Crime has skyrocketed in Washington, D.C., since 2019. Carjackings, always violent and occasionally deadly for hardworking Washingtonians, have especially spiked since 2019. There have been 330 of them reported so far this year, up 23% from the already high number last year. Murders are up 36% since 2019 and 157% since 2012.
How is the D.C. Council handling this problem? Why, of course, by making it easier for the carjackers. It just voted last week to reduce sentences for violent and gun crimes, including carjacking.
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Last week, the council unanimously voted to reduce the maximum sentences for burglary, carjacking, and robbery. Why? Because apparently, there aren’t enough burglaries, carjackings, or robberies in Washington. And the people who commit all the crimes, including the murders, which hit an 18-year high last year and might break the record again this year, aren’t getting out on the streets fast enough to victimize even more people.
With D.C. already in the middle of a massive crime wave, the council is sending a message to criminals to keep running up the crime numbers for both violent and property crimes. If you want career criminals to become even more brazen in trampling the rights and violating the safety of the honest citizens of the district, then just keep telling them by your actions that there will be minimal consequences for anything they do. Keep passing laws such as this one to show them that they can get away with it.
The council also voted to limit the penalty for illegal gun possession to a maximum of two years in prison. This raises an important question. Left-wing Democrats have an iron grip on the government of the District of Columbia. There is no Republican interference in anything they do. When the crime problem they are creating is raised as an issue, Democrats start to talk about guns.
But what good is gun control if you refuse to prosecute or punish violations of gun laws adequately? It’s almost as if they use this issue only as a means of deceiving voters.
D.C. is not New York. It was never truly made safe in the first decade of this century — just safer than it used to be. But now, it is sliding back into the bad old days, and the district’s elected officials seem completely unbothered by it.
It is interesting that the council waited until after the midterm elections to do this. It is as if it just wanted to get past the elections, to fool the voters just long enough before it put its true pro-criminal colors on the record. We’ve hoodwinked the voters, they said to themselves, now we can hand them over to the criminals’ tender mercies. Because criminals, as the Left would have it, are the poor victims. To these delusional ideologues, mass incarceration is a bigger problem than the revolving-door release of predators upon the general population.
Congress doesn’t have to let this happen. Democrats and Republicans of goodwill can step in and override this idiocy. Under the Constitution, the District of Columbia falls directly under congressional control. The council only governs the district to the extent Congress acquiesces — and it need not acquiesce to this nonsense.
At a time of high crime, the last thing any city or state needs is a prosecutor or legislature that wants to cut criminals additional slack.
The path to making cities safe is already well known: more police, more aggressive policing, and longer sentences for violent and repeat criminals. Fund the police and override the council, and you can save D.C. from descending into an even more unlivable place than it already is.
