Two events in Washington, D.C., this week made clear how bad crime has gotten in the nation’s capital, and how badly the D.C. government has responded to it.
On Monday, Mike Gill was waiting in his car outside his wife’s office in downtown D.C. to pick her up when a man entered his vehicle and shot him. The assailant fled, attempted two more carjackings in D.C. later that night (the second succeeded), and died in a standoff with police early the next morning in Maryland (after committing two more carjackings in the state). Gill remains in critical condition; Alberto Vasquez Jr., another victim of this carjacker, has already died.
On Tuesday, D.C. city councilman Charles Allen led a public panel discussion on the rise of carjackings and juvenile crime in the city. Also in attendance were D.C. attorney general Brian Schwalb and U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., Matthew Graves (the two divide criminal-justice authority between them). Pressed for solutions, Schwalb had little to offer. “We as a city and a community need to be much more focused on prevention, and surrounding young people and their families with resources, if we want to be safer in the long run,” he said. He absurdly added: “We cannot prosecute and arrest our way out of it.”
This is a feeble response given the magnitude of the problem. D.C. police have reported 49 carjackings and nine homicides so far in the new year. In 2023, overall crime increased 26 percent over 2022. That includes major increases in property crime (24 percent), violent crime (39 percent), and motor-vehicle theft (82 percent). The city also saw more homicides in 2023 than in any year since 1997.
Crime has become so widespread and random that it can strike in seemingly safe places at seemingly secure times, such as Dupont Circle at 4 p.m. (as was the case with a shooting on Tuesday). And anyone can be a victim: Another stark recent example was the shooting death of Ryan Realbuto, a 23-year-old Catholic volunteer, as he was walking back from church in northeast D.C. Crime has also touched members of Congress. Last February, Representative Angie Craig (D., Minn.) was assaulted in her D.C. apartment building. And last October, Representative Henry Cuellar (D., Texas) was carjacked at gunpoint in Navy Yard.
Schwalb’s ideological passivity is making this mayhem possible. “Kids are kids,” he told a local reporter last April when asked about trying more serious young offenders as adults. “And when you’re talking about teenagers particular — their brains are developing, their minds are developing, and they’re biologically prone to make mistakes — that’s what we’ve all done as we’ve grown up.” As if most of us spent our formative years robbing people at gunpoint. He also spoke out against emergency legislation the council passed last summer that simplified pretrial detention for people charged with violent crimes, condemning “the flawed assumption that easier and lengthier incarceration, both pretrial and after adjudication, will improve public safety.”
Unfortunately, Schwalb’s office doesn’t just talk the talk. Even as carjackings rise (nearly doubling from 2022 to 2023, the year Schwalb began in his post), he has repeatedly dropped cases of juvenile offenders, some of whom have gone on to commit crimes just days later. Meanwhile, he continues to devote city resources to investigating conservative legal activist Leonard Leo.
The rest of the D.C. government has also been falling down. Last January, the D.C. city council passed a revised criminal code that, among other changes, reduced criminal penalties. Amid soaring crime rates (and soon after Craig’s assault), bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress overruled this revised code, and President Biden declined to veto the congressional overruling.
This year, however, the council seems to be coming to its senses. Councilwoman Brooke Pinto has introduced a new crime bill that creates new levels of firearms offenses and makes it easier for prosecutors to bring cases for carjacking. “We know, and study after study tells us, that swiftness and certainty of getting caught is a deterrent to crime,” Pinto said, in defense of the legislation, which Mayor Muriel Bowser has said she will sign. The bill is a welcome step.
It may not be enough, though. So long as Schwalb remains in his post, there’s only so much the council can do. Past events, moreover, have shown it to be an unreliable steward of public order. Congress should be considering eroding the district’s autonomy if the crisis continues.
In the meantime, law-enforcement authorities should return to actually enforcing the law and punishing criminals in a manner that protects public safety. It has worked before, including in D.C. Contra Schwalb, Washington can actually prosecute and arrest its way out of this problem. Indeed, it must.