Stopping the viral spread of shootings
Disrupting DC's gun violence feedback loop
Gun violence has been a longstanding and evolving problem because it spreads like a virus through afflicted communities. Understanding why people carry and use illegal guns is critical to crafting effective policies that will prevent shootings. Significant bodies of research show that fear of other criminals is a key reason that criminals carry guns. Efforts that reduce this fear through enforcement and increasing the countervailing fear of punishment for carrying/using guns illegally really can mitigate gun violence. DC has largely failed to implement a comprehensive violence reduction strategy but recent improvements at the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) have begun to push back against the fear-based “feedback loop” that was driving more shootings. This post will review some of the relevant research on gun violence and highlight the gaps in DC’s current approach.
Gun Violence and Enforcement Research:
Trying to understand why people carry and use guns illegally doesn’t mean excusing their actions. Gun violence is a mix of very logical decisions by criminals and impulsive stupidity. The paper “Analysis of the factors influencing multiple uses of crime guns: An exploratory study” has an excellent research overview on why criminals use guns:
“Importantly, guns are highly prized among both street code adherents and gang-involved individuals, as they confer symbolic status to their owners (Goldsmith, Halsey, & Bright, 2022; Katz, 1988). An individual may treat a gun as an extension of their identity, as it represents wealth, power, and the readiness to protect themselves and their belongings (Goldsmith et al., 2022; Katz, 1988). With that, a gun not only increases the odds of success when carrying out a crime, but also satisfies a perceived need for self-protection from other criminally-involved individuals (Kleck & Hogan, 1999; Sheley & Wright, 1993; Wright & Rossi, 1986). It is therefore unsurprising that communities maintaining higher levels of disadvantage, violence, and gang activity also experience higher levels of gun crime (Burgason et al., 2014; Dierenfeldt et al., 2021; Huebner et al., 2016), as well as illicit gun trafficking among street code adherents and gang-involved persons (Braga & Cook, 2016; Cook et al., 2007; Cook, Harris, et al., 2015; Cook, Parker, & Pollack, 2015; Hureau & Braga, 2018).”
It is undeniable that guns are very useful for crime. In America they are easy to acquire, they are easily concealable and they can terrify victims into submission (making robberies/carjackings “easier”). Relative to other weapons they are more likely to both kill the target AND police are less likely to solve a shooting than a stabbing or other violent crime. When criminals target each other (which is most gun violence in DC) the side with no guns, fewer gun or weaker guns is at a serious disadvantage. This dynamic creates an “arms race” among gangs/crews to acquire more and deadlier guns like machine guns/conversion devices. All of our efforts to reduce gun violence are competing against these factors.
The fear of other “criminally-involved individuals” comes through as a key driver of illegal gun use across many studies. A qualitative study in New York City found similar motivations:
“Through in-depth interviews of participants, the study established that most possessed or used guns out of a generalized fear of being victimized or a specific fear of retaliation. A history of violence victimization also informed the decision to carry a firearm. Many also reportedly felt a pervasive fear of the state, particularly law enforcement.
Here is a similar finding from a study in Chicago:
The fact that victimization can motivate some people to begin illegally carrying (and eventually using) guns is one dynamic that allows gun violence to spread like a virus. Researchers applied epidemiological models of “contagion” to shooting and arrest data from Chicago to map how 1 shooting can “cascade” into many downstream shootings. Note that in these diagrams the vast majority of “shooters” were at one point a victim or target of a previous shooting:
This diagram from DC’s Gun Violence Problem Analysis shows how real gangs/crews in MPD’s police district 7D (approximately Ward 8 east of the Anacostia River) feud with each other and generate a significant amount of DC’s gun violence:
One key takeaway from this research is that unchecked gun violence can escalate by creating new victims and motivating more retaliation. The feedback loop looks something like this:
Notably this dynamic isn’t evenly spread across cities like DC, but is instead concentrated in a few specific neighborhoods.
