President Donald Trump instructed top prosecutors in a memo on Thursday to pursue the death penalty “to the maximum degree practicable” in D.C., marking his latest move to exert control over law enforcement in the city.

The memo, addressed to Attorney General Pam Bondi and U.S. Attorney to D.C. Jeanine Pirro, cites the crime emergency Trump declared in the city in August and says the “implementation of the capital punishment laws will be part of this continuing work.”

“You kill somebody, or if you kill a police officer, law enforcement officer - death penalty,” Trump said at an Oval Office signing ceremony Thursday.

District officials repealed the city’s death penalty in 1981. Trump’s memo directs Bondi and Pirro to use federal law to pursue capital cases in the city.

Even before the m

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