Why Is Crime Up In Washington D.C.?

No, not a story about Biden and his family. Rather, a discussion of rising violent crime and property crime in our nation's capital. From Yahoo News: "Big cities are becoming safer. So why is crime rising in Washington, D.C.?" The article doesn't mention the racial makeup of the offenders, but it does point out some DIE policies and laws that are impacting crime rates:

    After yet another shooting in his district last week, D.C. City Council member Trayon White, who represents the largely Black and destitute Eighth Ward, where gun violence is spiking, said he wanted federal troops to restore order to the streets of the largely neglected communities he represents.

    “The crime is out of control and getting worse by the day,” White said at a press conference with community leaders. “We must declare an emergency regarding the crime and violence in our neighborhoods and act urgently. It may be time to call on the National Guard to protect the children and innocent people that are losing their lives to this senselessness.”

    There is little sense that Mayor Muriel Bowser is willing to make such a dramatic move. But the deepening public safety crisis increasingly seems to demand a sweeping solution. There have already been 163 homicides in Washington this year, with more than four months left to go. By comparison, there were 116 homicides in all of 2017.

    In almost every other city in the United States, crime is falling. Washington is a rare exception, along with Oakland, Calif., and Chicago.

Actually crime is probably skyrocketing in other large cities, but the authorities there are no longer reporting crime statistics. (See, "Incomplete Data: One-Third of American Cities No Longer Report Crime Statistics to the FBI"--The Truth About Guns).

    In any event, the Yahoo article continues by blaming a slow recovery from the Covid panic and the January 6 protests (because only global warming has caused more misery) before finally getting to the truth of the matter:

    In recent years, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco have all elected progressive prosecutors and have enacted criminal justice reforms intended to rectify decades of discriminatory policing and sentencing.

    But now, some critics in Washington and elsewhere say those reforms have gone too far and are making American cities unsafe, often leading to the killings of young men of color who those very reforms were supposed to help. (In Washington, although crimes involving white people and crimes in wealthier, majority-white neighborhoods tend to earn outsize media attention, 9 out of 10 murder victims are Black men.)

    In 2016, the district passed a juvenile justice law that prevented the pretrial detention of young offenders. It also eliminated mandatory minimum sentences and, in general, provided broad pathways for young people who had allegedly committed crimes to avoid both arrest and jail.

    D.C. had also eliminated cash bail for criminal defendants in the early 1990s, at a time when crime rates began to fall across the country.

    But then violent crime started to rise, a trend that began before the pandemic but was accelerated by lockdowns, school closures and other disruptions. Suddenly the reformist policies passed in previous years began to buckle, especially when combined with courtroom closures and a pullback in policing.

    In 2014, district voters elected a progressive attorney general, Karl Racine, who focused on challenging the Trump administration and investigating corporate malfeasance. Because of Washington’s lack of autonomy, many crimes are handled by the local federal prosecutor, not the district's AG. The current U.S. attorney, Matthew Graves, has chosen not to pursue charges in 3 out of 4 arrests brought to his office.

    Graves has defended his work by seeming to blame the police department, but some have found his reasoning unconvincing. “Some cases are going to be challenging, yes. But that’s your job,” a former federal prosecutor said in response. “Do your job. Don’t just dismiss it just because the evidence is not everything you want it to be or think it should be.”

    The appetite for reform appears to have thoroughly ebbed in D.C. Earlier this year, proposed progressive revisions to the district’s criminal code were nullified by an unlikely coalition that included congressional Republicans, Mayor Bowser and, most surprising of all, President Biden himself.

If Biden really cared, he would fire the U.S. Attorney. That he hasn't tells you all you need to know.

• Related: Speaking of crime in D.C.: "Washington supermarket could close because it lost HALF A MILLION dollars to brazen thieves - after Target and Whole Foods axed locations due to rampant crime." This is how "food deserts" happen.