When MPD mapped juvenile gunshot victims the vast majority were in wards 7 and 8. The trauma of being shot at or having friends or family members killed then makes some kids more at risk of engaging in gun violence themselves. This perpetuates gun violence intergenerationally in DC’s poorest neighborhoods:
Because shootings can spread virally it’s incredibly important for DC to do everything possible to contain and reverse gun violence. Christopher S. Koper summarized some of the most effective enforcement strategies in a research and policy brief for the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF):
“Overall, available evidence suggests that police efforts targeted on high risk places, behaviors, and actors are effective, particularly when conducted in the context of multi-agency problem-solving efforts. For example, crackdowns on illegal gun carrying in gun crime hot spots, often done through directed patrols focused on gun detection, appear effective in reducing gun crime and improving citizens’ perceptions in targeted areas (Cohen and Ludwig 2003; McGarrell et al. 2001; Sherman and Rogan 1995; also see Koper and Mayo-Wilson 2006; Villaveces et al. 2000). Efforts targeted on high-risk groups such as gangs, probationers, parolees, and known chronic offenders are another important evidence-based approach to reducing gun crime. The “pulling levers” or “focused deterrence” approach that concentrates law enforcement, prosecution, and social service resources on high-risk groups, typically through face to face contacts known as “notification meetings”, has become a popular approach of this sort that has been tested in several sites (e.g., Braga 2008; Braga et al. 2001, 2008; McGarrell et al., 2006, 2009; Papachristos et al., 2005; 2007; Tita et al., 2003). Pioneered in Boston, this strategy has become a blueprint for other successful local and national initiatives, including the federal government’s Project Safe Neighborhoods program. The threat of federal prosecution for gun crimes, which often provides for much more harsh penalties than are available at the state level, is a central component of this approach.”
There are two key common elements of these strategies:
All of them are targeted on either specific people, places or behaviors
When these efforts aren’t focused on gun violence they are less effective. Even the incredibly successful Ceasefire program in Boston foundered when it was temporarily beset by “scope creep” into other types of crimes.
All of them work best “in the context of multi-agency problem-solving efforts” or more plainly, the police can’t do this entirely on their own.
Focused deterrence especially requires the “threat” of prosecution to make the deterrent messaging work
Recall that MPD said this in response to Council oversight questions about focused deterrence: “With focused deterrence, it is important to keep recognize that MPD is only one agency of the many. It is clear that simply arresting these individuals is an insufficient lever to change behavior. We will continue to work to enhance effective collaboration with other agencies to support strategies to reduce violent crime, and we urge the Council to continue to examine downstream elements in the criminal justice ecosystem.”
Focused deterrence has worked well in many (though not all) cities that have implemented it. “Across the 24 studies, Braga, Weisburd, and Turchan (2018) found that focused deterrence strategies were associated with an overall statistically significant crime reduction effect (d = 0.383)” Unfortunately it does require those “downstream elements in the criminal justice ecosystem” to be supporting rather than undermining policing efforts.
“Crackdowns on illegal gun carrying in gun crime hot spots” are a bit more controversial than focused deterrence but there is evidence that these kind of efforts do reduce gun violence. One paper reviewed studies from multiple cities and found that:
That is a more qualified finding than the research consensus on focused deterrence but we have other evidence that broader gun possession (especially by people with criminal records) leads to more crime. A review of changes in concealed carry laws found that “allowing individuals convicted of violent misdemeanors to became eligible to obtain a concealed carry license was associated with a 24 percent increase in firearm assaults.” The researchers found that this applied to both gun assaults and gun homicides when states didn’t apply “provisions” like “live-firearm training; discretion to deny a permit if an applicant is unstable or immoral; and discretion to deny a permit if an applicant has a history of violence and/or a history of other violent misdemeanor convictions. The analysis found that states that changed their laws without including one or more of these three provisions had an average increase of 10.26 gun assaults per 100,000 population annually (a 21.6 percent increase) and an additional 1.44 per 100,000 gun homicides (34.9 percent increase) per year compared to their forecasted trends.”
