Let's start on the east coast and migrate westward in a follow-up post later today. Our nation's capital has been suffering a rise in violent crime over the last few years, with one of the most serious patterns being an explosion of carjackings -- some of which have turned deadly. Fox News covered the serious uptick at the end of the summer: "Carjacking incidents in Washington, D.C., continue to rise since 2019, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) statistics show. On Sunday evening, two juvenile suspects made Washington Commanders running back Brian Robinson Jr. the latest of more than 300 victims impacted by carjackings far this year after they shot and wounded the football player on H Street — a busy strip of restaurants and grocery stores between Capitol Hill and Northeast D.C. neighborhoods," the story reports. "MPD has recorded 326 total carjackings between Jan. 1 and Aug. 30 of this year, representing a 27% increase compared to the same time period last year, when MPD had recorded 264 carjackings. Of those carjacking incidents reported as of Aug. 30, 73% have involved guns."
A shocking percentage of these crimes have been perpetrated by juveniles, as DC police officials continue to lament a shortage of officers on the beat. "We are still short 100s of cops and the responsible policing that used to address this has been prohibited by misguided legislation," the local officers' union posted on its Facebook page at the time. The dangerous spree is spilling into surrounding communities, too. A local news station interviewed a former city councilman who helped implement tougher penalties for carjackings decades ago, helping to slow down a previous epidemic:
As D.C. struggles with a spike in carjackings nowadays, such was also the case in the early 1990s. Councilmember Harold Brazil got the council to pass unanimously a bill in the 90s establishing a 15-year minimum prison sentence if a gun were involved in a carjacking, a seven-year minimum if no gun was involved and no bail if arrested. 7News caught up with Brazil to talk about the current situation and the motivation behind the bill he got approved 30 years ago...“If they feel that they can do it, and just slap on the back of my hand and let me go,” said Brazil, “They’ll keep on doing it at least there’s plenty of them that will keep on doing it.” A number of observers today point back to the law as something that worked...“You can’t maybe, put a juvenile away forever, for maybe a longer period of time as you would an adult, but something needs to happen to them,” said Brazil.
The article concludes with the former council member revealing that his own wife was carjacked outside their home a few months prior. He knows the formula for reducing this type of crime wave because he literally helped engineer a successful solution in the past. The tougher laws worked. Let's flash forward to today's DC city council and see what they've been up to lately:
The Washington, D.C., city council on Tuesday voted to dramatically reform the city's criminal code, reducing penalties for offenses including illegal gun possession and carjacking, even as D.C. has seen a spike in homicides in recent years. The legislation, which requires the approval of Mayor Muriel Bowser (D.), would eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for most crimes, the Washington Post reported, and lower the maximum sentences for crimes such as carjacking and robbery...The reforms to the city's criminal code come as homicides in D.C. spiked 14 percent in 2021 from 2020. The 226 killings in 2021 are more than double the 88 homicides the city saw in 2012...Other crimes besides murder have surged in D.C., including carjacking, which would see reduced maximum sentences if Bowser signs the bill. Carjackings have tripled since 2019. A doctor was murdered in March after he tried to prevent a carjacker from stealing his car, a city council candidate had his car stolen at gunpoint in January, and in August rookie running back for the Washington Commanders Brian Robinson Jr. was shot multiple times in an attempted carjacking.
“A man who helped pass D.C.'s historic [soft on crime] criminal code overhaul was shot and killed hours before council passed the bill last week.” https://t.co/FYQacXEeus
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) November 21, 2022
Hard as it is to believe, the mayor of Washington, D.C., might soon be elected with votes from illegal immigrants or the staff at the Chinese embassy. Last month the D.C. City Council passed a bill to expand the franchise in local elections to any adult with 30 days of residency. Mayor Muriel Bowser did not sign or veto it, so the bill was officially enacted Monday without her signature. A few jurisdictions have moved to let noncitizens vote in local races, but the D.C. plan stands out, given how it follows progressive ideas to a bizarre conclusion. New York City passed a noncitizen voting law that a court ruled this year was a violation of the state Constitution. But that proposal at least required noncitizen voters to have U.S. work authorization. No such limitation appears in the D.C. bill, meaning illegal aliens and foreign college students would be able to vote, and that’s not all. “There’s nothing in this measure to prevent employees at embassies of governments that are openly hostile to the United States from casting ballots,” the Washington Post reported.
From illegal immigrants to foreign diplomatic personnel from hostile countries, everyone can vote in DC. And I'd assume that objecting to any of this madness is tantamount to "opposing voting rights" and "suppression," yes? That's how the game works. The face of progress in America's capital city: Reduced penalties amid spiking violent crime, and universal voting franchise for any warm body. And Democrats want this place to be the 51st state, with two US Senators.
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