National Guard vs. Chaos: A Former Cop on Why Trump’s Call Is the Right One

Once again, I find myself going down the proverbial rabbit hole of politics, and as usual, politics is directly affecting law enforcement and their ability to protect our citizens. It’s just pissing me off, and the talking heads have it all wrong. We are witnessing a struggle between law-abiding states and cities, like my home state of Florida, and the states and cities that are in a perpetual state of chaos; most notably New York, California, Los Angeles and San Francisco, Chicago, DC, plus a host of others. Why is this the case? Strap in, because this will be partisan and I’m not pulling any punches!

History shows us again and again the crime trends where leftist-liberals are elected as opposed to conservatives, and there are differences. To be fair, and before I get in too deep and you think I’m completely one-sided, I also believe there are many scheming and corrupt republicans as well that need to go. As I’ve written before, this is not your father’s Democrat Party, not even close, and in almost every city where these democrats are in charge, crime is off the charts. These cities have policies such as no-cash bail, pro-illegal immigrant, anti-ICE, politicians who harbor defund/disband police ideology, pro-social workers instead of law enforcement, etc. General crimes and murders have skyrocketed with no end in sight. 

Because of this refusal to allow police to properly do their jobs, President Trump has begun deploying the National Guard to these cities in order to reestablish Law & Order. There is an immense push-back by these politicians against this, which is in contradiction to what the people actually want. I’ve watched news interviews with citizens from these areas, and they’re saying that they are tired of living in fear and they welcome the National Guard and an increase in police presence. They cannot venture out into their own neighborhoods for fear of being robbed and possibly killed. This is America! Why do we have to live this way? We don’t; if only our police were allowed to be police.

I’m going to provide a bit of a history lesson as to what the National Guard is and why it exists, because I’ll bet that 99% of our population doesn’t know where it came from. The National Guard is a component of the U.S. Military that consists of part-time reserve units that can be activated by either the state or federal governments in times of emergency or war. There are 54 National Guard units based in each of the 50 U.S. states, plus the District of Columbia, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. The Guard traces its origins to the state militias mustered in 17^th-century colonial America. At the start of the Civil War in 1861, Connecticut was the first state to call its militia a “National Guard.” The 1903 Militia Act and the National Defense Act of 1916 created the Guard as a reserve force that could be activated by both state governors and the president (hold this thought), including for overseas deployments during times of war.

In the vast majority of domestic deployments, the National Guard has been activated by state governments to keep the peace and restore order during natural disasters or civil unrest. But during some extraordinary circumstances, the president has activated the National Guard or federal troops on American soil, including times when the president thought that the state leaders weren’t doing enough. Sound familiar? The current deployments, though argued by the Left, are not without precedent, so don’t buy into the misleading rhetoric.

Here are seven of the most significant federal deployments, and I won’t get into each in detail for my purposes here, but feel free to research each event in depth. 

So thank you to History.com for the lesson.

1. The Civil War

2. Desegregation of Southern Schools

3. MLK’s March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama

4. The Detroit Uprising of 1967

5. Riots following the Assassination of MLK

6. Cuban Refugee Crisis of 1980 (“Libertad! Libertad!”) (We personally witnessed this here in Miami)

7. The 1992 Los Angeles Riots

And I will add the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew here in Miami-Dade County in 1992, as we needed the help because of the devastation we suffered. Even then, Democratic Governor Lawton Chiles hesitated in requesting troops from President George H.W. Bush, even though we all asked for it.  And as an aside, we ended up guarding the Guard instead of them guarding us because they weren’t allowed to load their weapons and were robbed by a$$hole bad guys when they discovered that their weapons weren’t loaded, mmm…Yes, we cops thought that was pretty stupid, too. 