When the RAND Corporation surveyed “gun policy experts” they found that “state prosecution of prohibited possessors seeking firearms” was the policy that had the broadest support. “For state prosecution of prohibited possessors seeking firearms, both the permissive group and the restrictive group reported a positive median rating (“good policy”).” Given that this sample of experts disagreed on most potential policies (with the “permissive” side generally reflecting Republican positions and the “restrictive” side reflecting Democratic positions) the strong consensus for prosecuting people who try to illegally get guns is a rare instance of unity across the political spectrum. This helps show just how extreme US Attorney Matthew Graves has been in undermining DC’s gun laws:
We see the same pattern from the research reflected in DC’s data. Over the years, as the United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) declined to prosecute an ever-larger share of Carrying a Pistol Without a License (CPWL) arrests we see that the following year there were more violent crimes that involved guns. The R-squared value of 0.73 is very high which says these metrics are highly correlated and this relationship appears to be predictive as well. If we apply 2023’s declination rate of 32% (which was an improvement from 2022’s record-high 45% declination rate) this simple model would predict 2024 to have 33% fewer violent crimes with a gun than 2023. So far (as of June 3rd) violent crimes with a gun are actually down 32%. The fact that this relationship has a clear causal mechanism (“criminals will use guns more when gun enforcement is weaker”) and seems to be predictive should cause some introspection at the USAO.
This is a very simple 2 variable model so one shouldn’t take the R-squared value literally and say “73% of the variation in gun crimes is due to the USAO’s declination rate.” But if even just 10% or 20% of our gun violence problem is tied to the USAO then they are responsible for dozens of avoidable deaths and they should be doing everything they can to get back to 2018 level prosecution rates. Instead United States Attorney (USA) Matthew Graves is focused on deflecting blame and continues to argue that prosecution rates are “not in the top 50” factors that impact crime. This is downright insulting to Washingtonians’ intelligence. It’s also worth noting that prosecution rates are much more correlated with violent crime than issues like police staffing that have received much more media attention:
None of these research findings should be particularly surprising. When more people are carrying guns it’s more likely that altercations or misunderstandings can devolve into gunfire. This is especially true when the people carrying the guns have a criminal record and/or are doing so illegally. There are some who have a nihilistic view and claim that it is impossible to deter criminals from using guns. But that claim requires ignoring the research base for hot spot policing, focused crackdowns on gun possession and criminals’ own reactions to enforcement. Guns are incredibly useful to criminals but we do know that criminals have some fear for the consequences of getting caught with them. Many will try to hide firearms to avoid detection, run from police if pursued, attempt to ditch illegal firearms so police can’t find them and through their lawyers do everything possible to avoid jail or prison time. The notion that criminals have zero concern of getting caught and therefore cannot be deterred at all doesn’t align with their behavior or the research. And the deterrent value of the “certainty” of punishment applies to both arrests AND prosecution: “prosecutors’ effect on the certainty and celerity of punishment was associated with lower levels of crime”
The “deterrent value” of the criminal justice system isn’t static; especially for the high-risk population engaged in frequent gun violence. If criminals think that police and prosecutors are more likely to catch them and be willing to prosecute then some criminals will change their operations in order to attract less unwanted attention from law enforcement; which is why we see meaningful reductions in gun violence in studies that assess these kinds of targeted strategies. The bar for enforcement to “work” isn’t to prevent every shooting (which is probably impossible) but to decrease violence over time.
The Current State of Gun Violence Enforcement Efforts in DC:
Unfortunately DC’s enforcement efforts have a long way to go. To start with the good news, MPD is increasing the certainty of punishment by solving more homicides and violent crimes, including shootings. There’s always room to improve (especially on non-fatal shootings) but MPD seems to be headed in the right direction:
For more on how Chief Smith seems to have shaken up MPD to be more proactive and solve more crimes check out this post:
There also seems to have been a small increase in targeted gang or crew “takedowns” this year. In the middle of May MPD and the USAO announced two large arrests of crews in the Trinidad and Carver-Langston neighborhoods. These investigations began in 2023 and were launched “in response to 59 violent crime incidents and 119 bursts of gunfire occurring in the area from January to July 2023.” While the reason for this focused investigation was gun violence, most of the suspects were charged with drug trafficking offenses.
