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pickletype t1_je11g2r wrote

Good. They should be grilled. They're failing to satisfy the most important aspect of their job, which is keeping their constituents safe by enacting a policy agenda that is conducive to this outcome. Instead, they have done everything in their power to allow the criminal elements in our city to thrive while avoiding any responsibility for their role in it.

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burrito-disciple t1_je1xsra wrote

They should be, but understand that the goal of the hearing will have little to do with that. It will be a show hearing for soundbites to play on Fox News to sell whatever political agenda they may have ("Democrat cities are cesspools of crime!" "DC can't be a state, look at how bad it is!" "We have to revoke home rule in the name of Law and Order!" etc).

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EastoftheCap OP t1_je2c7pv wrote

Maybe it will motivate our government not to keep creating those moments for Fox News in the future.

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LoganSquire t1_je2ola3 wrote

No thanks. I’d rather not have our elected leaders take their cues from Fox News.

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burrito-disciple t1_je5joot wrote

You think the DC government should behave in a way that impresses Fox News? And you think that's better than just being able to run our own city and deal with our own government without begging Fox News viewers that we should be able to have representation in a democracy?

That's a hot take.

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jaco1001 t1_je232nh wrote

OP knows that, and is actively doing that.

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GhostDawg01 t1_je3f3g1 wrote

To put it simply, DC politicians coddle criminals. Even the worst of them.

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SquishWindow t1_je1bxyl wrote

If Congress wants to have a productive conversation about public safety in DC that's one thing, but that ain't what this is. It's weird to have a hearing about public safety in DC where the only executive branch official is the city's CFO - not the mayor, not the deputy mayor for public safety, not any leadership from MPD. I get that some people had complaints about the RCCA, but if you're worried about the current state of public safety in this city, it might be worth doing something other than hauling up councilmembers to yell at them for a bill that never took effect and no longer exists.

If I was really concerned about public safety in this city, I might ask officials to testify before me who could explain why MPD murder cases are getting summarily dropped, or why the majority of MPD arrests aren't getting prosecuted by USAO. And no, I don't think the person to answer those questions is the head of the fucking police union.

If I was really concerned about public safety in this city, maybe I wouldn't be pushing for gigantic cuts to USAO staff.

This thing is a clown show. From the bottom of my heart, fuck all of you who keep cheering on Republicans in Congress for this sideshow bullshit that isn't going to make a single person in this city more safe.

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ehenning1537 t1_je1hhl4 wrote

I’m not even sure all these people giving hurrahs to the GOP actually live in or near the District. None of them have neighborhood flair. The top commenter has only been on Reddit for 24 days. The next commenter has a legit account but still spends an alarming amount of time defending Kanye West. He also makes right wing comments in other city subs.

I don’t think the comment section here is remotely representative of DC

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Sufficient-Job-1013 t1_je29ne0 wrote

I’m 1000% against the GOP and don’t support almost anything they do and this is clearly a stunt.

That said, I’m deeply frustrated and disappointed with the Council because they are doing NOTHING. They have almost zero public presence, they have NO ideas to address problems, they have no follow through on systems in place, and worst of all they don’t take any ownership of their role in the problems we are facing.

We seem paralyzed in search of how to do criminal justice reform. Far leftists are unhinged and their policies are absurd and out of touch. Far rightists are unhinged and their policies are psychotic. We need some leaders to step up and bring some reasonable ideas in the interim until we figure out how to hold criminals accountable without being completely racist.

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SquishWindow t1_je2mkds wrote

> I’m deeply frustrated and disappointed with the Council because they are doing NOTHING

I guess I just think it is silly to focus your ire on the Council, especially to the exclusion of everyone else responsible for public safety in this city. The Council voted last year to approve $20,000 signing bonuses for new MPD officers to hire 350 more officers. And despite the extremely stupid debate surrounding the RCCA, it really was not designed to be some soft on crime giveaway, and in many ways was supposed to make it more straightforward and easy to prosecute a variety of crimes, including gun crimes that are currently difficult to prosecute. It's just false that the Council is trying to turn the city into some soft on crime communist utopia. If your main reason for being angry at the Council is that they aren't pursuing policies to just wantonly lock people away and throw the key away for the rest of their lives, fine, but then stop talking shit about the GOP because you're sounding an awful lot like Nixon & Reagan.

