Crisis in the country’s capital – Report

According to a report from the Manhattan Institute, the crime crisis in the nation’s capital is the result of police defunding and a lack of enforcement. These policies require change.

By Eileen Griffin

A report finds that widespread lawlessness in the District of Columbia requires a range of measures.

A Manhattan Institute study finds that there are multiple causes for the excessive crime wave plaguing Washington DC.

In 2023, residents of Washington, DC, experienced a crime wave across multiple categories of offenses. Murders and carjackings have increased. Shoplifting is rampant. General lawlessness and disorder prevail on the city’s streets.

The rising crime rate is linked to the deterioration of various law enforcement and public order mechanisms, the report concludes.

Like many other Democrat-run cities, Washington, DC joined the movement to defund the police, leaving citizens unprotected as Hartland Daily News has reported.

Cities that cut their police budgets found that officers sought better jobs elsewhere. After cutting staff, city human resources managers found that it was much harder to hire officers than to fire them.

Frustrated residents of the district are trying to save themselves by organizing a recall effort against two city council members, Brianne Nadeau and Charles Allen, who have supported alternative law enforcement policies.

The Recall Nadeau website states that the city council has made the crime situation worse by cutting police funding, reducing penalties for violent crimes and eliminating mandatory sentences for repeat offenders.

The Recall Charles Allen website states that he has reduced sentences and put juvenile delinquents under the age of 24 back on the streets.

“Charles Allen boasted about cutting the number of police officers on the streets while denying the remaining officers the equipment they need to protect themselves and the public,” the website states. “These cuts have left the Metropolitan Police Department with nearly 500 fewer officers today, leaving areas understaffed and unprotected.”

If the impeachment is unsuccessful, Brianne Nadeau and Charles Allen will both remain on the Washington, D.C., City Council. Their current terms run until 2027.

The Manhattan Institute report concludes that there is a “capacity” problem in the fight against crime. Fewer police officers, fewer resources, less attention are causing a “collapse” of the law enforcement system.

“There are fewer police officers, and those officers are doing less,” writes Charles Fain Lehman, a Manhattan Institute fellow. “The U.S. District Attorney’s Office is prosecuting far fewer people. There are fewer judges, and they are working through a larger backlog of cases. Students are skipping classes more often, and as unsheltered homelessness rises, the District has not cleaned up the encampments.”

Crime is concentrated in specific neighborhoods of the city, with most crimes occurring in just a few locations. About half of all murders are committed by individuals with gang affiliations. Many are repeat offenders with criminal histories.

Approximately 60 to 70 percent of all gun violence can be traced back to an identifiable group of city residents.

“This finding is consistent with research from other cities, which routinely shows that violence within a given jurisdiction is highly concentrated within specific, close-knit social networks,” Lehman writes.

Carjackings are not typically the work of gangs, the report said, but violent motor vehicle thefts are usually committed by juvenile criminals.

“This creates the impression that DC has a second crime problem: a problem with juvenile delinquents, who manifest themselves most visibly by stealing cars, going joyriding, and spreading their activities on social media,” Lehman writes.

While other crimes may not be as serious, they contribute to the overall disorder and sense of insecurity that residents face. The sense of lawlessness creates the impression that anyone can become a victim at any time.

“In short, Washington, D.C., doesn’t just have acute problems with underage homicide and car theft,” Lehman writes. “It also has a pervasive, though harder to measure, problem with disorder, homelessness, (possibly) shoplifting, and fare evasion — that is, petty crime.”

Research shows that more policing reduces crime. DC has fewer police officers, less staff in the Investigative Services Bureau, and DC’s forensics lab lost its accreditation from 2021 to 2023, resulting in a bottleneck in criminal investigations.

In addition to the staff reduction, the police officers who remain in service appear to be doing less police work.

Cutting police budgets and abolishing law enforcement methods sends a message to law enforcement that they are not valued, appreciated, or respected by the city’s political leadership.

Prosecutions have also fallen dramatically in DC, even for serious crimes. Only about half of felonies and a quarter of misdemeanors were prosecuted in 2022.

Although the DA’s office blamed a lack of staffing, prosecutors from the Washington, DC, office were deployed to prosecute the January 6 rioters, rather than working through the backlog of criminal cases.

There is also a shortage of judges in Washington DC, with the number of vacancies further slowing down the justice system.

An additional correlation to rising crime is a corresponding increase in school absenteeism. In DC, juvenile crime is skyrocketing, but school attendance is falling.

“We might hypothesize a causal relationship between these two facts: the increase in crime and disorder is caused by a sudden and sustained reduction in the level of activity designed to contain crime and disorder,” Lehman writes.

Criminals know when they are unlikely to face consequences. Until every part of the system is equipped with resources, support, and proper policies, criminals will run rampant and lawlessness will prevail.

“The solution, then, is to improve the capacity of that system to function,” Lehman writes. “That means encouraging the people and institutions that operate that system to do more. But it also means giving them more power to do more. Such a ‘capacity vision’ should be the starting point for the discussion about crime control in the District.”

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