The D.C. Council approved emergency legislation Tuesday to make it easier to keep accused violent offenders locked up before their trials as the District struggles to respond to a citywide wave of shootings, lootings and carjackings.
The bill, introduced last week by Brooke Pinto, the Ward 2 Democrat and chair of the judiciary and public safety committee, was approved 12-1, with the lone dissenting member being Ward 4 Democrat Janeese Lewis George.
The measure is designed to give judges greater latitude to jail adult and juvenile suspects accused of homicide, carjacking, sexual abuse and assault with a dangerous weapon.
“What this legislation does is bring the definition of what constitutes a danger to the community in line with reality that we’re seeing on the ground [and] to ensure that judges have the discretion to hold people who otherwise would pose a danger to the community,” Ms. Pinto said during Tuesday’s council meeting.
Ms. Pinto introduced the legislation following another bloody week in the nation’s capital.
A Kentucky man was shot and killed on Catholic University’s campus in Northeast on July 5 during what his family said was an attempted robbery. NBC affiliate WRC-TV reported Tuesday that 22-year-old Jaime Macedo was arrested as a suspect in that case.
On July 3, police said a man who worked as an Afghan interpreter for the U.S. military before the Taliban takeover was shot and killed in Northeast. The suspects in that shooting remain at large.
There have been 11 slayings in July alone.
Violent crime is up 33% so far this year, with recorded increases in all major crimes — from homicides and robberies to carjackings and assaults with a dangerous weapon — when compared to 2022.
The violence this year has claimed the lives of 12 children in the District as of Tuesday; last year, 16 children were killed in the city.
But Ms. Lewis George pushed back on the emergency legislation, saying the new rules lay the groundwork for judges to violate due process and over-incarcerate District residents.
“There is no credible evidence that pretrial detention would make D.C. safer, but this change would come with the very real harm of putting thousands of D.C. residents in unjustly before they had had a trial,” the Ward 4 representative said.
She later added that “This is haphazard policy, and we’re making it to ruin families and children for generations to come.”
Ms. Pinto countered by saying that 12 homicide suspects last year were out on pretrial release, and 18 of those who were killed in homicides were also on pretrial release. She also cited a study in New York that found that expanding pretrial release for people charged with violent crimes increased recidivism.
Under current law, Ms. Pinto said, the standard to meet pretrial detention for adults is already “extremely hard.”
The temporary law also creates a new felony offense of “endangerment of a firearm” that makes it illegal to fire a gun in public and allows courts to receive GPS information about people released from jail with ankle monitors if they are suspected of committing another crime.
Additional elements of the new legislation expand the District’s private security camera rebate program and also speed up cases involving children who are abused.
A separate declaration that was passed unanimously allows Metropolitan Police Department officers to pursue suspects when the alleged offenders present a risk to public safety.
The vehicular pursuit declaration reforms a 2022 law that Ms. Pinto argued had effectively made it illegal for MPD officers to pursue suspects.
Ms. Pinto’s emergency legislation addresses key elements of what D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has included in the Safer, Stronger Amendment Act first introduced in May.
That bill — which Ms. Pinto’s public safety committee held a 12-hour meeting on late last month where almost 170 public and government witnesses testified — would increase penalties for certain violent crimes and illegal gun possession.
D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson voted in support of the emergency legislation Tuesday but spoke out against the aims of the then-emergency bill last week when he said much of the District’s crime problem is due to a low closure rate on homicides.
“You can get away with murder in this city, but that’s true of a lot of places. But increasing the closure rate – increasing the case closure rate has the quickest deterrent effect,” Mr. Mendelson told Fox affiliate WTTG on Friday. He added that half of the murders in the city go unsolved.
Lindsey Appiah, D.C.’s deputy mayor of public safety, contended Monday during a public safety meeting in Northeast that the Metropolitan Police Department’s homicide closure rate is above the national average. Acting Chief Leslie Parsons assured at that same meeting that “you can’t get away with murder” in the District.
Ms. Bowser was less charitable with her retort to the chairman’s comments when she said “I’m not going to pay too much attention to asinine statements.”
The emergency legislation takes effect immediately and will last 90 days.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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