridor and it’s like they never [saw] me.”
A mediation was organised after Mark believed Kim was talking about him behind his back. At that meeting, Kim says she asked Mark if he took the video of the vulnerable student in the Support Unit.
“The room went quiet,” she says. “And he said yes.”
Mark Prince told Background Briefing he did not admit to this during the mediation.
Kim thought there would be consequences, but the justice she was seeking never seemed to happen.
“I was told to never talk about Mark Prince to anyone,” Kim says. She was also told if anyone was to mention Mark’s name she could not say anything.
If you or anyone you know needs help:
- Lifeline on 13 11 14
- Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467
- Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636
- Headspace on 1800 650 890
- ReachOut at au.reachout.com
But the isolation continued, and being shunned from a community that meant so much to her took a deep toll on Kim’s mental health. She sank further and further into a void of depression that eventually led to suicidal ideation.
Out of her desperation, a plan was formed — she would take her own life and spray paint “Investigate Delroy” at the scene.
Ultimately, Kim sought help for her mental health and decided to take a break from the school.
“I thought the change would do me good. I wanted to get out of Dubbo. I wanted to get away from all this shit,” she says.
Eventually, Kim quit after 18 years at the school and told management it was because she was “known as a whistleblower and I don’t wanna come back”.
Do you know more? Contact Background Briefing at background.briefing@abc.net.au
“If I was believed in the first place, it would never have got to this.”
Before she left, Kim spoke to a colleague — Danielle Sparrow — and told her she’d felt targeted at the school since reporting wrongdoing. She warned Danielle that speaking up could backfire.
It would be years before Danielle would fully comprehend what Kim meant, and years before Kim would discover the boy in the video wasn’t the only student who had issues with Mark Prince.
Delroy student threatened, suspended
Paul Eastwood always had his sights set on becoming a professional rugby league player.
Schoolwork was a challenge for the teenager when he started at Delroy in 2014, and he joined the support unit.
“It was a pretty good school,” Paul says of his first year, “I liked going”.
When he joined the Clontarf Foundation program, Paul felt his dream was being realised. Clontarf is a federally funded program designed to support young Aboriginal boys through sport, mentoring, and leadership.
But instead of encouragement, Paul says his time in the program became a source of fear and humiliation.
Mark had moved from the support unit to Clontarf and was the operations officer.
A NSW Department of Education investigation would later find Mark engaged in threatening behaviour toward a male student. That student was Paul.
Paul’s father, Greg Eastwood, remembers his son as a cheerful and determined boy who wanted to learn, despite struggling with literacy.
“He was always a happy kid,” Greg says. “He will stand up for what he thinks, right or wrong. He wanted to learn, but he had difficulties.”
At first, things seemed fine. But after Paul joined Clontarf the situation began to deteriorate.
Paul started receiving suspension letters.
“Twenty-day suspension — Christ, how ridiculous is this?” Greg says. “We’d get these letters and have no idea what was going on.”
Paul says the reasons he was given for being suspended were for backchatting and swearing at teachers, and fighting with other students.
“The deputy saw me walking down the hall [and said] ‘Paul, you’re going for 20 days’,” he says.
He asked what for? Paul says the deputy principal replied, “You were going on with the teacher — Princey.”
Paul says Mark would verbally taunt him during the school day: “‘Take your hat off. You got no brains in there. You’re not going to get your year 10 certificate’, and that kind of stuff.”
The NSW Department of Education found there was insufficient evidence to prove this occurred.
Paul acknowledges it wasn’t just his interactions with Mark Prince that were leading to these suspensions.
But even when he felt he was trying not to get suspended he’d be punished again. Paul says he felt targeted.
Mark told Background Briefing he was not connected to Paul’s suspensions and did not provoke him.
Paul’s father Greg told his son to try and behave and met with teachers at the school to try and resolve things, but the suspensions kept coming.
After a while, not even being home felt safe to Paul.
Mark would regularly drive the Clontarf bus, full of students, past Paul, who would garden to pass the time.
Mark would honk the horn and the kids would all wave, Paul says.
“I just kept my head down. I felt humiliated.”
Greg set up cameras outside the house and saw the Clontarf bus passing repeatedly.
“He’s only a young boy — it affected him,” Greg says.
Mark later admitted to sounding the horn of the Clontarf bus near the Eastwood home, though the Department of Education found there was no evidence the honking was intended to be threatening.
For Paul, the ongoing challenges at school left deep scars. He began shutting himself off from friends, stopped playing as much football and often stayed in his room with the lights off.
“I always sat there thinking ‘what’s going on? What could the reason be for him to target me so much?'”
At first, Greg had thought his son was acting up. But one night, when he heard Paul crying alone in his room, he realised something more serious was happening.
“He was crying at night, wondering what he’d done and saying, ‘I don’t even know what I’d done’.”For more stories like this follow the podcast
Listen for free on ABC Listen on your mobile device.
Greg feared Paul might try and hurt himself, so he tried telling the school and the director of the Clontarf program but, he says, nothing seemed to change.
Despite his ordeal, Paul wanted to prove his dedication. He kept attending school and Clontarf training, trying to show up early in the mornings before the doors opened. He still wanted to play professional football.
“I was always the first one there,” he says. “I cared about going to school.”
But the ongoing treatment took its toll.
Paul never told his friends what was happening. The only person he trusted was Kim May.
