Biden lets criminals run free in DC
Byron York
BIDEN LETS CRIMINALS RUN FREE IN D.C. An amazing statistic has been circulating among people who follow crime in Washington, D.C. In 2022, the U.S. attorney in Washington, appointed by President Joe Biden, declined to prosecute 67% of all arrests in the city. That’s not 67% of all crimes committed. It’s 67% of instances in which police have identified, captured, and charged a suspect. Prosecutors just let them go.
The situation was reported by a Substack called DC Crime Facts, with more reporting added by the Washington Post.
The number, 67%, is off the charts, especially when compared with other cities with significant crime problems. In Detroit, prosecutors declined 33% of cases — and that itself was high. In Philadelphia, prosecutors declined just 4% of cases, and in Chicago, 14%, all according to numbers compiled by the Washington Post.
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The U.S. attorney in Washington is Matthew Graves, appointed in 2021 by Biden. He sat for an interview with the Washington Post and remarkably tried to argue that his office is not prosecuting less serious crimes because it is focusing on more serious crimes. When it comes to the big stuff — murders, armed carjackings, assaults with intent to kill, and first-degree sexual assault — Graves told the Washington Post that his office is doing its job. In those cases, Graves said, his office prosecutes 87.9% of all arrests. (That is a lot, the Washington Post noted, but less than the 95.6% prosecuted by Graves’s Trump-appointed predecessor.)
The problem is the less serious crimes that Graves is declining to prosecute include drug possession, gun possession, and a variety of misdemeanors. In all, according to statistics compiled by the Justice Department, Graves declined to prosecute nearly 53% of all felony arrests, as well as 72% of all misdemeanor arrests. Felonies are by definition serious crimes, and the U.S. attorney in Washington is letting a majority of those arrested just walk away.
The refusal to prosecute gun possession is particularly striking because Democrats, who run the Justice Department and the Washington government, make such a big deal of gun control. They press and press for more of what they call “gun safety” measures. But when suspects are arrested on charges of possessing firearms, they let them go. Also, remember that the Council of the District of Columbia recently passed a bill overhauling the city’s criminal code in which they decreased the penalties for the most serious crimes involving guns, including murder, armed home invasion, armed carjacking, and gun possession. Why push for more “gun safety” laws when you’re not going to prosecute the people who break them?
Recently Biden, planning a reelection bid, tried to raise his credibility on crime by supporting a Republican effort to overturn the new Washington crime law. But at the same time, Biden’s U.S. attorney is declining to prosecute a majority of the city’s felony arrests. What is the sense in that?
The trend is heading upward. Biden’s supporters will point out that the declination rate, that is, the percentage of arrests that the U.S. attorney in Washington declines to prosecute, went up through the years when a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney ran the office in Washington. Now, the upward trend has steepened.
The government keeps statistics by fiscal year, that is Oct. 1 through Sept. 30, so the figures to do correspond directly to a president’s time in office. Fiscal 2017, for example, began on Oct. 1, 2016, and ended on Sept. 30, 2017, while former President Donald Trump did not begin appointing U.S. attorneys until he took office on Jan. 20, 2017. So it does not correspond exactly. But here are the numbers for U.S. attorneys declining to prosecute felony arrests in the district.
In fiscal 2017, overlapping Obama and Trump, the declination rate was 17.3%. In fiscal 2018, the first full year of Trump, it was 23.4%. In fiscal 2019, it was 27.2%. In fiscal 2020, the last full year of Trump, it was 34.9%. And in fiscal 2021, in which Trump and Biden overlapped, it jumped to 44.3% — the biggest increase in this time period. And then in fiscal 2022, all Biden, it jumped again to 52.9%.
In his interview with the Washington Post, Graves pointed to Washington’s crime lab, the Department of Forensic Sciences, which in 2021 lost its accreditation with the National Accreditation Board, known as ANAB, because it “deliberately concealed information from the ANAB assessment team, violated accreditation requirements, engaged in misrepresentations and fraudulent behavior, and engaged in conduct that brings ANAB into disrepute,” according to the accrediting board’s letter of suspension. The lab represents the worst of the dysfunctional District of Columbia local government.
Graves said prosecutors now have to use outside laboratories for their work. “We have to prioritize violent felonies and make sure we are doing the forensic testing for those cases,” he told the Washington Post. “Our office is often bearing the cost for this analysis.” However, the Washington Post pointed out that local prosecutors in Washington who handle juvenile crime, of which there is a lot, and most misdemeanors also have to use outside labs and have declined far fewer cases than the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The bottom line is that what is happening under the Biden administration, an accelerated decline in the prosecution of serious criminals, is entirely consistent with the Democratic rhetoric that Biden and others in his party employed in the 2020 election and beyond. Now, it has gotten to the point where prosecutors in the nation’s capital are refusing to prosecute 53% of those arrested on felony charges — a far higher number than in comparable cities. How high can it go?
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