Steve Burns
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON – (WMAL) Advocating for a more “holistic” approach, multiple members of the D.C. Council roundly criticized Mayor Muriel Bowser’s latest plan to fight the continued uptick in violent crime in the District by allowing police officers to conduct searches of violent and repeat offenders without a warrant.
“The Mayor’s approach is kind of an old-school way of doing it, where you just arrest everybody and hope that you’ve solved the problem,” said Councilmember David Grosso. “Rather than assuming everybody’s a criminal, take the approach that we have a partnership between the police and the community.”
Wednesday’s public hearing on a set of bills, including the Mayor’s lasted into the evening as law professors, youth and community leaders and others gave their input on the bill.
“Responding to current events primarily with an increase in policing is short-sighted and ineffective,” said Georgetown Law professor Kristen Henning. “If our community members do not see (D.C Police) and other criminal justice agencies as legitimate and fair, community-police relations will only get worse.”
Henning maintained a number of provisions in Bowser’s bill “undermine procedural justice,” and said her proposals make the city less safe in the long-term. “Studies repeatedly show that incarcerating youth increases rather than reduces recidivism.”
Another competing bill was introduced by Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie to put more money into community and mental health programs.
“Bolstering our ability to react to crimes should be secondary to preventing crime in the first place,” McDuffie said. “I worked on developing policies and programming that would engage the community, to make them a part of the solution, not the problem.”
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