I think it's pretty hard to argue that the Council is the main or biggest problem. It's a huge problem for the city if almost 2/3 of MPD arrests don't get prosecuted by the USAO. Maybe that's a problem with MPD officers doing a shitty job of collecting evidence that will hold up in court, maybe that's a problem with DC's forensic lab being a shitshow that lost its accreditation and being unable to process evidence to make cases, maybe that's a problem with many MPD officers being shitheads who the USAO can't credibly put on the stand, maybe that's a problem with USAO not pursuing crimes that they consider too low-level. Almost certainly it's a combination of all of those things. But - while surely the Council can play some role in fixing those problems, there are a bunch of people who are more directly responsible for fixing them who aren't being hauled in front of Congress for a stupid fucking fascist circus this week - unless you want to count the president of DC's police union, lol. It's also a huge problem if, as many of the crimepost idiots on this sub love to claim, USAO not papering MPD arrests is leading MPD officers to just not actually do police work anymore.

Similarly, it's a huge problem that our courts are understaffed and that USAO resources are stretched too thin to give local DC prosecutions adequate time and attention. The Council can't do much about those things. Maybe they can be better advocates for DC, maybe they could help raise public awareness of the ways federal policy could help make things better in DC / the ways federal policy is a bottleneck, and maybe that would create more energy for positive change at the federal level. But again, Council members are going to be "grilled" this week by fascist fuckheads who don't actually give a shit about improving public safety in DC and will not be interested in the slightest in hearing about anything constructive they could be doing besides a televised clown show.

Edit and, ask any police officer in this city, and they will tell you that one of the biggest changes they have seen is the number of guns in this city in the last few years. The crimebrained idiots on this sub will never admit it, nor of course will the fascist monsters holding the hearing this week, but our national addiction to guns and aversion to actually curbing gun supply in this country is a gigantic cause of violence in the District. The Council can also do absolutely nothing about that.

The "worst" thing the Council has done is to propose that some criminal sentences get marginally shorter than they were, and make it possible for some people who have already been in jail for many years to get out of jail. On the first point - again, that's now a policy that never took effect, was never going to take effect before 2025, and now will never take effect at all, so blaming DC's crime problems on it is a stupid. On the second point, OK, I understand if you think it's bad for some people to get out of prison earlier than what they were originally sentenced to. I'll agree to disagree. But I'd remind you that if you are anywhere to the left of, say, Sean Hannity, as of like two years ago you probably would have admitted that our country has an insane problem with mass incarceration, driven by decades of politicians pandering to citizens who mindlessly demanded harsher sentences whenever given the option. That continues to be the case today, and personally I think it's embarrassing for so many people to quickly fall into the trap of sentencing can only move in one direction, it can never get shorter than what it has historically been. That sort of thinking is just so dis-spiriting, our country has actually learned absolutely nothing from the failures and moral atrocities of mass incarceration. I'm not a prison abolitionist, but American mass incarceration is a monstrous and destructive approach to public safety; and the DC Council never proposed ending mass incarceration, they just proposed and implemented some very modest reductions in criminal sentences that absolutely do not deserve the breathless outrage that they receive.

There are real problems with public safety in this city, caused by a lot of different things. Training all the anger on the Council is for people who have an irrational, single-minded, and destructive hard-on for maximizing prison sentences and have little interest in using any other tools, including good policing, to improve safety.

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Deanocracy t1_je3woyr wrote

** But - while surely the Council can play some role in fixing those problems,** what has the council done to make you believe they don’t support this outcome?

** Similarly, it's a huge problem that our courts are understaffed and that USAO resources are stretched too thin to give local DC prosecutions adequate time and attention.** the last time anyone looked they had the largest budget by far of any federal court. And they aren’t saying they need more anywhere. Just you are.

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SquishWindow t1_je4szwu wrote

> the last time anyone looked they had the largest budget by far of any federal court. And they aren’t saying they need more anywhere.

They are saying they need more resources, but maybe not on the Citizen app, Nextdoor, or OANN, which is probably why you missed it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/01/01/dc-judges-vacancy-senate/

https://www.npr.org/local/305/2022/12/16/1143595613/senate-confirms-seven-judges-for-d-c-courts-addressing-vacancy-crisis (this one notes some recent confirmations to DC superior court, which is good, but there are still a bunch more vacancies)

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Deanocracy t1_je4too6 wrote

I don’t see the word money in either of those articles.

Which makes me think you are being malicious or you are just not intellectually equipped for this conversation.

The nextdoor line seals it. Malicious. Posting a blue link that doesn’t discuss budget of the fed court in a fed court budget convo.

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SquishWindow t1_je53jwo wrote

My dude, I said "our courts are understaffed" which you somehow took to mean that I was only talking about federal court and talking about money.

There's obviously been a vacancy problem in DC Superior Court. Maybe you just didn't know that we have a non-federal court system here that handles criminal cases? Is that the problem? They don't talk about those sorts of pesky details on Nextdoor and so they just elide you?

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Surefinewhatever1111 t1_je1d1fg wrote

YMBNH This isn't new, we've been doing this show since at least the 90s. Stop getting all get up about Congress, you can't do anything about them anyway.

