MSNBC legal analyst Anthony Coley said Wednesday on “Morning Joe” that Democrats on Washington, D.C.’s council created a “political opening” for President Donald Trump’s policing takeover.
Coley said, “There is a gap between what the data shows and how many Washingtonians feel. And I live in Washington. This is personal for me. Many people are frustrated with crime that we see, particularly committed by juveniles in the city of Washington. People are frustrated, Willie, that when they go to CVS to buy deodorant, that they have to get it from behind locked plexiglas. Right? These are not just random anecdotes. What we see in the Washington Post polling, among others, is that roughly half of D.C. residents, mostly half of D.C, view this as a serious problem or an extremely serious problem. And the question then becomes why?”
He continued, “Juvenile arrests are down in the District of Columbia, but we don’t see that in Baltimore, where year over year juvenile arrests are up. And so what are the reasons for that? Jonathan Lemire rightly pointed out the $1 billion that Congress is withholding, which would allow Washington, D.C, to hire more officers. But the D.C. council has a role to play here as well, because some of the laws that they have passed are not as strong as they could be for juvenile offenders and for re-offenders. Now, having said all of that, I want to be clear that this does not justify the disproportionate response that we are seeing from Donald Trump. It is a political stunt. He is exploiting people’s fears. But to be frank, Democrats on the D.C. Council have created this political opening that allows him to do that.
Coley added, “Now, I’m not naive, Willie. I suspect that even if juvenile crime wasn’t a problem, Donald Trump would have taken the actions that we have seen in recent days. But from a raw political perspective, you never want to give your political opponent an opening to address the needs that many of your constituents have. And that’s what we’re seeing playing out right now.”
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