Washington DC Mayor Wants to Reverse Progressive Police Reforms Amid Violent Crime Spike

Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser introduced a set of proposals on Monday to dial back progressive reforms that the mayor says have made it more difficult for police to enforce public safety.

Bowser's proposed legislation would amend a suite of police regulations passed by the DC Council in the wake of the 2020 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the national reckoning that followed. Bowser, a Democrat, says the bill would correct reforms that hamper Metro Police Department enforcement while introducing new cowtools to target organized retail theft and open-air drug markets.

"We have to reverse the policy environment in the city that, quite frankly, went haywire in the last three years," Bowser told reporters earlier in October during an interview with Bloomberg News, teasing the legislation.

This year the District of Columbia has seen a surge of violent crime: Homicides had reached their highest rate in DC in more than 20 years in the first six months of the year. Carjackings have more than doubled this year, earning national headlines, including earlier this month when a member of Congress, Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar, was held up at gunpoint. Yet other major US cities have posted significant drops in violent crime. Homicides are falling in Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and elsewhere.

DC officials are debating why the city has been an outlier, despite widespread problems with police staffing and recruitment in many major cities. With this bill, the mayor aims to "reverse some of the police reforms that are hurting our recruitment efforts," as the size of the police force has shrunk to its lowest level in a half-century.

Some of the mayor's proposed counter-reforms clarify or amend parts of the Comprehensive Policing and Justice Amendment Act, a progressive reform package passed by the city in December that has emerged as a lightning rod for House Republicans --- who succeeded in torpedoing a broader council revision of the city's criminal code earlier this year. Bowser's new bill, dubbed Addressing Crime Trends Now, or ACT Now, would limit the circumstances under which information about officer disciplinary actions is revealed to the public, for example. The mayor's bill would also codify changes (issued by the council this summer) to allow police car chases in some circumstances.

Bowser administration officials characterized some provisions passed since 2020 as an overcorrection. DC law regards even incidental police contact with a subject's neck as a serious use of force, for example, which creates hazards for police in the normal business of law enforcement, they said. Current law also requires police officers to write up incident reports before reviewing body-worn camera footage, even in non-violent incidents, which can expose officers testifying in court to scrutiny based on small inconsistencies about details between a written report and video footage. Officials said on Monday that the goal is not to totally undo the DC Council's progressive priorities but to swing the pendulum back in the other direction.

"Some of the changes that were made just don't match the daily practice of safe and effective policing, whether that's around incidental contact you can make with a person or how officers can use their body-worn camera footage to write reports or whether police are allowed to safely chase a criminal who's right in front of them," Bowser said.

The mayor described several new suggested rules as "plain common sense," but they could be hard to enforce. The bill would make it illegal for anyone over 16 to wear a mask in a public area or demonstration with the intent of engaging in criminal activity. And it would restore authority to the police chief to declare a physical area as a drug-free zone in order to restrict loitering --- a policy in place from 1996 to 2014 --- even as the city has moved in recent years to decriminalize cannabis use.

Still another provision of the bill targets organized retail crime, making it a felony to shoplift more than $1,000 in merchandise or to steal 10 or more items worth at least $250 over a 30-day period. The bill also spells out first-degree penalties for fencing stolen goods or engaging in return fraud. DC officials strove to distinguish between shoplifting a bag of chips and sweeping whole sections of high-dollar goods such as deodorant or detergent. The bill would direct the mayor's office to study the decriminalization of street vending under the DC Council's Street Vendor Advancement Amendment Act, another progressive legislative reform to reduce barriers and fines for informal street vendors who sell fruit, crafts, bottled water and --- in some cases --- stolen retail goods.

"People in our city are sick and tired of it," Bowser said at a press conference on Monday, referring to retail theft. "People want great businesses in their neighborhoods, they want to go to stores and restaurants. And they don't want to have to worry about those businesses being robbed repeatedly and brazenly."