In many of these cases the best prosecutorial strategy is to focus on drug charges since those can be much easier to prove than shooting cases. Law enforcement can use undercover officers to do “controlled buys” which help prove the cases: “Agents conducted numerous controlled buys of fentanyl, fentanyl analogue, cocaine base, and firearms in connection with this investigation.” Proving a shooting case can be much more difficult, especially when many victims are gang/crew members who are unlikely to cooperate. Some readers may have concerns about ramping up the “War on Drugs” but in this context drug charges are a simply an available legal tool to prosecute people responsible for gun violence. The similar drive in some jurisdictions like Baltimore to prosecute gang/crew members for financial crimes has a similar motivation. The (mostly) small-time fraud these gang/crew members conduct is much smaller in dollar terms than the fraud, wage theft and tax evasion that wealthier white collar criminals engage in (like this $40M tax cheat). But financial crime prosecutions can often be much easier to prove than shooting cases and they help the policy goal of incapacitating these violent individuals.
Past gang/crew takedowns have helped reduce crime within their territories:
“The violent crime landscape around the 2900 Block of MLK Avenue improved immediately after these 17 defendants were taken off our streets. MPD has documented a 63% reduction in violent crime when comparing the six months after these defendants’ arrest to the six months prior. Similarly, nearly a year later, there was a 60% reduction in violent crime. And, even at the two-year mark, there was a 23% decrease in overall violent crime, which included a 56% decrease in homicides specifically, when comparing this period to the two years prior.”
The problem is that a few of these targeted (and very resource intensive) investigations can’t make up for the massive decrease in enforcement over the last few years. From 2018 to 2023:
Felony arrests are down 16%
This is primarily driven by a decrease in arrests-per-officer and secondarily by the decrease in MPD staffing
Felony prosecutions are down 23%
One driver is that the USAO declined to prosecute 34% of felony cases in 2023, up from 28% in 2018
Felony counts sentenced are down 33%
A key driver here is that the USAO has gotten more likely to reduce convictions to misdemeanors (via more generous plea bargains) and court vacancies have slowed down cases
When we plot the relative scale of “regular” arrests and felony cases vs. these targeted operations it shows just how limited they are:
All of these decreases in arrests, prosecutions and convictions add up to a huge cumulative shortfall in enforcement that has undermined deterrence and incapacitation in DC. Relative to 2018’s arrest, prosecution and sentencing rates, from 2019-2023 we had:
4,724 fewer felony arrests
Equivalent to ~9 months of 2018’s arrest volumes
5,888 fewer felony cases
Equivalent to 1.3 years worth of 2018’s prosecution volumes
4,557 fewer felony counts sentenced
Equivalent to 2 years worth of 2018’s sentencing volumes
Note that the shortfall is larger the further “downstream” we go in the justice system. Meanwhile the few takedowns the USAO highlighted in their press release represent a few dozen arrests at most; they simply aren’t a substitute for a functioning prosecutor’s office for most cases. While there may have been more operations that didn’t get announced it’s safe to assume that these targeted “takedowns” add up to less than 100 arrests each year. These high quality investigations probably are better cases than everyday gun and drug arrests. But a few dozen arrests, no matter how “high quality,” can’t make up for the fact that the USAO prosecuted ~1,000 fewer felonies in 2023 as in 2018 and ~1,800 fewer in 2022. Compared to 1-2 high profile anti-gang operations each year, the Gun Violence Problem Analysis found over 20 gangs/crews just in police district 7D (~Ward 8). These operations are helpful and generate laudatory headlines for leaders but they are insufficient on their own to contain gun violence in DC which is exactly what we’ve seen over the last few years.
