DC's unelected prosecutor:
- Declined to prosecute 1/3 of gun cases
- Dropped 37% of charged cases
- Reduced 50% of convictions to just misdemeanors, usually by offering generous "golden ticket" plea bargains

If we want to tackle gun violence, we need a new U.S. Attorney. (1/ I have refrained from calling for USA Graves' removal until now. This new gun prosecution data was the breaking point.

Compared to 2018, the USAO is securing less than half as many felony convictions for Carrying a Pistol Without a License.

This is a policy choice. (2/

If the police in DC catch you with a machine gun you have a good chance of the United States Attorney's Office letting you plead guilty to misdemeanor charges & walking away with no jail time.

Then the USAO will whine about "the system" to pass the blame for gun violence. (1/ This plea deal happened in FEBRUARY, after the Department of Justice announced a "surge" of resources to fight violent crime in DC.

The USAO seems more concerned with clearing out its caseload & blaming others than incapacitating dangerous suspects. (2/

At the start of 2023 DC was at record lows for arrests, prosecutions & detention.

Chief Smith got MPD to make more arrests than they had in years.

Public pressure dragged the USAO to prosecute more cases.

This correlated with big drops in crime in the 2nd half of 2023. (1/ Today's post goes through how on almost every enforcement metric DC was at rock bottom by the beginning of 2023; driven by decreases in arrests and massive decreases in USAO prosecutions.

But there was no political penalty for this deterioration for Mayor Bowser or the USAO. (2/

- The average DC homicide suspect has been arrested ~12 times prior, to include violent & gun possession offenses
- Because of USAO non-prosecution, dismissals & plea bargains they only have ~3.1 convictions
- The USAO only secures prior felony convictions against 54% of them (1/ This latest Gun Violence Analysis is well-done & repeats many of the key lessons of the (sadly unheeded) 2021 analysis.

Specifically, many of DC's murderers are being caught for crimes BEFORE the murder & the system is failing to stop them. (2/

cjcc.dc.gov/sites/default/…

MPD's Detective pipeline is important. A law enforcement source told me to check this out & compared to NYPD our police department in DC:

- Allocates a much smaller % of officers to detective work
- Solves a much smaller % of crimes

This correlation deserves some attention. (1/ There is a TON of research that shows that allocating more detective resources to crimes increases clearance rates (i.e. solves more crimes). This is intuitive but the data supports the common sense intuition. (2/

manhattan.institute/article/improv…

I hope DC media will please look at what Baltimore says is working to reduce homicides (down 23% YTD) & gun violence & then contrast it with DC.

Their prosecutor is aggressively pursuing firearms offenses. @USAO_DC declines to prosecute about half of MPD's firearms arrests. (1/

https://twitter.com/PeterMoskos/status/1729711099321188400

The local Baltimore prosecutor (who unlike DC can charge most adult crimes) also has the USAO as an additional tool/deterrent.

In Baltimore criminals are "terrified of the U.S. Attorney's office." In DC they laugh in cops' faces about getting no-papered by the USAO. (2.

This story is a microcosm of how our broken prosecution, rehabilitation & safety net ensure police keep interacting with "repeat customers" who continually victimize new people:
- When detectives shared pics of this robbery suspect many officers shared past no-papered arrests (1/ This is from a May 2022 incident where the suspect escalated panhandling into threats.

The @USAO_DC did paper this arrest but proceeded to plea down to simple assault with not even probation; just time served (pretrial) as the sentence. (2/

So many arrests don't result in either meaningful rehabilitation or incarceration because of the operational gaps in USAO, OAG, PSA, CSOSA, USMS & DC's safety net programs.

This "follow through" on arrests deserves more attention. MPD can't fix the downstream agencies. (1/ To their credit, it appears that @USAO_DC & maybe OAG are increasing prosecution rates (after facing public pressure). But while USAO clamors for more sentencing enhancements they often drop or plea down cases to minimal sentences like in this case: (2/

https://twitter.com/dccrimefacts/status/1716884798147604535

New post: DC passed a crime bill. What now?
- Research & DC's history show that Hot Spots Policing & Focused Deterrence methods often reduce crime
- MPD knows this but hasn't fully implemented them
- What are the bureaucratic or political barriers to scaling these methods? (1/ Hopefully DC's political class doesn't declare "Mission Accomplished" on crime now that the Council passed @CMBrookePinto 's compromise legislation. She deftly found areas of consensus & removed the Mayor's most harmful/controversial proposals. (2/

Today's post is a primer for Mayor Bowser's Public Safety Summit tomorrow. This rolls up a lot of the issues we've discussed previously and hopefully we'll hear some new ideas on how the administration is dealing with these topics: (1/
- Policing
- Prosecution
- Prevention Arrest rate: Each MPD officer is making ~41% fewer arrests than they were pre-COVID, with the largest decreases in police districts 5, 6 & 7 that have more gun violence. How does the administration think about this trend and is this something they are attempting to reverse? (2/