Violent crime declined in nearly every major U.S. city last year. The District was a tragic outlier.
Many perpetrators apparently believed they could get away with breaking the law, and they were somewhat correct. The D.C. police force was the smallest in half a century. Arrests fell sharply during the pandemic and stayed low. Prosecutions plunged, with only 33 percent of adult arrests leading to immediate charges in fiscal 2022. D.C.’s crime lab, which analyzes forensic evidence, lost its accreditation for two years, making it harder to bring gun and drug cases. (This was finally fixed in December.) On top of that, D.C. courts were impeded during the pandemic, creating a massive backlog and leading to strikingly low numbers held in the D.C. Jail last year. Almost every part of the District’s fragmented public safety system fell short.
Effective law enforcement requires that those who have the authority to combat crime also take responsibility for doing so. This is hard to achieve in the unusual hybrid system of government in the nation’s capital, with multiple federal and local agencies (and differing elected officials) in control of various aspects of criminal justice. The tangled lines of accountability encourage finger-pointing rather than problem-solving.
Two D.C. Council members face recall efforts because of public outcry over crime. Yet all key players need to be held to account: Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and every member of the council; D.C. Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb (D), who is chiefly responsible for prosecuting juveniles; U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves, who chiefly prosecutes adults; and D.C.’s judges, who have made it unduly difficult to secure convictions.
Recent actions create grounds for optimism. Police are making more arrests. Prosecutors are bringing more cases. And the council passed the Secure D.C. Omnibus Amendment Act, which the mayor signed this past Monday. There are encouraging indicators that the worst of the crime wave is behind us. But what else do city leaders need to do?
Ms. Bowser deserves credit for advocating emergency legislation last summer that made it easier for police to go after violent criminals by, among many other things, expanding the circumstances under which defendants should be detained awaiting trial. But the deterioration of the Department of Forensic Sciences’ crime lab on her watch — it lost accreditation from mid-2021 to the end of 2023 — was a management failure. Where’s the plan to prevent a repeat?
Similarly, the 911 call center suffers from insufficient staffing. Desperate callers can be put on hold for several minutes, with tragic and, at times, deadly results. Then there are the parents of children in the juvenile system pleading for better support coping with kids’ addiction, mental health and school attendance issues. This falls largely on the city’s executive branch.
Mr. Graves, who is a presidential appointee, not an elected official, needs to prosecute more cases. It’s true the number has gone up since the nadir in fiscal 2022, but his office’s day-of-arrest charging rate was 44 percent in fiscal 2023. Mr. Graves’s latest public data shows an increase to 55 percent from October to December. But the recent norm is above 65 percent. There are always reasons — some more valid than others — that a given arrest might not lead to charges. Sometimes police botch evidence-gathering; sometimes victims fear testifying, especially in domestic violence situations. But it’s especially worrying that prosecutors offer to settle carjacking cases for the lesser charge of unauthorized use of a vehicle, which is not classified as a violent crime. The new crime law expands the definition of carjacking to make those cases easier to prosecute; Mr. Graves should make aggressive use of it.
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D.C. Attorney General Schwalb
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Mr. Schwalb’s office brought charges against 46 percent of juveniles arrested in fiscal 2022 and 53 percent in fiscal 2023. Only 60 percent of juvenile carjacking cases were charged in fiscal 2023, along with an estimated 43 percent of nonviolent, non-gun offenses. Because anyone charged as a youth can be confined in D.C.’s juvenile system only until they’re 21, prosecutors argue they don’t need to bring cases for every crime an individual has committed to secure the maximum sentence.
But the attorney general, elected in 2022, testified last summer against Ms. Bowser’s proposal to make it easier to hold more youths who are considered dangerous. He insisted that juveniles released pretrial weren’t committing serious offenses. In fact, police say juveniles (and adults) are frequently arrested for new crimes while wearing court-ordered GPS ankle monitors stemming from previous charges.
Last month, for example, a 14-year-old was charged with breaking into a Secret Service vehicle used by President Biden’s granddaughter in Georgetown while wearing a court-ordered bracelet. He was also charged with the armed carjacking of three ride-hailing drivers. Because D.C. law shields the names of minors charged with crimes, the public doesn’t know the extent of his previous interactions with police.
Senior D.C. government officials complain that the attorney general uses confidentiality surrounding youth criminal proceedings to conceal how many minors are getting unjustified deals that keep them out of the criminal justice system. The attorney general’s office says D.C. already has one of the highest rates of juvenile incarceration in America and does not divert youths charged with gun possession or serious violent crimes into programs created for nonviolent offenses.
Mr. Schwalb has recently modulated his tone. Actions will speak louder, especially if he closes the catch-and-release pipeline by keeping the relatively small number of teens who commit a disproportionate share of crimes off the streets for as long as is consistent with the seriousness of their alleged conduct.
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D.C. Police Chief Pamela A. Smith
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After taking over the department in July, Ms. Smith surged more officers onto the streets at night on Thursdays through Sundays to combat violent crime. She’s also trying to enhance the police’s real-time data center (which was supposed to open last month but has been delayed) and better coordinate with other law enforcement agencies. Arrests per officer have started to rebound under her watch. Still, police closed only 52 percent of homicide cases last year. At least that’s better than the rates for robbery (27 percent) and nonfatal shootings (26 percent).
Ms. Smith needs to focus hard on boosting all these numbers. She also needs to improve officer retention and recruitment, admittedly a task that will take years. The easiest way to free up more sworn officers to do real policing is to hire more civilians for desk jobs or as crime scene technicians. The department has repeatedly failed to meet its own goals in this area.
Several rulings by the D.C. Court of Appeals in recent years have raised the burdens of proof for prosecutors, discouraging them from bringing charges they see as solid but don’t think would stick. In one notorious case, the appellate court ruled that a gun couldn’t be linked to a suspect even though it was found under his mattress in a bag with mail addressed to him. The court has also made it harder to establish that police had probable cause to pursue suspects who run away from them. The solicitor general of the United States should appeal decisions by D.C. courts that are at odds with Supreme Court precedent.
Beyond covid-related delays, which added to a massive backlog, the D.C. Superior Court now has 11 vacancies, with two more departures coming soon. There are also two openings on the Court of Appeals. Nine nominations for the lower court are pending in the U.S. Senate, including six who are awaiting a floor vote. The Senate should swiftly confirm them.
D.C.’s new crime law requires judges to issue written explanations if they choose to release defendants before trial who are charged with crimes in which there’s a presumption they should be held. This flows from frustrations that some judges seem more sympathetic to the accused than the victims. To rebalance the local courts, Mr. Biden ought to nominate experienced prosecutors to fill the remaining vacancies, especially for the appellate court.
Crime in Washington isn’t just the mayor’s problem, or the council’s. All of those with power to improve the situation owe the city more.
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