This decrease in enforcement is especially prevalent in drug trafficking cases. Despite the fact that the USAO knows that drug convictions can help “incapacitate” violent gang or crew members they have allowed felony drug convictions to fall by 88% since 2017:
Of course DC’s crime lab (run by DC’s Department of Forensic Science (DFS)) losing accreditation in 2021 is a big part of this story. However, US Attorney Matthew Graves has claimed his office “effectively built a makeshift DFS” and that the lab getting re-accredited is “not going to impact the charging numbers.” So according to USA Graves the paltry 69 drug felony counts sentenced in 2023 is as good as we’re likely to see (at least under his leadership). This little-reported collapse in drug convictions has been a huge benefit to DC’s gangs and crews who “are heavily engaged in narcotics sales” and drive so much gun violence in DC.
Another key way in which enforcement has collapsed in DC is with gun cases. I won’t repeat all of the stats from my previous post but this graph shows how the USAO is both more likely to decline to prosecute and more likely to reduce a conviction to a misdemeanor than they were just a few years ago (before the rise in gun violence). Collectively these trends have cut felony CPWL convictions per arrest in half:
One additional red flag is that late in 2023 the USAO began to decline more cases. The USAO’s reported gun prosecution rates are actually a bit lower than the DC Sentencing Commission’s data but from January-October 2023 the USAO claimed they prosecuted 63.6% of adult gun cases. However by the end of the year this had fallen to 62.9% which implies that specifically in November-December 2023 they only charged 60.1% of cases, a drop of 3.5 percentage points.
This seems to reflect the USAO’s general slowdown in prosecution after they got through Fiscal Year 2023 (which ended in September 2023) and mostly deflected media attention away from their low prosecution rate. To this day the USAO has not offered any explanation for the one month spike in prosecutions that aligned perfectly with when they needed higher prosecution numbers to share with the media and faded as soon as the media moved on:
Some (though not all) of these suspects that the USAO refuses to prosecute for gun crimes go on to allegedly commit more serious crimes. The suspect who alleged shot at a MPD officer was someone who had TWO previous arrests for CPWL that the USAO hadn’t prosecuted:
In addition to declining to prosecute more cases, the USAO has gotten much more lenient with plea bargains. While historically only 25% of Carrying a Pistol Without a License (CPWL) convictions were reduced to misdemeanors (which some defense lawyers called a “Golden Ticket”), under USA Graves this immediately doubled to 48% and then rose to a record-high of 60% in 2023:
If any DC elected official had suggested that we should reduce illegal gun possession from a felony to a misdemeanor it would have been the subject of hostile Congressional hearings and breathless media coverage for being “soft on crime.” But because USA Graves did this quietly in DC’s courtrooms and it only came out in the DC Sentencing Commission’s report it has attracted almost no local media coverage.
Another indication of how lenient the USAO has become with gun cases is that they only prosecuted 127 “Project Safe Neighborhoods” cases in District Court (where gun cases are more likely to succeed and receive a longer sentence) over the last two years. This secured USA Graves glowing media coverage but 127 cases is only 14% of MPD’s arrests for “Unlawful Possession of a Firearm-Prior Felony (UPF-PF)” from 2022-2023.
UPF-PF applies to suspects who are illegally carrying a gun AND have a prior felony conviction so the charge heavily overlaps with Federal law (Title 18, Section 922(g)) “that prohibits a felon from possessing a firearm.” Project Safe Neighborhoods isn’t intended to apply to every Felon in Possession case but it is framed “an immediate solution to swiftly removing prohibited possessors of firearms from our communities.” Given that all (or the vast majority) of MPD’s 936 arrests for “Unlawful Possession of a Firearm-Prior Felony (UPF-PF)” could qualify for prosecution under Federal law in District Court, it’s telling that in ~86% of these cases the USAO chose to either not prosecute the case at all or to instead charge them in DC Superior Court where they know they are less likely to secure a conviction. This is not how an office trying every possible lever within their power to reduce gun violence would act. Furthermore, 127 Project Safe Neighborhood cases is actually less than the US Attorney’s Office in Maryland filed over the same time period despite USA Graves having ~3 times more Assistant US Attorneys.
