correction
A previous version of this article incorrectly characterized a bill passed on an emergency basis over the summer. The bill said there should be a presumption of pretrial detention for people accused of violent crimes, regardless of whether they had past convictions involving violence. The article has been corrected.
Amid a sharp increase in violence in the District, including more homicides in 2023 than in any year since 1997, local officials are under pressure to show residents that they have ideas for how to lower crime — and fast.
Over the past 12 months, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and D.C. Council members have crafted an array of public-safety legislation, naming the bills for goals that have proved elusive: “Safer Stronger,” “Accountability and Victim Protection,” “Addressing Crime Trends (ACT) Now.” While each proposal has been trumpeted as a key element in the fight against crime and some have passed on an emergency basis, others have foundered in committees and no individual bill has emerged as a defining response to a seemingly intractable problem.
The chairwoman of the council’s public safety committee, Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2), combined parts of 12 bills into an omnibus package that she hopes will serve as the municipal government’s comprehensive answer to the crime crisis. The legislation, which the council voted 12-0 to enact Tuesday (with Ward 8 Council member Trayon White Sr. voting present), includes some of the most controversial provisions from past proposals — such as creating drug-free zones in which loiterers would be subject to arrest; limiting information available to the public about the D.C. police department; and making it easier to hold certain adults and youths in secure detention while they await trial.
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Here is a breakdown of what the bill does:
Changing police oversight
The bill makes various adjustments to the Comprehensive Justice and Policing Reform law that passed after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020.
It restores law enforcement’s ability to review body-camera footage before writing police reports, except in cases of serious or deadly use of force. It loosens restrictions on certain vehicular pursuit tactics and, while retaining a ban on chokeholds, adjusts language prohibiting neck restraints.
Increasing penalties for gun possession
The bill creates several new gun laws in the District, including the offense of “endangerment with a firearm,” making it a felony to fire a gun in public, a change that was established in emergency legislation last summer.
It also increases punishment for certain charges related to illegally possessing firearms. Pinto wrote in the committee report that ‘these enhancements should bring sentencing ranges into lengths that make it more likely that defendants will actually serve time in detention which matches the danger they pose to the community.”
Expanding pretrial detention for youths
Over the summer, the council passed emergency legislation that made it easier for judges to detain youths charged with any violent offense while they awaited trial. After that bill took effect, the number of children and teens held in secure detention facilities ballooned, putting a strain on the juvenile justice system.
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This omnibus bill includes a more limited version of that provision, making it easier for judges to detain certain youths charged with firearm possession or with committing a dangerous or violent crime while armed, including with a knife. It also expands the likelihood of pretrial detention to juveniles charged with unarmed murder, first-degree sexual abuse, carjacking or assault with intent to commit any of those offenses.
Locking up more adults before trial
The bill says that, absent a compelling reason for pretrial release, people charged with violent offenses should be detained while they await trial, even if they have no previous convictions for such crimes. It also requires judges to write explanations if they decide to release defendants in those cases.
That provision is adopted from a similar one that passed on an emergency basis over the summer, saying there should be a presumption of pretrial detention if a person was accused of a violent crime, regardless of whether they had a past conviction involving violence.
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Some council members in February had asked for more evidence that holding people in pretrial detention drives down crime. Pinto said they would have to check back after the policy had been in place for more than a year.
Allowing police to create ‘drug free zones’
The bill includes a “drug free zone” provision from legislation proposed by Bowser in the fall, which would allow police to cordon off temporary zones for five days where anyone congregating to use, buy or sell drugs could be arrested if they refuse to leave. The measure has drawn scrutiny for its similarity to a 1990s approach to cracking down on open-air drug markets, a problem that public safety officials concede is not driving the current crime crisis as it did decades ago.
Expanding the collection of DNA
Pinto successfully sought to restore a provision expanding the collection of DNA from people charged with certain felonies after they are arrested, arguing that it would help solve more crimes, especially rape. After council member Kenyan R. McDuffie (I-At Large) successfully led an amendment in February to remove the provision from the bill on the grounds that it violated people’s civil liberties, Pinto returned with a compromise for the Tuesday vote: Instead of collecting DNA from any person arrested in a felony in D.C., she proposed collecting DNA after someone is charged with a violent crime or sexual assault and a judge finds probable cause. The compromise passed the council 10-3.
Changing threshold for felony theft
Council member Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4) successfully sought an amendment to make it a felony if someone committed more than one theft in a six-month period of items costing more than $1,000 in aggregate. She had argued against Pinto’s initial proposal of decreasing the felony theft threshold from $1,000 to $500, which she said would do nothing to prevent theft but give more people felony records. Lewis George’s amendment passed 12-1, with Pinto voting against it.
Adding new voices to D.C.’s sentencing panel
The bill changes the makeup of the District’s sentencing commission, which drafts and modifies sentencing guidelines used by D.C. Superior Court judges, to “ensure that the perspective of prosecutors is better represented.”
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The commission has 12 voting members — including one appointed by the U.S. attorney for D.C. and one by the D.C. attorney general — and five nonvoting members. The bill adds, as voting members, the D.C. police chief, one additional representative of the mayor and one additional representative of the council. It also requires that one of the council’s appointees be someone who has been previously incarcerated.
Requiring more efforts from city agencies
Multiple provisions in the omnibus package require D.C.’s public safety agencies to take certain actions that others outside of government already have recommended.
One requires city officials to convene twice-monthly meetings to review shooting incidents in the District, similar to what a government consultant recommended in 2022. Another provision requires the Office of Unified Communications, which runs the District’s 911 call center, to post more comprehensive data for the public. And a third provision requires the government to create a new “director of emerging adults” to coordinate services, programs and other initiatives for people ages 18 to 24. The city’s People of Promise program, launched years ago, also works to assist vulnerable residents, including young people.
A public safety plan
White on Tuesday advocated for an amendment to require Bowser to develop a comprehensive public safety plan, which Pinto accepted. White said he was drawing on his lived experience as a young Black man from Ward 8 who has lost friends to gun violence and watched others go to prison, leaving him with a sense that D.C. has long failed to address the root causes of crime with comprehensive strategies vs. recycled ideas focusing on punishment.
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“We need a public safety plan, and until we get that, we’ll be here over and over again, throwing things against the wall, hoping they stick,” White said.
Some notable omissions
The bill does not include several provisions from past bills that would have changed the District’s so-called second-chance law, which allows certain people who are imprisoned for crimes they committed before age 25 to petition for release after 15 years behind bars, regardless of how much time they were sentenced to serve. The changes would have made it easier for judges to deny such applications. In a committee report, Pinto said that testimony by people who have benefited from the second-chance law convinced her to keep it in place as is.
In fashioning the omnibus bill, Pinto also removed a controversial provision from one of her past legislative proposals that would have allowed law enforcement to randomly search people charged with violent offenses who are on pretrial release. After a harsh rebuke from many residents in D.C., who worried that the provision could empower police to harass residents, Pinto wrote in the committee report that “this proposal could undermine relationships between [D.C. police] and the communities whose buy-in it needs the most.”
This story has been updated following the second and final vote of the council on March 5.
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