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cphoover t1_je19mv1 wrote

They should be grilled for their ineptitude

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Pipes_of_Pan t1_je157dc wrote

Bizarre to see DC residents viewing this deranged and politically opportunistic oversight as sincere and helpful. We are talking about the worst republicans of modern history whose top constituencies are traitors and racists.

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NorseTikiBar t1_je1hjut wrote

Crime post trolls gonna crime post troll.

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IAmTheJudasTree t1_je33qck wrote

>Crime post trolls gonna crime post troll.

The number one post on this subreddit right now is by a person saying that they were "almost kidnapped by a Latino man" in DC (the poster also says DC has a "huge sex trafficking problem," which is factually not accurate).

But if you read their post and their comments, it sounds like they were walking outside, they saw what they say was a "latino man" in a truck circling a block a few times and the poster decided they were on the verge of being kidnapped and they reported it to the police. The person didn't actually get out of the truck and try to kidnap them.

Unfortunately, anecdotes have always driven public opinion, and policy decisions, around crime and criminal justice, whether based on fact or fantasy.

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posam t1_je1s82c wrote

Absolutely insincere but I just want more insight at this point because nobody can point enough fingers around between MPD, the USAO, etc.

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Pipes_of_Pan t1_je1v95v wrote

I know what you’re saying but I don’t think they’ll get one legit question about the governance structure. Also they’re not going to listen to our electeds when they point out that easy access to guns is driving a ton of the violence. I get that it’s just one more finger to point but it’s ridiculous to have so many guns flowing into our city.

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AndreTippettPoint t1_je5p30l wrote

I haven't been watching the hearing, but I suspect this is right. Still, the failures of the US Attorney's office need greater exposure. And while I know this isn't always a popular opinion, but we also need more focus on the misguided public safety agenda of the DC Council.

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dynospectrum7 t1_je2b9fa wrote

If this can light a fire under their asses, why does it matter who cares? There is no reason this city should only have half the murders as NYC when it’s only 1/10th the size. That’s just ridiculous.

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Disused_Yeti t1_je0pcv7 wrote

i'm sure they are really concerned about what is going on in dc and wouldn't possibly use it to grandstand about how much of a hell hole all democrat run cities are to pander to teh rubes back home...

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gopoohgo t1_je0r01f wrote

A sitting House rep being assaulted in the lobby of her building, and the staffer of a US Senator being stabbed on H Street in the span of 6 weeks isn't concerning?

While every politician lobbies or grandstands, these people and their staffers live in the immediate vicinity for at least a third of the year.

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Disused_Yeti t1_je0swm9 wrote

didn't say it wasn't concerning but you give these clowns infinitely more credit than they deserve

all you have to look at is the title of their inquiry having 'overdue' and 'part 1' to know it's theater

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celj1234 t1_je0x3w5 wrote

No. Why should their job title have me concerned.

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DancesWithTreetops t1_je0tc7w wrote

Neither are concerning enough to have a hearing over. This is GQP grandstanding for their ramp up of election year culture war bullshit. If Rand Pauls staffer, or the congresswoman who was robbed were targeted because of their affiliation with the House or Senate, then I would be concerned. But, living in a city comes with city crimes.

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gopoohgo t1_je0uq81 wrote

>Homicides are up 19 percent over the same time in 2022, when D.C. for the second year in a row surpassed 200 killings, something it had not done since the early 2000s. Overall crime is up 23 percent, driven in large part by a spike in auto thefts, though violent crime is even with 2022, a year that saw decreases.

>Other distinct challenges specific to D.C. have also emerged: Federal prosecutors — who function as D.C.’s local prosecutors in the federally funded D.C. Superior Court — recently reported they are declining to prosecute roughly two-thirds of arrests, raising questions about prosecutors’ standards for accepting cases and the evidence in the cases police bring. With the D.C. crime lab shut down, prosecutors are also having to outsource processing of evidence to other labs, also potentially affecting decisions about which cases to pursue, as the office has noted.

Either of these are enough to have a hearing over imho.

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EC_dwtn t1_je0wi2t wrote

And notably absent is the USAO from the witness list, which is how I know this is a stunt and a joke.

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gopoohgo t1_je0xfir wrote

Yeah, I was hoping that the USAO would be called.

However, would there be jurisidiction issues? If they are federal prosecutors, wouldn't they have to be called by the Judiciary Committee?

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AnonyJustAName t1_je17h2c wrote

Agree. Oversight over DOJ and thus USAO is a different committee than oversight over DC. Perhaps they can call a joint hearing and invite the mayor to that one?

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cptjeff t1_je4unrt wrote

No. If a witness is relevant, they can call them. Rules for Congressional hearings aren't strict at all. Really, nonexistent. But note the "Part 1" on the hearing title. Hopefully Graves gets hauled up next hearing.

