Trump also asserted that any congressional action could serve as a model for other US cities.
It was not clear how Trump's takeover of Washington DC's Metropolitan Police Department could be replicated elsewhere.
In seizing control on Monday, Trump took advantage of a federal law, the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, that permits the president to do so under emergency circumstances for up to 30 days.
Trump also announced on Monday that he was deploying 800 National Guard troops to the city, a tactic he employed in Los Angeles in June when he mobilised thousands of Guard soldiers and hundreds of US Marines in response to unrest over his administration's immigration raids.
Separately, hundreds of federal officers and agents from more than a dozen agencies have fanned out across Washington DC in recent days.
In one neighbourhood, officers from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the FBI could be seen along with the US Park Police searching the car of a motorist parked just outside a legal parking area to eat take out and drop off a friend.
Two blocks away, US Customs and Border Protection officers gathered in a parking lot before driving off on patrol.
The Republican president argues the moves are needed because the US capital is gripped by a wave of violent crime and pervasive homelessness although federal and city crime statistics suggest violent crime has declined since a spike in 2023.
The office of Washington DC mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, declined to respond on Trump's latest comments.
Bowser has sought to strike a diplomatic tone, even as she has cited statistics showing the city's violent crime rate hit a 30-year low in 2024.
More than 1450 law enforcement personnel were on patrol in Washington DC on Tuesday night, a White House official said, including 30 National Guard troops and 750 city police officers assigned to the "anti-crime" operation.
The official said the White House expects a "significantly higher" presence of Guard soldiers on Wednesday night.
The effort has resulted in 103 arrests since August 7, which includes 43 on Tuesday, the official said.
The charges include one homicide charge, 33 firearms charges and 23 immigration charges, the official said, and have led to 24 seized firearms.
During the same period in 2024, the Metropolitan Police Department arrested 364 people in total, police data shows, including traffic and liquor law violations as well as murder, prostitution, carjacking, assault, theft, burglary and robbery.
The MPD data shows that police made 20,386 adult arrests in 2024, an average of 56 arrests a day.
As of Tuesday, city officials said they were still in command of the department and had received no new orders from the administration, the Washington Post reported.
The Metropolitan Police Department on Wednesday referred all questions about arrests involving federal agents to the White House.
Asked for comment on Trump's call for congressional action, House Speaker Mike Johnson's office pointed to his social media response to the president's action on Monday: "President Trump is RIGHT. We can't allow crime to destroy our Nation's Capital."
However, any legislation to extend Trump's control over the police department would likely fail in the Senate, where Democrats can use procedural rules to block most bills.
Trump told reporters on Wednesday that if Congress fails to act, he can declare a "national emergency" to extend the 30-day limit although legal experts expressed skepticism about that claim.
"There's nothing about the president extending past 30 days unilaterally," Claire Finkelstein, a University of Pennsylvania law professor, said of the Home Rule Act.
"If the 30 days are up, that's that."
with AP
