FBI Agents Unprepared and Overextended as Trump Redeploys Them for Community Policing in DC, Stirring Concerns over National Security Investigations and Morale
FBI agents, who typically focus on complex threat investigations, have found themselves performing patrol duties alongside local police in Washington D.C., as part of President Donald Trump’s declaration of a public safety emergency in the city.
In recent months, these agents have been tasked with roles outside their areas of expertise, including spending extended hours scrutinizing old Jeffrey Epstein files for necessary redactions, assisting ICE in locating and removing undocumented immigrants, and now patrolling the streets of the nation’s capital.
While collaboration between federal agencies and local police departments is common for specific investigations or to develop certain tools like gun tracing, FBI agents are not trained or equipped for community policing, according to multiple federal law enforcement officials.
FBI Director Kash Patel had previously pledged to “let cops be cops.” However, in recent years, the bureau has highlighted the increasing number of new agents who do not come from a police background but instead have backgrounds in technology, law, and other disciplines. A 2024 class of new agents included over 44% with advanced degrees, according to an internal newsletter.
“FBI agents are not police officers,” former FBI deputy director and CNN law enforcement analyst Andrew McCabe stated Tuesday. “Most of them don’t come to the FBI from a background as a police officer. So they don’t have the training, skillset, or experience needed for this type of work, which can be dangerous both for them and for those they are policing.”
Much of an FBI agent’s job is desk-based, and essential skills for de-escalating field situations, or identifying threats or potential hostile scenarios, are not comprehensively part of their training. The FBI’s use-of-force policy also has a lower threshold for when agents can use firearms to protect themselves compared to most police departments. In Washington D.C., officers have options to utilize tasers and pepper spray before resorting to lethal force, which is not standard equipment for agents.
Furthermore, federal agents are minimally trained in conducting vehicle stops, one of the most dangerous aspects of a police officer’s job. Unlike routine encounters with suspects, which may involve one or two officers, when agencies like the FBI conduct an arrest, they typically plan and execute it with a larger team of agents compared to the number of suspects.
Many agents now tasked with patrolling Washington D.C.’s streets alongside the Metropolitan Police Department are reportedly adopting a “wait-it-out” approach, hoping to return to their previous investigations once Trump’s 30-day period controlling the MPD is set to end.
“If we’re doing (policing), we’re not covering down on those other threats,” one source said.
Other federal agencies involved in the surge of resources to D.C., like the Secret Service, US Marshals Service, Federal Protective Service, ICE, and Border Patrol, have officers with more experience in arresting individuals or conducting traditional police work compared to the FBI.
The difference in training was a notable issue during the protests following the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. Agents with little training in crowd control were thrust into the streets to protect federal buildings and found themselves outnumbered by protesters. In an attempt to de-escalate tensions, some agents knelt in a symbolic gesture that has since become a topic of debate in the Trump administration’s response to perceived “woke” policies associated with political opponents.
Under Patel, some of these agents have faced reassignments to less prestigious jobs and internal disciplinary investigations. The FBI declined to comment on multiple questions from CNN for this story.
Since the weekend, FBI agents have been accompanying Metropolitan Police Officers, and according to Patel, were involved in 10 out of the 23 arrests that occurred in D.C. on Monday night. However, it’s unclear to what extent FBI agents participated in these arrests.
The arrests included unlawful firearm possessions, DUI warrants, one on a search warrant for a prior murder charge, and more, which Patel promoted on social media. “When you let good cops be cops, they can clean up our streets and do it fast,” Patel wrote on X. “More to come. Your nation’s Capital WILL be safe again.”
In 2025, hundreds of FBI agents were reassigned to immigration-related duties, which raised concerns among some agents that this shift could hinder important national security investigations, including those into espionage by foreign countries and terror threats.
At the time of the push for more federal agents to help with immigration enforcement, FBI agents involved were instructed by supervisors not to document moving resources away from high-priority cases. Behind the scenes, some FBI agents clashed with their immigration enforcement counterparts over issues involving racial profiling and other tactics that could potentially violate the Constitution, according to law enforcement sources. While agency leaders have publicly touted a close working relationship between organizations, the situation has often been quite different on the ground, sources said.
Then came the files of Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died by suicide in prison in 2019 before his case could go to trial. In March, FBI agents worked tirelessly, sometimes for 12-hour shifts, reviewing documents and evidence against Epstein to make redactions on the Justice Department’s failed attempt to discredit conspiracy theories and allegations that they were continuing to hide perceived crimes against the wealthy and powerful. Much of this stemmed from Trump’s allies, including those in key leadership positions.
Agents were ordered to put aside investigations related to threats from China and Iran, as well as other cases, to complete the Epstein redactions. Every division in the bureau was ordered to supply agents for this task. “There is no other entity that does that work if the FBI is not doing it,” McCabe said. “And that is really important stuff that needs to be done every day in this country by a limited resource of FBI agents. And so every time you distract them into doing something like this, you’re doing less of that.”
Patel and his deputy director, Dan Bongino, often highlight the work of the FBI online, recently featuring busts of an alleged human trafficking operation in Nebraska, fentanyl seizures, and other FBI successes. The new reassignments to help patrol D.C. come days after two senior FBI officials, including the acting-director before Patel was appointed by Trump to lead the agency, along with other agents, were summarily fired following perceived opposition to the administration.
The firings, including that of former acting director Brian Driscoll after he resisted the administration’s plans to quickly fire more than 100 mid-level and senior employees in the early days of Trump’s second term, have also created a sense of concern among agents over who could be targeted next or what past actions could land them in trouble with Trump-appointed leadership.
Law enforcement sources fear this volatile period inside the FBI could lead to a brain drain amid constantly evolving threats as numerous agents, analysts, and professional staff consider departing for other agencies or the private sector where their national security and investigative skills remain highly sought after. “Morale is the worst I’ve seen,” said one law enforcement source. “The bureau is becoming unrecognizable. Lots of people are weighing really difficult decisions right now.”