President Donald Trump said on Monday that he intends to "liberate" Washington, D.C., pledging an aggressive federal crackdown on what he described as rampant crime in the nation’s capital. In a series of statements, the president claimed that homeless encampments would be cleared "immediately" and that perpetrators of violent offenses would be jailed swiftly. Multiple outlets, including Forbes, report that the announcement will include the deployment of several hundred National Guard troops to the city. The move would build on the reported reassignment of about 120 FBI agents to night patrols and the introduction of Secret Service "special patrols," steps the administration says are necessary to restore public safety. Trump also alleged this week that unnamed D.C. officials "fudged" crime statistics to understate the scope of the problem and said those individuals are already under investigation. "The days of ruthlessly killing, or hurting, innocent people, are over," he said, adding that federal authorities will “scrape away the filth” from the city. District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser rejected the president’s portrayal, noting in an MSNBC interview that violent crime is down 26% from a year earlier. Bowser said local authorities would nonetheless cooperate with any federal presence, emphasizing that municipal and federal law-enforcement agencies "always work cooperatively with us, and we expect that they will again."