Mayor Adrian Fenty said he will soon introduce provisions of his omnibus crime bill as emergency legislation so they can be implemented immediately, before the start of the routinely crime-heavy summer.
Fenty made the announcement Thursday during a news conference just north of the U Street corridor. Joined by Attorney General Peter Nickles, Police Chief Cathy Lanier and a handful of D.C. Council supporters, the mayor said he would seek emergency enactment of the Omnibus Anti-Crime Amendment Act on June 2.
“The additions to the bill are aimed at strengthening measures to limit gang activity, enforcing compliance among gun offenders, and cracking down on illegal gun possession,” Fenty said in a statement. “This legislation will allow us to break the pattern of violent crime and gun possession that has long plagued our neighborhoods.”
Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans said the emergency will only include provisions of the bill related to gangs, guns and drugs.
“Those are the essential provisions that we need in place to deal with crime in the summer,” he said.
Among its provisions, the bill seeks to stop criminal street gangs through court orders, increase prison sentences for committing a crime while in possession of a firearms, establish a registry of gun law offenders, and create an offense of illegal possession of a firearm in a motor vehicle.
It was unclear how Councilman Phil Mendelson, chairman of the public safety and judiciary committee, will react to the emergency.
“Crime is always a great subject for grandstanding,” Mendelson said prior to Fenty’s news conference, an event to which he was not invited. “I’ve said repeatedly this bill will move out of committee next month. This is complicated stuff and it should be done correctly.”
Mendelson said that his committee has met with Nickles and his staff at least four times to discuss “a host of issues” with the 56-page bill, in particular the gang provisions. That said, the measure could be before the full council in July, Mendelson said, and enacted as an emergency then.
But Evans worried that under the “Mendelson approach, it won’t become law until next year.”
“It’s ridiculous,” Evans said. “We really need to move forward with this.”
