Tolerating Crime was a Choice for District of Columbia Officials

On August 11, President Donald Trump declared a crime emergency in the nation’s capital. Fed up with a violent crime problem that has long been tolerated, and perhaps obfuscated, by D.C. officials, President Trump chose to exert his considerable federal authority to try to address the situation.

For those who slept through U.S. Civics, including many in the media, the District of Columbia is not akin to other cities – it is a federal enclave. Article I. Section 8. of the U.S. Constitution provides:

The Congress shall have Power… To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States

Congress delegated a measure of autonomy to the federal district in 1973 with the Home Rule Act. Still, the District’s local government is a creation of, and exists entirely at the pleasure of Congress. Moreover, even under the Home Rule Act, the federal government retains the power to act directly in certain circumstances.

Since its existence, undermining Second Amendment rights has been a priority for the District’s local government. Only three years after Congress granted D.C. home rule, the city council enacted the Firearms Control Regulations Act. The law’s ban on civilian handgun ownership and possession of usable firearms within the home were found unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark Second Amendment case District of Columbia v. Heller (2008). After Heller, the D.C. government continued to do all it could to prevent law-abiding residents and visitors from being able to exercise their right to self-defense – even going so far as to demand neighboring, and far safer, jurisdictions enact onerous gun control laws.

What the D.C. local government hasn’t done is take violent crime, and the criminals who commit it, seriously.

As NRA-ILA has repeatedly pointed out, when it comes to D.C.’s violent crime policy, there is plenty of low-hanging fruit to be picked. This is in part because violent crime is heavily concentrated among individuals who are already known to law enforcement. This means that vigorous prosecution of an exceedingly small subset of the population could substantially reduce violent crime without diminishing the rights of law-abiding citizens.

A December 2021 study from the federal enclave’s Criminal Justice Coordinating Council and the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) found that “In Washington, DC, most gun violence is tightly concentrated.” The report went on to explain:

This small number of very high risk individuals are identifiable, their violence is predictable, and therefore it is preventable. Based on the assessment of data and the series of interviews conducted, [National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform] estimates that within a year, there are at least 500 identifiable people who rise to this level of very high risk, and likely no more than 200 at any one given time. These individuals comprise approximately 60-70% of all gun violence in the District.

According to the report, “Approximately 86 percent of homicide victims and suspects were known to the criminal justice system prior to the incident. Among all victims and suspects, about 46 percent had been previously incarcerated.” Further, “most victims and suspects with prior criminal offenses had been arrested about 11 times for about 13 different offenses by the time of the homicide.”

In 2024, the Heritage Foundation published an item discussing the District’s lackluster prosecutorial practices under U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves, analyzing information from the D.C. Sentencing Commission’s 2023 Annual Report.

The Heritage piece noted,

Every day, law enforcement officers in the District of Columbia arrest felons who are in possession of a firearm. Every day, those cases are presented to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for prosecution.

Under Graves’ tepid leadership over the past two years, over 2,000 gun cases either were not prosecuted, dropped, or pled down to lesser charges in D.C. Superior Court, according to the D.C. Sentencing Commission’s annual report.

Those seeking more background on the D.C. approach to crime should take the time to read the Washington Post’s excellent 2016 series of articles titled “Second-Chance City.” The well-researched journalism explained how the District’s soft-on-crime policies and inability to monitor those placed under their supervision were a detriment to the city.

Given the D.C. local government’s conspicuous inability or unwillingness to tackle violent crime, it shouldn’t be surprising that others with authority would attempt to make the city livable for its law-abiding residents and visitors.