We now find ourselves at a crossroads of sorts that we shouldn’t be. Going back to 2020 and the Summer of Love, where we had 574 riots of one size and scope or another, and no, they weren’t peaceful protests, they were riots, that could have been avoided if the democrat officials just allowed their police to do their jobs. This is not rocket science. If allowed to properly deploy and take action against criminals that are destroying property and attacking citizens, these “protests” would have been put down almost immediately, but that didn’t happen. We even had a police precinct in Seattle overrun by rioters, as was allowed by their mayor. Shameful! None of this has happened in Florida, why? Because we citizens, elected a governor and other elected officials to include almost every sheriff here, who will not tolerate this. It’s like magic! 

Now let’s talk about your run-of-the-mill general crime. These cities are completely out of control, and people are dying, but that doesn’t seem to be on the politician’s radar. Chicago-well, what can we say? President Trump is now considering deploying the National Guard to Chicago, and with good reason. You would think that we were back in the Capone Days with the number of killings that have plagued that city in recent years. As reported by the Chicago Police Department and the Chicago Tribune, the recent murder numbers are: 

2018 – 467

2019 – 417

2020 – 633 

2021 – 658

2022 – 545

2023 – 617

2024 – 573

2025 – 273 (YTD & subject to change every weekend)

Chicago’s 2023 murder rate of 617, with a population of 2.74 million, was still well over the number of New York City’s 38,6, with a population of 8.3 million, so the numbers are off the scale.  

What really frosted my a$$ is when I heard Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson say just earlier this summer, when presented with the 2024 number of 573, that “we have to get that number under 500.” What? Under 500 murders is the bar you’re setting? Not 300, 200, 100, or maybe shoot for 0, pun intended! Yes, that’s unattainable, of course, but I just don’t understand how 500 murders is an acceptable number for your city, and he said it with a straight face, no less. But this isn’t about protecting the citizens that elected them, elected Governor Pritzker, Governor Newsome, Governor Hochul, Mayor Bass, DC Mayor Bowser, and many others. Though Bowser now seems to have come around and thanked the president for the deployment to the District. Why? Because it worked! The bad guys saw the troops, authorized by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to be properly armed and ready to defend the citizens of DC and themselves, and went into hiding. Remember FAFO? That’s exactly what happens, and that’s exactly what bad guys understand – force. Are we clear? Any argument to the contrary has no standing. 

We’ve seen the misleading photo-ops starting with New York Governor Kathy Hochul when she went for her little ride on the New York subway with Mayor Eric Adams and said how safe it was. Sure. Then just recently, we saw Illinois Governor JB Pritzker say how he went for a walkabout along the Lake in Chicago and how quiet and safe that was. What you didn’t see during these self-serving moments were the security details surrounding each governor and mayor during the joyride and walk. Each one had their State Trooper or NYPD details with them. Do you have an armed security detail with you everywhere you go? No, you don’t, so trying to relate to us common folk just doesn’t work. The rules are different for them, and we are on our own.

No, this isn’t about serving and protecting the citizens of these and many other cities and states; this is just about pushing back against President Trump because it’s President Trump. I would wager that if any republican president were doing these same things, they would push back as well, only not as hard and viciously as they are doing now. Yes, Trump is polarizing, and he is hard to take at times, but protecting the American public is his number-one responsibility, as it is for every other elected official in our country. They seem to have completely, not forgotten, but disregarded this duty just to oppose anything conservative and to stay in power. They are not stupid, just calculating, and Opposition is the new name of the game, and nothing else matters. 

So if we don’t want to see the National Guard deployed in our cities, the police have to be allowed to do their jobs-unhindered and free to make the arrests, put down any civil unrest, defend themselves without worrying about being accused of the shooting wrong a$$hole-bad guy just because of the color of their skin, and being raked over the coals for political expediency, and the courts keeping these animals off the streets. Folks, your police know where all the bad guys are, so tell your city, county, and state leaders to stop being obstructionists and just let your police be police! I guarantee that if the political talking heads get out of the way, your crime rates will go down, and you’ll be safer to live your lives as you are meant to. We have the most professional and dedicated law enforcement in the world. Let them show you. “Let’s Go Brandon!”