On Tuesday’s edition of NBC’s “Meet the Press Now,” D.C. City Council Chair Phil Mendelson (D) stated that “when it comes to crime, there is how people perceive and what the reality is, and perception is clearly a challenge, and we need to make folks feel safer. The President’s rhetoric, though, makes the challenge harder for us.”
After listening to criticism of the City Council from a D.C. resident, Mendelson said, “Well, there certainly are some residents who are disgruntled with local government. But the reality is that crime is the lowest it has been this century. Crime this year is down — violent crime is down 26% compared to last year. If you look at violent crime over the last ten years, it’s down 43%. There were 3,469 violent crimes committed last year. That’s 3,469 individuals, victims who have really bad stories to tell, no question about it. But, overall, we are reducing crime, and this city is not the pandemic of rampant lawlessness, which is what the President said in his announcement yesterday. It’s a false narrative. It’s a manufactured crisis. I think it’s because he can do here what he can’t do in California or any other state, because of our unique relationship. And so, he is doing here or trying to do here what he tried to do in California, bring out the National Guard and also to so-called federalize our police force.”
Host Ryan Nobles then asked, “I understand, the President’s rhetoric aside, and how he can often be overblown when he tries to latch on to an issue, and I understand where you’re coming from when it comes to these statistics. But these are average, everyday Washington, D.C. residents. This woman that I talked to this morning is a Democrat, and she doesn’t feel safe right now. What do you say to those folks who you can read the statistics to them over and over again, but they still don’t have a sense of safety in their city, and what can you do to make sure that the trend line that you’re working on in terms of those crime statistics continues to go down, but, at the same time, gives a sense of security to the people you represent?”
Mendelson answered, “Well, that trend line is going down. Now, I live in the city and I feel safe in the city. But I get it, that there are some who don’t feel safe. And that is a duty of government to address that and try to make folks feel safe or safer. I don’t know anything about this individual, whether she was victimized or whether she knows someone who was, and maybe not. But, when it comes to crime, there is how people perceive and what the reality is, and perception is clearly a challenge, and we need to make folks feel safer. The President’s rhetoric, though, makes the challenge harder for us. When the President of the United States stands at a podium and says that Washington, D.C. is lawless, then we have to spend our time talking about statistics, which is kind of boring, but the fact is, we are not lawless. Now, she was criticizing the Council. The fact is is that the Council just strengthened our juvenile curfew law a month ago. We have passed two major crime bills that everybody has complimented that have strengthened some crimes and also made it easier to hold individuals and juveniles pending trial. These are actions that the Council has taken in the last two years to actually make our laws tougher and enable our police to be able to do more.”
Mendelson further stated, “There are other issues that are making crime-fighting difficult, such as, we have judicial vacancies that we are relying on the federal government to appoint and the fact that there are a large number of cases, arrests that the police make that the U.S. attorney declines to prosecute.”
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