325 Narcan doses, 43 lost children: DC National Guard mission wraps first year
By Hope Hodge Seck
Aug 4, 2026, 12:12 PM
Since Aug. 11, 2025, nearly 9,700 National Guard troops from across the nation have been shipped into Washington, D.C., and put up in hotels in service of the “Make DC Safe and Beautiful” mission ordered by President Donald Trump.
As the mission approaches the conclusion of its first year — with at least two more to go, unless the president says otherwise — its measure of success depends on whom you ask. In a round-table discussion with reporters Monday, Brig. Gen. Leland Blanchard, the D.C. National Guard’s interim commanding general, suggested the impact of the Guard’s presence was as much about an increased feeling of safety as it was about the number of interventions.
Those numbers, in the context of the size of the Guard deployment, are modest. Blanchard said Guardsmen had provided 788 medical assists, “ranging from administering CPR to applying tourniquets for gunshot victims;” reunited 43 lost children, intervened in 262 fights to prevent further escalation; and administered the overdose reversal drug Narcan to 325 people. Guard members supported law enforcement 479 times, he said, or a little more than once per day over the course of a year-long deployment.
“Those are not simply numbers. Those are not just data points,” Blanchard said. “Each of those represents fathers, mothers, children, people who have received emergency care, been returned to parents, and families, had their lives saved from opioid overdoses, or were involved in violent situations brought under control before further harm was done.”
He added that a Guard team on a “ride the rail” mission on the D.C. Metro had stopped a sexual assault in progress and recently intervened to stop a knife-wielding would-be assailant.
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/08/04/325-narcan-doses-43-lost-children-dc-national-guard-mission-wraps-first-year/
