Bluesky

Occupied Washington, DC—When the night comes, it is not just the National Guard, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and a jumpy police department walking the streets. In an otherwise eerily quiet city, the people are present as well. Armed only with cell phones, medical kits, and the confidence to assert their dwindling rights, groups of local residents trail and record Trump’s occupation forces. They’re known as the night patrols.

These night patrols watch over the city to ensure that people are protected from state violence, false arrest, abduction, and harassment. Failing that, their goal is to document the constitutional violations or brutality they witness, so people can see the truths about the occupation that a compliant, largely incurious media are not showing. Their footage has gone viral and exposed the mainstream media’s lies about how happy DC residents are to see the South Carolina National Guard marching by their kid’s elementary school.

There is no centralized night-patrol planning committee. People in different groups don’t necessarily know each other, but everyone with whom we spoke was either experienced in this kind of work through previous cop-watch trainings or are compelled by what is happening to play their part in making sure the foot soldiers of the surveillance state know they too are being surveilled.

While we do not know the number of unconstitutional jailings that have happened over the last two weeks, the angry reactions of federal judges when these cases come before the bench speak to how violently careless, amateurish, and dangerous Trump’s police state’s conduct has been. This is unsurprising given that the chief DC prosecutor is another Fox News incompetent: the sloppy, allegedly soused Jeanine Pirro. We now have in DC a military fascism run as cheaply and poorly as one of Trump’s failed casinos. If Trump were the fascist leader of Italy in the 1920s, the trains would not have run on time. (Unfortunately the Trump administration has also seized control of DC’s Union Station, so set your watch to the coming ineptitude.) It’s maddening, but people are pushing back, and the night patrols are on the front lines.

Every night patrol is different. One volunteer told us that it “fluctuates depending on events and community needs. Different crews have their own rhythms.” Sometimes that means groups are small—maybe just three or four people—and other times it means flooding the streets with rallies that turn into patrols when the speeches are done. Above all else, it is a commitment to peaceful, legal, and direct confrontation. The people who do night patrol work are serious, and if you volunteer, they expect you to know what you are doing or listen to those who do.

We spoke to night patroller Ash Lazarus Orr, who described the patrols as consisting of “a lot of young people, a lot of people of color, queer and trans folks,people who have been directly impacted by policing, and folks with street medic backgrounds. It skews toward people who already know what it’s like to be criminalized.”

These efforts are supported by work going on across the city, including cop-watch trainings, court-watch trainings, “know your rights” guides, handbooks on filming the police, and jail support by the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network.

The patrols do more than just bear witness. Orr has had to bandage terrified people beaten by and fleeing DC’s Metropolitan Police Department, returning home at sunrise with his clothes stained with blood.

Another time, Orr said, he saw officers trying to arrest a man over a burned-out taillight “while his two young children sat alone in the car, crying.” “Thankfully,” he explained, “our group managed to put pressure on these officers [phone cameras out and ready], and they eventually let the man and his children go.” That happens more often than you’d think. Weapons and a free pass to beat people doesn’t mean that they have the resolve to do this awful work when confronted with people with cameras.

Recently a night patrol captured ICE and the MPD arresting without cause a Black corporate attorney and West Point graduate named Paul Bryant at 2:00 am in Logan Circle. The police and feds on the scene asked his name and why he was out at that hour. Bryant refused to answer, as is his right. He was released the next day after the judge excoriated the DC prosecutors. A lawsuit is now expected.

The night patrols are clearly making a difference. Many of the occupying forces have shifted their tactics from walking around and harassing people to a “jump out” strategy in which they stay in their cars until screeching to a halt and storming out to accost people. Their selections are, no doubt, driven by shameless racial profiling. No rights are read, no badges shown. When it’s ICE, their faces are covered. These terrifying “jump-outs” are not new to Washington, DC; the DC Justice Lab has long called them “DC’s scarier version of stop-and-frisk.” They are supposed to be unconstitutional. Yet it’s a sign of the effectiveness of the night patrols that they are resorting to this tactic in order to avoid people’s questions, cameras, and assertion of rights. The armed occupiers aren’t defending the Constitution. They fear it.