When he finally mentioned Mark Prince’s name to her, she cut him off. Paul didn’t know Kim had been warned not to talk about Mark to anyone.
Paul and Greg felt no-one believed them.
‘I was horrified’
Years later, when Kim returned to Dubbo, she ran into Paul’s older brother, Brad.
“He said ‘Paul’s not doing real good’,” Kim says. Then Brad mentioned Mark Prince.
She couldn’t believe it. Kim met with Paul and Greg, and not long after, another person became involved — Danielle Sparrow, the teacher Kim had warned all those years ago about the risks of speaking up.
Since then, Danielle had become a union representative at Delroy. Teachers, students, and staff started opening up to her about ongoing issues at the school.
As the issues mounted, Danielle had wondered about Kim and the warning she had given right before she left. She gave her a call.
“Bit by bit, she was telling me more and more about what had happened. I was horrified. I couldn’t believe that something [like that video] had happened and the person had been able to stay working in the school,” Danielle says.
The pair decided to do something. They filed a complaint to the NSW Children’s Guardian about Paul’s treatment and the video shown at the birthday party by Mark, as well as other issues at the school including treatment of students by teachers and alleged bullying between staff.
Danielle and Kim tried their local MP. But it felt like no-one cared, Danielle says.
Then, seven years after Kim first reported Mark to the Delroy principal, something happened.
A secret government blacklist
An investigator from the NSW education department was sent to Dubbo and launched what would end up being a 14-month investigation into Delroy College, including into Mark’s conduct.
According to documents seen by Background Briefing, of the 26 allegations made against Mark 15 were sustained, including the allegation Kim had made eight years earlier.
Mark admitted he had filmed a student in a support unit on his mobile phone without permission, and admitted to showing the video to colleagues.
“The evidence demonstrates that Mr Prince was laughing at the video he had filmed of a vulnerable student,” the investigation found.
There was conflicting information as to whether the child’s bottom was filmed, but the department said it was inappropriate for an employee to film a student without the prior knowledge or consent.
The department also said Mark’s actions demonstrated little regard for the wellbeing of a vulnerable student.
Eleven allegations were not sustained due to insufficient evidence.
The investigation also exposed that in 2018, when Mark was a supervisor on a Clontarf bus trip with students for a football trip, he bought them two cartons of beer.
When a student was blamed and pulled into a meeting to be suspended, Mark said nothing.
When the Clontarf Foundation became aware of the incident Mark was immediately stood down and subsequently resigned from his role at the foundation.
Clontarf Foundation chief executive Gerard Neesham declined an interview but said in a written statement that the foundation treated the matter seriously and informed the suspended student’s family, the school, and the department about the incident.
The investigation also found Mark’s behaviour of purchasing and supplying alcohol to the students on the bus was “irresponsible” and “reckless”.
It also said that then allowing a student to take the blame for the alcohol being on the bus was “deceitful”, and Mark’s actions “compromised the safety of children in his care”.
As a result of the investigation, Mark was added to a confidential database called the Not To Be Employed (NTBE) list, permanently banning him from being employed by the NSW Department of Education.
The department said allegations that may have amounted to criminal conduct were reported to NSW Police.
NSW Police said it was unable to comment.
Loophole allows blacklisted employees to work with children
Following the department’s findings of misconduct and banning Mark from entering public schools in NSW he has continued to work with children and holds a current Working with Children Check (WWCC).
Mark now works at the Regional Enterprise Development Institute, a non-profit providing services to Indigenous communities.
In 2023 and 2024, following the findings of the department investigation, Mark was employed as the senior case manager for the NSW government program Youth On Track — a program designed to support at-risk 10-17 year olds.
“That’s where I feel the community does not understand,” Danielle says.
“Those loopholes exist. You may be banned from working for an organisation [but] you can work for another.
“The two don’t actually talk to each other and tell each other that the person was banned from working here because of these issues.”
Kim feels the system is confusing at best.
“It doesn’t give me closure. I know for a fact he’s out there working with kids,” she says.
Education department admits failure
For Kim, the investigation also revealed how others in the system failed to act when they should have.
Before the investigation had wrapped up, Kim received an apology letter from the NSW Department of Education from the Professional and Ethical Standards (PES) team.
“Our records showed that you reported concerns about Mr Prince taking inappropriate images of students to your principal at Delroy College, Dubbo, in May 2014,” the letter said.
The letter said the PES team held no records that the principal at Delroy at the time reported the allegation to them about Mark filming a student, as was required under the procedures in place in 2014.
It also admitted that when Kim took her concerns about the video to PES, it did not take take appropriate action in response to her report. PES accepted the principal’s explanation at the time, that it was filmed in an “educational context”, and decided that the matter did not require investigation.
“The information you provided in the document should have been more closely examined,” the letter said.
The principal at Delroy in 2014 declined an interview request.
Even though Kim got a result, she says the apology letter doesn’t give her closure.
Greg and Paul feel the system meant to protect them failed. Kim had already reported Mark’s behaviour to the principal but nothing changed, and Mark’s threatening behaviour towards Paul went unnoticed by those in charge.
For Paul especially, the damage continues. His disengagement from school means he still struggles to read and write.
“Why did this happen? Why did the school let it happen? Why did the Department of Education let it happen? Why did Clontarf let it happen?” Greg says.
“It’s taken up a lot of our time and energy to tell the truth, to get them to act on those allegations, and we are the ones that suffer.”
