The New York National Guard is in Washington, D.C. to assist with presidential inauguration ceremonies.
Huge crowds are expected to gather in the nation’s capital this weekend for the presidential inauguration, even with Friday’s news that the event is moving indoors due to forecasted below-freezing temperatures.
New York’s National Guard will assist other authorities to keep people there safe.
“The majority of them are MPs, so they're military police, service members and officers,” said Lt. Cl. Jean Marie Kratzer, New York National Guard spokesperson.
Five-hundred members of the New York National Guard are already in D.C.
“Civil authorities, they've asked us to come support and help. So, with that, we provide that specialized training,” said Kratzer. “We will focus primarily on crowd management. Just traffic and crowd control is our biggest purpose. We’re there to support.”
Kratzer says not only are most of the deployed guard members military police, but many of them also hold law enforcement positions as their full-time jobs.
They will be deputized as "special police" for the District of Columbia while on duty there.
“So our service members on the officer’s side, they'll go through three, four months of extensive training just focusing on becoming military police officers. They end up going through a couple months, when they first become new officers and then right around the rank of captain, they go through another couple months of training,” said Katzer.
But the team has training in other areas that may be needed as well, which could become necessary.
“We also are trained for any civil disturbance responses,” adds Katzer. “And we also can support the sustainment operations for these civil authorities that have asked us to come support.”
And that now includes altering plans over the weekend for an indoor swearing-in at the Capitol Rotunda and what President-elect Trump called a “modified parade” at a nearby arena.
Roughly 220,000 tickets were initially made available to enter the Capitol grounds.
Whether inside or outside, thousands of people are still expected to flock to Washington, D.C.
“So in the National Guard, our main purpose is for a homeland response force. We train for this. We provide for whatever we can from our state or our country. So, we're very fortunate,” said Katzer. “Even though we are a part-time force, a lot of these people are trained professionals, probably a large majority of them are in law enforcement. So, they have that specialized training on the civilian sector, but they also get it from the military side too.”
And more experience to be gained at the 60th presidential inauguration on Monday.