House Republicans called victims of violent crimes in Washington, D.C., to act as witnesses in a Thursday Judiciary Committee hearing as part of their latest effort to highlight the abundance of violence in the District.
GOP members of the subcommittee on crime and the federal government continued their months-long attempt to highlight the pitfalls of D.C.’s public safety and blame the city’s Democratic leadership for the raging assaults.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the chairman of the full House Judiciary Committee, said in his opening statement that prosecutors’ soft conduct and defunding the police lead to more crime.
“When you disparage the good men and women who put on the uniform, risk their life every day in our streets you also get a shortage of police officers and more crime,” Jordan said.
Jordan continued with a reminder that “bad guys” can do the math — fewer police and soft prosecutors means there is less likelihood they’ll be caught, and they are less likely to be prosecuted if they are apprehended.
The subcommittee listened to testimony from three people who experienced violent assaults in D.C.
Gaynor Jablonski, a local pub owner, showed a video to the subcommittee and recounted his June experience in which he was assaulted in his own pub by a DoorDash worker who initially pulled out a gun. Jablonski’s 5-year-old son was nearby when the assault occurred.
Mitchell Sobolevsky told the story of how he was robbed, and D.C. firefighter Myisha Richards recounted an incident in which two women assaulted her as actively attempted to help a person breathe.
All accounts were met with gasps and apparent sympathy from lawmakers in both parties.
Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) highlighted D.C.’s high murder rate and exchanged ideas with detective and Chairman of the D.C. Police Union Greg Pemberton on how to recruit more people for the force.
“That culture of lawlessness has contributed to this jurisdiction having a higher murder rate than anywhere else in the country and these absolutely staggering crime instances that we heard,” Kiley said. “Perhaps, the biggest thing that we can do to change that culture of lawlessness is to create a new level of support for law enforcement, to recruit more folks into the profession, to improve moral.”
Pemberton agreed, citing that at least some provisions in the D.C.’s Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act need to be changed. The package was passed in December 2020 and includes accountability measures for law enforcement officers created in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.
“This is absolutely detrimental to the hiring, the attrition rates of Metropolitan Police Department,” Pemberton said. He emphasized that it would be “impossible” to staff police departments at a reasonable level without getting rid of “at least some of” the provisions in the bill.
Pemberton did not specify which provisions in the legislation he would suggest getting rid of, though.
Democratic subcommittee members, however, seemed split in their perceptions of how high-priority the hearing was.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) acknowledged the public safety crisis facing D.C. while Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) lambasted Republicans for holding the hearing without an elected Speaker.
“As Republicans struggle to elect a new Speaker, sending the House spiraling into new debts of chaos and dysfunction,” Nadler said. “This hearing is yet another attempt to distract and mislead the American people. We won’t fall for it.”