Trump’s D.C. Law Enforcement Takeover Has Black Parents on Edge

Days after President Trump ordered a surge of federal law enforcement agents in Washington, D.C., Charlene Golphin told her 17-year-old son that his curfew was being cut short by two hours.

Ms. Golphin feared that as a Black boy, her son would be caught in the dragnet set up by officers tasked by the president with cracking down on the “roving mobs of wild youth” he accused of terrorizing the city.

Her son, Atrayu Lee, argued that his mother was overreacting. He didn’t engage in the activities that could incite a negative interaction with the police, he said. He spent his free time working with local organizations and had stopped wearing hoodies or black track suits.

Ms. Golphin didn’t want to hear it. “I said what I said,” she affirmed.

The highly visible new patrols of federal agents and National Guard troops and President Trump’s declaration that young people are a threat to public safety has put Black parents on edge, prompting many of them to enforce stricter rules about going out and wade back into tough conversations about racial profiling and policing.

For decades, Black parents have given what they describe as “the talk,” a set of guidelines for how their children, particularly boys, should interact with the police and try to avoid attention from law enforcement altogether.

These conversations became heightened after the deaths of Trayvon Martin in Florida and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., prompting national attention to the problem of young Black men dying at the hands of the police. After the nationwide protests that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis led to policing reforms in cities across the country, some parents said they had felt comfortable enough to back off those conversations.