Republican lawmakers zeroed in on the District’s lagging prosecution rate and the city’s lead prosecutor during a congressional hearing about the crime surge in the nation’s capital.
U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves was berated by GOP lawmakers for his office’s decision to decline 67% of the criminal cases brought to prosecutors by D.C. police, despite the District witnessing a 13% increase in violent crime and a 27% increase in overall crime so far this year.
Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett called the low prosecution rate “disgraceful,” while Florida Rep. Byron Donalds told Mr. Graves that he was abandoning his responsibility to the Metropolitan Police Department and District residents.
“You’re not doing your job, and I find it disgusting, frankly,” Mr. Donalds told Mr. Graves.
The lead prosecutor, whose office handles most crimes in the District, repeatedly pointed out that the statistic comes from fiscal year 2022, which ended last September. He argued that the high declination rate has gone down since then, though did not offer specific numbers.
Further, Mr. Graves said 90% of the most serious offenses are charged, and that the high declination rate is attributed to his office dismissing misdemeanor offenses such as gun and drug possession.
But D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser emphasized how important it is to pursue those lesser crimes when the committee suggested hiring more prosecutors.
“Misdemeanors indicate, in my view, a sense of lawlessness. And that sense of lawlessness grows,” Ms. Bowser said.
She sympathized with the U.S. Attorney’s desire to focus on homicides, but stressed that the office also needs to “prosecute our gun offenses, because a felon in possession of a gun should be prosecuted.”
Another statistic Republicans cited often was that the District’s homicide suspects are arrested 11 times, on average, prior to being charged with a deadly offense.
Rep. Jake LaTurner, Kansas Republican, pressed Mr. Graves about how often his office declined to prosecute someone who was later charged with homicide. The U.S. Attorney said he couldn’t recite that number off the top of his head.
The city as a whole has witnessed increases in most major crimes in 2023 — from homicides and carjackings to sexual assaults, robberies and dangerous weapons assaults.
The District experienced a chaotic end to Mother’s Day weekend when a 10-year-old girl was seriously wounded by a stray bullet in Northeast. Hours later, a 12-year-old girl was hit by a bullet while she was sleeping in her Southeast home. Three people were killed within a seven-hour period later in the day on Monday.
Some Republicans sought to draw a contrast between what they felt was leniency toward local criminals because the attorney’s office was dedicating resources to prosecuting Capitol riot offenders.
“What do you think a resident in Anacostia is more afraid of: their child catching a stray bullet on Monday, or a grandma walking through the Capitol more than two years ago?” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Republican.
Democrats on the panel, such as New York Rep. Daniel Goldman, criticized GOP lawmakers who defended D.C. police during Tuesday’s hearing but also supported the rioters who broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Other Democrats voiced their support for D.C. statehood while arguing that the Republicans leading the Oversight Committee are trying to bigfoot the city’s locally elected mayor and D.C. Council.
“That fact that [Republicans] pretend to know how to govern D.C. better than y’all is patronizing,” said Rep. Maxwell Frost, Florida Democrat. “Republicans here are so preoccupied with trying to govern D.C. that it makes you wonder who they’re trying to represent.”
Rep. Jasmine Crockett, Texas Democrat, furthered the argument for the District’s autonomy by saying that the city doesn’t control certain aspects of its criminal justice system, such as its prosecutors and judges.
She then turned the attention to Rep. George Santos, New York Republican, and his arrest on fraud charges last week to point out what she called a contradiction in Republicans’ concerns.
“The fact is, my Republican colleagues want to talk about keeping D.C. streets crime-free, but they can’t even keep the halls of Congress crime-free,” Ms. Crockett said.
It is the second hearing on this issue organized by House Republicans. The first was held in March, when the committee hosted D.C. Council member Charles Allen and Council Chairman Phil Mendelson.
Republicans criticized Mr. Allen for supporting efforts to defund District police, while Mr. Mendelson argued that “there is no crime crisis in Washington.”
Days before the March hearing, an aide for Sen. Rand Paul was the victim of an apparently random stabbing by a man who had recently been released from jail. And in the days afterward, a Virginia woman was brutally killed inside her New York Avenue hotel room by a stranger.
Ms. Bowser has worked to reinforce the District’s public safety image in the past week.
She announced her plans to introduce a D.C. Council bill Monday that would increase penalties for felony gun possession and allow the courts more discretion when it comes to ordering pre-trial holds on repeat violent offenders.
The mayor also hosted a summit last week in which city police and prosecutors shared what they are doing to address growing concerns about crime among District residents.
But Ms. Bowser said at the summit that she thought the public attention has resulted in more pressure to prosecute crimes, saying “I actually think that the light of day on all parts of the ecosystem is working.”
Gregg Pemberton, the head of the D.C. Police Union, called Ms. Bowser a “great ally” against efforts to defund the department in a letter Monday to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, Kentucky Republican.
He also credited her with vetoing a major rewrite to the D.C. criminal code, which was overridden by the council but ultimately rejected by Congress on a bipartisan basis during a mandated review period.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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