Think it's hard working for Trump? Try running the DEA and the DC police
Trump tapped Terrance Cole as part of his extraordinary takeover of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department.
WASHINGTON – Working for the famously impatient President Donald Trump in one top job is hard enough. Imagine the uncomfortable position Trump’s new interim federal police commissioner finds himself in.
As part of his extraordinary Aug. 11 federal takeover of law enforcement in the nation’s capital, Trump tapped his newly confirmed Drug Enforcement Administration chief Terrance "Terry" Cole to also head one of the nation’s largest and most dysfunctional police departments as part of a broader Justice Department takeover.
All eyes will be on Cole as he tries to deliver on Trump’s promise to sharply and immediately reduce violent crime.
Cole just took over at DEA on July 23 after his Senate confirmation and oversees a staff of 10,000 agents and other personnel.
But now Cole also will be taking over the top job at the Metropolitan Police Department at the personal direction of a man who made a name for himself by firing people for even the most minor screw-ups.
In the same breath as telling Cole about his new position, in fact, Trump described him on Aug. 11 as “our new DEA administrator, who's one of the top in the country.”
“He better be,” Trump added, looking at his new appointee. “Terry, if you're not, I gotta get rid of you so fast.”
Cole is likely to face stiff opposition from Washington officials, including its city council and federal delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton.
It was unclear how the police rank and file and the MPD's police union would respond to being run by the Trump administration.
"We completely agree with the President that crime in the District of Columbia is out of control and something needs to be done with it," union chief Gregg Pemberton told Fox News.
Democratic lawmakers in Congress also criticized Trump’s takeover of the MPD and his decision to send National Guard troops into the city to help reduce crime rates that DOJ itself said recently were at a 30-year low.
Cole will also have to deliver results for Attorney General Pam Bondi, who Trump put in charge overall of the DOJ takeover. And he’ll have another direct boss in U.S. Marshal Gadyaces “Gady” Serralta, who Bondi said will be “supervising command and control of the entire operation” under her and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
A DEA career and a state homeland security job
Cole does have some experience working with local law enforcement and in juggling a lot of responsibilities.
From 2023 to earlier this year, he served as Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security. In that role, he oversaw 11 state public safety agencies comprising more than 19,000 employees and managing an annual budget of $5.7 billion.
At DEA, one of Cole’s highest priorities is to reduce drug-fueled violence in America’s most affected cities through expanded partnerships with state and local law enforcement, according to the DEA’s news release following his confirmation.
Cole was praised by Trump and Patel on Monday for an interagency operation in Northern Virginia between the FBI and local authorities that resulted in the arrest of 545 people.
“What are we going to bring to DC? What we did in Northern Virginia, thanks to Terry Cole and Governor Youngkin and the team,” FBI Director Kash Patel told reporters.
“We said, let's let good cops be cops. Let's get them the intelligence and what they need, and let's get the red tape out of their way, and let's get DOJ partnered up with us to bring great prosecutions,” Patel said. “And that's exactly what we did.”
Posts in New York, DC, Colombia and Afghanistan
Before his stint in Virginia, Cole was a respected 22-year career agent and supervisor at the DEA, where he served in Oklahoma, New York and Washington – as well as in Colombia, Afghanistan and the Middle East.
Before retiring in 2020, Cole served as DEA’s acting regional director of Mexico, Canada and Central America. He also served as a police officer in New York state.
Michael Braun, one of Cole’s former DEA colleagues, said he was “a bit surprised” at the announcement but that Cole is up to the job.
“I know Terry very well, and the guy’s quite capable of handling DEA as well as the DC Police Department,” Braun, the former DEA chief of operations.
“I mean, look, he's got a command staff in place at the DC police department and he's got his command staff in place at DEA. So he's going to have his hands full,” Braun said. “But I have all the confidence in the world that he can do it.”
But reducing crime in DC will be just one of Cole’s assignments. Another will be managing Trump’s expectations. And the president suggested he wants Cole to also tackle the thorny issues of wokeness and culture wars at a police force with a proud history of Black leadership.
Looking at Cole, Trump told him to be “tough” on the police force.
“You have a lot of good people. You have people that shouldn't be there. … They got in there because of woke,” Trump said. “But you have a lot of great police and those people are the ones that want to help you.”
An ally in the DC Police Union?
Gregg Pemberton, chairman of the DC Police Union, appeared to welcome the move. “We completely agree with the President that crime in the District of Columbia is out of control. Something needs to be done with it,” Pemberton said in an appearance on Fox News.
The union chief said that in 2020, the DC City Council passed “an enormous amount of legislation” that exposed officers to administrative, civil and even criminal liability, “even when they do their jobs properly.” As a result, the department now has 3,180 sworn police officers, down 800 from its authorized strength of 4000.
“So the fact that we need help from federal law enforcement and maybe even the National Guard shouldn’t come as a surprise,” Pemberton said.
But, Pemberton added, “to make sure that it doesn’t ebb and flow, and that the feds come in and we lower crime, and then they leave and we’re left holding the bag, it’s very important that people know that there is underlying legislation that needs to be corrected so that we can actually properly staff this police department in order to properly police the city.”