As a relatively new DC resident trying to come to grips with the situations here, I am picking up what you're putting down here. But the obvious question is..why. What is the motivation for the USAO to decline to prosecute such a high proportion of crimes in DC? Who benefits?
It's tough to determine the "true" reasons. They claim that it's because of MPD and the crime lab but I found that their apparent ability to charge more cases in the Chinatown pilot showed those were mostly excuses. MPD has problems but there's no evidence that they are 4X-5X worse than NYPD for instance.
The USAO has admitted that they pulled prosecutors off of local crimes to support January 6th prosecutions though allegedly that is no longer the case. It's also possible that they are declining cases to increase their "win" rate (though DC has pretty comparable conviction rates) since the DOJ has very high targets for conviction rates. It could simply be a desire for less work and the fact that the USAO isn't accountable to local voters.
Makes sense! I think in general this feels “scandalous” but I usually look for some kind of strong motive other than ‘laziness’ to buy in all the way on something scandalous. But yeah, I guess in the absence of plausible real motives, we need to pressure our elected officials to ask the questions.
Thanks for all your work! Learning a ton from your newsletter.
Not sure if you've written about this but curious your thoughts on DC staffing levels compared to other major cities.
I often will see a comparison and DC is far higher # of police officers per resident than places like NYC, Chicago, LA, etc.
Is this because we have 20m+ visitors plus commuters flowing into a small space each year? Because federal gov't places so many demands on local police (escorting convoys, dealing with protests) that isn't taken care of by federal law enforcement agencies (Cap Police, USSS, embassy security)?
I haven't written about it much because I don't have enough data to say anything insightful. It is objectively true that DC has more officers per capita and MPD's defenders are also correct that MPD has different responsibilities. I hope the staffing study from the DC Auditor can help shed more light on how MPD is using its officers BUT I generally think DC's decades-long argument over the "right" number of officers mostly misses the mark. DC has so far been unable to grow MPD despite record hiring incentives and politicians often deflect to arguing over the "right" fantasy number of theoretical police (4,000! 4,200!) rather than actually doing the hard work of trying to help MPD grow AND use its existing officers more efficiently AND make MPD a better organization for officers and residents.
"The USAO is THE bottleneck and the key difference between DC and other cities"
Wow - this truly does seem like a key piece of the puzzle. Maybe you've buried the lede a little bit with the headline? Because the truly notable thing, at least in my understanding of the post, is that the USAO is such an outlier. But I really only intend that as a small piece of (hopefully) constructive criticism to an overall excellent and informative piece with analysis that is almost impossible to find anywhere else.
Separately, it would be interesting to know how the USAO's prosecution rates compare to cities with higher crime rates than NYC. I'm thinking of cities like Baltimore, Philadelphia or New Orleans. Is a low prosecution rate a common driver or is it a special factor in DC?
Thank you. I do see your point. I've written a lot about the USAO before so I chose to highlight the more recent data so it didn't come off as just rehashing previous points but you are right that the KEY point hasn't changed.
Keith Alexander got the declination rates for a few other cities in his piece for the Post. "But even compared to a local prosecutor’s office, a 67 percent declination rate is high. For example, in Wayne County, Mich., which includes Detroit, the prosecutor’s office reported declining 33 percent of its cases last year. Prosecutors in Philadelphia declined 4 percent and prosecutors in Cook County, Ill., which includes Chicago, declined 14 percent, according to data from those offices." It probably would be a good idea to try and survey even more cities to show how much of an outlier the USAO is.
Thanks for the reply, the link and the further info. It's all very interesting from the point of view of "what are the key drivers of crime?" I'm relatively new to the details of this topic and to your Substack so I probably haven't fully understood or appreciated the USAO's struggles until this post. Thanks for bringing them to my attention.
As a relatively new DC resident trying to come to grips with the situations here, I am picking up what you're putting down here. But the obvious question is..why. What is the motivation for the USAO to decline to prosecute such a high proportion of crimes in DC? Who benefits?
