Fighting crime and creating a safe environment for residents is a top priority for any DC official. So where was the outrage when DC’s murder rate went way up in 2007?
Over the past year, I spent countless hours speaking with the police, community leaders and members of DC government lobbying solutions to help make DC’s streets safer. This includes reforming our arrest booking system, otherwise known as “papering.”
What most people don’t know is that anytime an MPD officer makes an arrest, s/he must spend hours filling out paperwork and then appear in federal court first thing the next morning to present it to a magistrate. This is because DC has no court system of its own or an independently elected Attorney General and cannot have these arrests processed as quickly as other states. The result is that too many criminals are released since the police do not have the time to uphold this costly bureaucracy. This system costs DC government $5 million annually in overtime and puts the public at risk. With such a system is it any wonder that crime is going up?
The best way to fight and deter crime is to get more officers out from behind their desks and onto the streets. That is why I lobbied for the solutions that I did and as a result of those efforts and the efforts of Councilmember Tommy Wells, we now have a task force that is working to reverse this faulty system. I can only hope that soon we will have a government that lets cops do what they are supposed to do – patrol the streets to keep us safe.
Republican Carol Schwartz has been in office since 1974, and she should know better than anyone that when crime goes up, the entire District suffers. But instead of working overtime to lobby and find new ways to support our police officers, she has been content to let a broken system continue.
1 comment:
Mr. Clampitt,
Good afternoon. As a DC resident I am naturally concerned with crime and the effects of crime. In your blog you mentioned that you wanted to get police from behind their desks and on the street. This is a great idea and I am all for it. Another idea, that I hear very little from politicians in the city is the repeal of the gun ban in DC. In every single other area of the country that citizens have been allowed to carry concealed weapons the crime rate has gone down. I feel the same for DC. In addition, most firearms laws in our country are racist and discriminatory in nature - DC's laws are not an exception to this. Inner city blacks are not treated the same as whites who live outside the city in reference to 2nd Amendment rights. I would be interested to hear you opinions on the 2nd Amemdment to our constitution as well as you opinions on law abiding citizens ability to exercise personal responsibility and personal protection. Thank you.
Greg
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