D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser chided city lawmakers Monday for not passing her public safety plan last year, but a key legislator said her administration failed to provide information to support her proposal.
In a statement issued Monday, the Democrat said her legislation would have helped blunt last year’s spike in homicides. The Metropolitan Police Department recorded 162 homicides in 2015, a 54 percent increase over the previous year.
“Way back in August, 131 days ago, to be exact, I proposed ’Safer, Stronger DC’ — a comprehensive public safety plan to combat violent crime,” the mayor said. “Unfortunately, the [D.C.] Council has failed to act on this vital legislation.”
Her plan included authorizing funds to deploy more police officers in areas with the highest crime rates, providing money for more crime scene investigators and, most controversially, increasing by 50 percent the penalties for violent crimes committed on public transportation and in the city’s parks and recreation areas.
But D.C. Council member Kenyan McDuffie, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said the mayor’s office and the police department have failed to provide information about Ms. Bowser’s proposal that his panel has long sought.
Mr. McDuffie said he specifically wants to see data that support the mayor’s call for stiffer sentences for crimes committed on buses, on subway trains and in city parks as a deterrent to crime — information that has been promised but never delivered.
“We’re not going to be knee-jerk or reactionary. We want an evidence-based, data-driven approach,” the Ward 5 Democrat said. “Some things proposed in the mayor’s bill run counter to criminal justice reform nationally.”
Mr. McDuffie said his efforts to meet regularly with Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier have been thwarted, despite his office’s scheduling of monthly meetings a year ago. McDuffie spokeswoman Dionne Calhoun said the police chief and the lawmaker, whose committee oversees her department, met only three times last year — in January, March and July, the month before Ms. Bowser announced her public safety plan.
However, Kelly O’Meara, legislative affairs director for the police department, said Chief Lanier and Mr. McDuffie “speak and meet frequently both on recurring and emerging issues, and we look forward to continuing to work together on important public safety issues in the District.”
Ms. O’Meara said the chief had a similar working relationship with Tommy Wells when he was Judiciary Committee chairman. She said they would set a “target date” for a monthly meeting that could be changed as needed.
Mr. McDuffie said he has crafted his own legislation. He said it adds preventive measures to Ms. Bowser’s proposal, such as an approach that focuses on how city health workers can play a part in fighting violent crime.
He said he examined crime prevention best practices in several cities and that the legislation should be ready in coming weeks. He did not commit to a specific date for its introduction.
“Law enforcement typically responds after a crime has happened,” Mr. McDuffie said. “We cannot arrest our way out of this problem.”
• Ryan M. McDermott can be reached at rmcdermott@washingtontimes.com.
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