It's tough to determine the "true" reasons. They claim that it's because of MPD and the crime lab but I found that their apparent ability to charge more cases in the Chinatown pilot showed those were mostly excuses. MPD has problems but there's no evidence that they are 4X-5X worse than NYPD for instance.
The USAO has admitted that they pulled prosecutors off of local crimes to support January 6th prosecutions though allegedly that is no longer the case. It's also possible that they are declining cases to increase their "win" rate (though DC has pretty comparable conviction rates) since the DOJ has very high targets for conviction rates. It could simply be a desire for less work and the fact that the USAO isn't accountable to local voters.
Makes sense! I think in general this feels “scandalous” but I usually look for some kind of strong motive other than ‘laziness’ to buy in all the way on something scandalous. But yeah, I guess in the absence of plausible real motives, we need to pressure our elected officials to ask the questions.
Thanks for all your work! Learning a ton from your newsletter.
In the absence of public & political pressure on the USAO, can we learn from MPD mgmt and officers what THEY want us/the District to do?
Not sure if you've written about this but curious your thoughts on DC staffing levels compared to other major cities.
I often will see a comparison and DC is far higher # of police officers per resident than places like NYC, Chicago, LA, etc.
Is this because we have 20m+ visitors plus commuters flowing into a small space each year? Because federal gov't places so many demands on local police (escorting convoys, dealing with protests) that isn't taken care of by federal law enforcement agencies (Cap Police, USSS, embassy security)?
I haven't written about it much because I don't have enough data to say anything insightful. It is objectively true that DC has more officers per capita and MPD's defenders are also correct that MPD has different responsibilities. I hope the staffing study from the DC Auditor can help shed more light on how MPD is using its officers BUT I generally think DC's decades-long argument over the "right" number of officers mostly misses the mark. DC has so far been unable to grow MPD despite record hiring incentives and politicians often deflect to arguing over the "right" fantasy number of theoretical police (4,000! 4,200!) rather than actually doing the hard work of trying to help MPD grow AND use its existing officers more efficiently AND make MPD a better organization for officers and residents.
I wrote/vented about this topic a bit in this post: https://dccrimefacts.substack.com/p/what-have-we-done-to-our-police
Pre Covid or Pre Floyd?
"The USAO is THE bottleneck and the key difference between DC and other cities"
Wow - this truly does seem like a key piece of the puzzle. Maybe you've buried the lede a little bit with the headline? Because the truly notable thing, at least in my understanding of the post, is that the USAO is such an outlier. But I really only intend that as a small piece of (hopefully) constructive criticism to an overall excellent and informative piece with analysis that is almost impossible to find anywhere else.
Separately, it would be interesting to know how the USAO's prosecution rates compare to cities with higher crime rates than NYC. I'm thinking of cities like Baltimore, Philadelphia or New Orleans. Is a low prosecution rate a common driver or is it a special factor in DC?
Thank you. I do see your point. I've written a lot about the USAO before so I chose to highlight the more recent data so it didn't come off as just rehashing previous points but you are right that the KEY point hasn't changed.
Keith Alexander got the declination rates for a few other cities in his piece for the Post. "But even compared to a local prosecutor’s office, a 67 percent declination rate is high. For example, in Wayne County, Mich., which includes Detroit, the prosecutor’s office reported declining 33 percent of its cases last year. Prosecutors in Philadelphia declined 4 percent and prosecutors in Cook County, Ill., which includes Chicago, declined 14 percent, according to data from those offices." It probably would be a good idea to try and survey even more cities to show how much of an outlier the USAO is.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/03/29/us-attorneys-office-charges-declined-dc-police/
Thanks for the reply, the link and the further info. It's all very interesting from the point of view of "what are the key drivers of crime?" I'm relatively new to the details of this topic and to your Substack so I probably haven't fully understood or appreciated the USAO's struggles until this post. Thanks for bringing them to my attention.