According to the Washington Post, homicides are up 15 percent in Washington, D.C. compared to this time last year. Homicides reached a 16-year high last year.
This past weekend, three men were shot to death in Brightwood Park, a middle-class neighborhood in Northwest D.C. that not long ago was considered safe. Violent crime is up about 23 percent in Brightwood Park this year.
The Post reports that neighborhood residents are struggling to find solutions to this crime epidemic. One woman, a former member of the local Advisory Neighborhood Commission, came up with a novel idea. She told the Post:
There’s that small element who, in my opinion, just don’t want to change. We’ve continued to throw resources at people, but at some point you have to say, ‘That’s not working,’ Some of these dudes need to go to jail.
They do, indeed. I’ve been saying for years that America has an under-incarceration problem.
Unfortunately, the prevailing thinking holds just the opposite. The prevailing view, reflected in the bipartisan, Trump-supported First Step Act jailbreak legislation, is that too many Americans are already in jail.
And even if politicians came to understand that more “dudes need to go to jail,” that aspiration would be thwarted absent a police force with the resources needed to effectuate it. Here too, liberal dogma — defund the police — stands in the way.
In Washington, D.C., the police force has 200 fewer officers than last year, according to the Post. The mayor proposed to hire 150 new recruits to compensate partially for this reduction. However, the city council allowed her to add only 40.
Many on the council prefer to fund what they consider alternatives to the police force, “violence interrupters,” for example. But according to the Post, violence interrupters are present in Brightwood Park. Yet, violent crime is soaring there.
I have nothing against violence interrupters. However, as the Brightwood Park resident quoted by the Post says, that’s “not working.” “Some of these dudes need to go to jail,” and only a fully-manned police force backed by serious prosecutors and mayors can make that happen.
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