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... Well past midnight one day this spring, three police officers pulled up to a nightclub where a man was stomping on a young woman lying on the sidewalk.

The officers stopped the attack and arrested him, according to a police report. It was the kind of assault police might encounter on almost any night in almost any city.

But one detail stood out to police officer Xavier Jimenez, who wrote the report: "There was approximately 15 national guard members in the area on routine patrol who did not take any action." ...

The roughly 4,500 soldiers currently deployed to Washington outnumber its 3,200 police officers, opens new tab. And they cost more: The Trump administration last year told Congress that sending guardsmen to the capital cost about $1.65 million a day " before officials doubled the number of troops this summer. The city's most recent police budget was about $1.5 million daily. ...

To gauge the impact of that deployment, Reuters reviewed every publicly available charging document filed in Superior Court and interviewed lawyers, residents, service members and others who are familiar with their work.

The soldiers mostly responded to minor incidents in neighborhoods that are wealthier, whiter and less dangerous than the rest of the capital, Reuters found after comparing court records to the city's demographics and crime information.

Reuters could find no reference in court records to soldiers doing any kind of law enforcement in the neighborhoods where about 82% of the city's 859 murders occurred over the past five years. ...