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DancesWithTreetops t1_je0wf5p wrote

A misleading word salad is precisely why congress holding a hearing about DC crime is a bullshit grandstanding ramp up of election year culture war grievance crap. Violent crime was down in 2022, and violent crime in DC is currently running even with 2022 stats according to your word salad. Again...the GQP has no interest in governing. Political theater, grievances, and culture war bullshit is all they care about.

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gopoohgo t1_je0wr7v wrote

>A misleading word salad

Cut and pasted from WaPo? Are you really saying that they are taking cues from the GOP? Or that the GOP reads WaPo as gospel?

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topher180 t1_je12hxz wrote

Misleading word salad is what someone says when they want to discredit you but not actually provide any facts to the contrary. And then, when you call them out on how ridiculous it is, they are indignant. Good job 👏

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DancesWithTreetops t1_je18gma wrote

Yeah...or you can just read the word salad and recognize it for what it is.

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topher180 t1_je1b3p6 wrote

These are really weak, lazy replies. You’re not really saying anything of substance and yet you insist on criticizing others of being indirect and/or verbose.

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DancesWithTreetops t1_je0wyir wrote

I said that what you posted was a misleading word salad...regardless of source. Nothing more, nothing less.

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fronthacker t1_je0vlnl wrote

I wouldn't mind some grand standing critical of our city's leadership, it's what we do all day in this sub anyway!

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Disused_Yeti t1_je0yawk wrote

actual reform would be better than grandstanding

also having it initiated by people not politically motivated to conflate dc the city with 'dc' the shorthand for the federal government for their personal and party gain would be nice

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burrito-disciple t1_je1y9lb wrote

I mean that's exactly what the goal of these hearings are. Weird to see so many "residents" on this sub so eager to see home rule revoked.

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mwheele86 t1_je1kssg wrote

Def think they should be grilled but if the topic of the USAO and DC courts doesn’t come up then it’s pointless. More importantly, those with say in congress need to hammer out what changes they would like to see that will satisfy them as a lot of the RCCA is cleaning up language.

I don’t recall the details but I thought I just saw an article about the house budget proposes across the board cuts to the USAO offices. That is the opposite direction we need to be going.

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AnonyJustAName t1_je3lqtp wrote

This hearing is being conducted by the Committee with oversight over DC .

The committee with oversight over DOJ and thus USAO and DC courts is a different committee altogether.

Agree re: funding of USAOs esp since DC has no elected prosecutor of adult crime.

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mwheele86 t1_je5bjgp wrote

Not sure who downvoted you but this was a good nugget of info.

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plasmainthezone t1_je34hel wrote

Im as liberal as they come, good, DC is absolutely atrocious on crime.

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LostLongIslander t1_je5gfyt wrote

I love how I’m the sub you’re either a fascist GOP neo-nazi or your so liberal you believe we should abolish the police, prisons, and poverty is a valid excuse for murder and assault. There’s no middle ground here

Nuance is definitely not a strength of this sub lol

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tuukkas t1_je3ofey wrote

can’t believe anyone would take this as sincerely trying to help the people of DC.

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[deleted] t1_je5iwso wrote

Bad actors all around. Our city officials don’t listen to the desires or needs of any residents, from Barry Farms to AU Park. It’s either outright cronyism, or it’s grandstanding for other Twitter-addicted activists.

Then there’s the House GOP, who won’t rest until there is a committee of overseers to rule the city.

We’re so fucked.

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FIFA95_itsinthegame t1_je4q8j4 wrote

This thread is really showing how conservative the Democratic Party actually is. I know some of the people cheering this on have signs in their yard and pink hats in their closets.

The absolute freak out over the most basic criminal Justice reforms (that actually would bring us in line with other states) would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad.

Welcome fascist interference with your home city at your own risk is all I’m saying.

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madraelin t1_je1j8gt wrote

Whatever you think of these hearings, the fact is that the current council is trying to implement laws similar to those enacted by the extreme leftists running Seattle and Portland, once gem cities, now on par with third world countries. I’m a democrat and I say my party is sadly soft on crime and thinks giving the criminals hugs instead of jail time will make be nice to people.

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jdixonfan t1_je1yda3 wrote

Thanks for your opinion on DC crime, person who lives on the West Coast and has a diaper fetish.

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madraelin t1_je2ubpm wrote

It’s because I lived in DC / DuPont Circle for three years and still miss the city. And I’ve seen what happened out here in the PNW - bad policies have destroyed the quality of life.

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Surefinewhatever1111 t1_je10izy wrote

So hard to choose: gerbils for brains on the Council/Mayorality, rabid squirrels for brains in Congress.

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