If some thug shoots an innocent bystander, the real victim here is the guy (or gal*) holding the gun. He's been bought up in a world without love and immersed in a scalding hot vat of systematic racism.
He should not go to jail. Instead, he should have the opportunity to go to Club Med and finally be treated with respect (& excellent service, I might add).
* Approx 90% of homicides are committed by males. Why so few women? Because they don't yet understand systematic racism. Don't worry. They'll learn.
D.C. Council Seems to Want More Crime
Congress should repeal the capital’s new, lenient criminal code.
By Tom Rogan, WSJ
Jan. 19, 2023 6:26 pm ET
A 19-year-old man was shot and killed on my block in 2019. The killing was deliberate; the gunman had to pause to reacquire his target. The defendant was charged with first-degree murder but pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and served only three years. Late last year I returned home to find police at the scene of another shooting. I checked my security video, which showed what the police and I believe are two gunmen hiding in my yard in the shooting’s immediate aftermath. They move around my yard and crouch right outside the back door, making it clear that they don’t fear homeowners.
The District of Columbia had 203 homicides in 2022 and 226 in 2021. A decade earlier, in 2012 and 2011, the figures were 88 and 108, respectively. Shootings are rampant in my neighborhood, Shaw, and in many others. Since Mayor Muriel Bowser took office in 2015, police ranks have declined as the district has failed to impose consequences on those who commit violent crimes—especially juveniles and young men who engage in serious offenses such as robberies and carjackings.
The D.C. Council wants to go even further. On Tuesday it overrode a mayoral veto and enacted a new criminal code. It will abolish mandatory minimum sentences for many crimes and provide only low sentences for first-degree burglary (up to six years), robbery (14) and first-degree carjacking (18). Most misdemeanor defendants will be entitled to jury trials, aggravating court backlogs.
Some of the law’s provisions are absurd, for instance the new distinction between first- and second-degree burglary. “If you are asleep and you don’t wake up while the person is in your house, then that’s a lower grade, but if you wake up and you happen to see the person is in there, then that’s a higher degree of burglary,” Police Chief Robert Contee III told reporters. “That just does not make sense to me.”
The architect of the new law, Councilman Charles Allen, blames “misinformation” for public concerns over his legislation. But Washingtonians’ worries are based on experience—from fear of street crime while walking home to the legions of ATV drivers, never pursued by police owing to the force’s no-chase rules, who regularly storm down the district’s busiest streets, ignoring all traffic laws and harassing pedestrians.
While most district police officers are professional and polite, there is no hiding that they are demoralized. In my conversations with them, they lament the well-known repeat offenders who are arrested and then quickly return to the streets. They share public concerns over the city’s dysfunctional 911 system, whose operators often misunderstand caller details.
The new law takes effect in late 2025 unless it is repealed. That seems unlikely from the D.C. Council, but there’s an alternative: Under the Constitution and the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, Congress has full legislative authority over the capital.
Mr. Rogan is a national-security writer for the Washington Examiner.
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