On Thursday’s broadcast of Newsmax TV’s “The Record,” POLITICO White House and Washington Reporter Daniel Lippman stated that “D.C. has a shortage of hundreds of officers,” and one reason is they see “there’s not actually real consequences” for juvenile offenders.
Lippman said that, nationwide, “it’s hard to recruit police. D.C. has a shortage of hundreds of officers, which, if they want to tackle crime, that’s something that they should focus on, in terms of having enough money and resources to do that.”
Host Greta Van Susteren then said, “[T]he reason why we don’t have a lot of police, that we have such a shortage is because morale is low, and the reason morale is low, is when you’ve got politicians going around saying, defund the police and they’re spat on, it’s like, who wants to be a police officer?”
Lippman responded, “And they also see that, when people do get charged, if they ever do get — 15-year-olds get charged with carjacking, where it becomes this type of sport, there’s not actually real consequences. And so, that — if you have incentives, then that will help a lot.”
He added that “if you throw the book at all of these people, sometimes, they actually become more hardened criminals…if you have more diversion, sometimes, then — you get them into schools, make sure that they find after-school programs and extracurricular activities, not just have them hang out with other criminals.” And that social issues have to be tackled to have a long-term impact on crime.
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