While one tactic is to work in smaller groups like Orr, another has been to mobilize cop-watch rallies or “Defend the District” go-go shows in order to draw in people—especially youth—for larger showings of strength. “Go-go is the native music of Washington, DC,” one attendee told us. “This music has been used for our resistance time and time again.”

The attendee added that there is “joy in the revolution,” and that it is important to show the occupation forces that they are unafraid: “There are police everywhere. We are outside. We are not scared of you. This is our home!”

At one such event, Frankie Seabron, an organizer with Harriet’s Wildest Dreams (HWD) said, “We need to keep Black people in this city safe. We need to keep youth, migrants, and our unhoused people safe. Because those are the people who this fascist system is targeting.”

Last Saturday, the DC Against Trump Coalition (DCAT) started a rally at 14th and U in one of DC’s curfew zones, where minors are barred from gathering after 8 pm, allowing police to target Black youths as soon as the sun goes down. The event ended with groups of protesters patrolling different areas of DC up until 4 am.

This is becoming its own method of organizing. During the last week, the night patrols have grown in number and frequency. They often occur after mobilizing rallies from organizations and coalitions like FreeDC, HWD, DCAT, and the independent DC media group Liberation Lens. It can be dizzying keeping up, but FreeDC’s calendar is a good start.

This week a group of fed-up military veterans associated with the group FLARE USA, which stands for For Liberation And Resistance Everywhere, have joined in on the overnight cop-watch efforts. “We are also here to disrupt ICE Raids,” retired marine Mathew Gordon told us. “ICE is kidnapping people off the streets, and we are doing everything they possibly can to make their lives miserable.” These vets go to ICE checkpoints and pepper the agents with harsh questions on camera about the immorality and illegality of their actions until they leave.

When FLARE vets approach National Guard members, they employ a calmer, less confrontational strategy, educating them about their rights to challenge orders they think could be illegal. Gordon said this was more effective since “most are much younger and don’t want to be here.” FLARE will have a series of actions next week.

“We feel that deploying the US military to the streets of Washington, DC, to police our own citizens is unconstitutional,” Gordon told us. “We took an oath to support and defend this country against all enemies foreign and domestic—that is our oath, and that oath doesn’t expire.”

There’s a common and familiar refrain at protests, which in DC has become more than slogan—it’s an organizing principle. Ty Hopson Powell at the Defend the District go-go rally repeated it to us as he explained the importance of grassroots organizing: “It is us that will save us! It is the message that we have been saying on the streets for years as frontline organizers who are the most invested in this work. WE WILL SAVE US! They won’t save us.”

Local government institutions certainly will not, as Washington’s Mayor Muriel Bowser has made perfectly clear. Even though 80 percent of the city feels “less safe” since the occupation began, Bowser is in open collaboration with Trump, praising him earlier this week for what she pointedly calls “the surge” and undercutting not only the people she represents but also other cities facing down this regime’s threats to make urban militarization the new normal.

The failures of Bowser and the city government to stand up for its residents means Powell’s words have never rang truer. No one is coming to save the people in DC—and yet, no one should bet against the people of DC saving themselves. “What does keep us safe is people showing up for one another,” said Orr. “Cop watch, night patrols, mutual aid—these are ways communities step in to protect each other when institutions only cause harm. When we document, de-escalate, offer medical care, or simply stand beside someone in crisis, we’re proving that safety comes from solidarity, not surveillance.”

Doing this kind of work empowers communities, and the videos expose the truth of life under occupation more effectively than a thousand empty speeches. “This isn’t about individuals playing hero,” said Barr. “It’s about collective accountability and care. The most important thing is to start where you are, with the skills and resources you already have.”