The USAO’s role also extends to approving warrants. Jeremiah Jordan is accused of a double homicide and seven months before the alleged killing MPD apparently wanted to arrest him but the warrant was "never approved." He allegedly "escaped police custody with a firearm" but that fact (on top of a prior felony conviction) wasn’t enough for MPD to get a warrant:
One MPD officer described the issue (not specific to the Jordan case) like this:
”The USAO doesn't just decline to prosecute people who have already been arrested. They also decline to process warrants for submission to the DC Superior and District Courts. This ends many cases before an arrest can be made. In other jurisdictions (as close as Maryland), the prosecutor isn't necessarily the last word in whether an affidavit in support of a warrant is presented to a judge and can't block prosecution at that early stage.”
We know from research (and common sense) that we need effective enforcement to comprehensively reduce gun violence and DC’s data confirms that the biggest bottleneck in enforcement today is the US Attorney’s Office. There are fair criticisms to be made of other actors in DC’s criminal justice system but none of them come close to the USAO in terms of undermining DC’s fight against gun violence. Unsurprisingly this ongoing problem has festered due to a lack of transparency and accountability.
The Lack of Accountability for the US Attorney:
Because the US Attorney is a Federal appointee, the residents of Washington DC have no direct ways to remove or replace USA Graves. Within the Department of Justice (DOJ) there have been no signs of any accountability for USA Graves. In fact, it appears that the DOJ’s “Annual Performance Plan” actually incentivizes the USAO to drop any case that might have any risk of losing at trial. The performance measure for “Violent Crime and Gun Violence” counts any case that the prosecutor drops/dismisses as “favorably resolved.” Thus a prosecutor who declined, dropped or offered generous plea bargains to secure convictions in most cases would appear to be “successful” under this DOJ metric:
The Biden Administration could step in and stop the self-inflicted political wound of protecting USA Graves but they haven’t taken action so far. Some members of the administration leaked to Politico their frustration with their “left flank” on crime and saw voters removing Multnomah County (Portland, OR) prosecutor Mike Schmidt as vindication for their more “tough on crime” approach. However, when we compare the most recent prosecution data from Portland to the USAO’s latest detailed breakdown we see that the USAO declines over twice as many cases! By keeping USA Graves in his role, President Biden is protecting someone significantly more lenient towards crime than the now-ousted Portland prosecutor:
What’s even more frustrating for Washingtonians is that the Portland race actually offers a crystal-clear example of how electoral accountability can drive prosecutorial outcomes. During COVID the Portland DA really did stop prosecuting most misdemeanors (the graph tracks the % of cases that they rejected) and was only back to pre-COVID levels when the challenger announced his campaign for the office in May 2023. Once the prosecutor was facing a viable (and eventually successful) electoral challenge he dramatically increased his prosecution rate for misdemeanors. Washingtonians can’t impose this kind of electoral accountability on our unelected Federal prosecutor, USA Graves.
Congress has likewise failed to seriously hold USA Graves accountable for his performance. We did see an increase in prosecutions after he was grilled in a May 2023 hearing about prosecution rates but there’s been little accountability or progress since.
Finally, local media seems to have largely moved on from any interest in scrutinizing Graves’ performance. It’s been over a month since the DC Sentencing Commission released their Annual Report that first revealed the USAO’s collapse in gun prosecutions but so far only conservative outlets have given it any attention. There have been more stories about a single shooting with a reversed pretrial detention ruling than the 2,262 gun cases that the USAO has declined to prosecute, dropped or pled down to a misdemeanor over the last two years. Instead, Washingtonians are the recipients of pieces like this:
This piece highlights the work of the Child Exploitation & Human Trafficking (CHET) unit within the USAO. Not once in the entire segment does it mention that the kind of convictions this team focuses on have collapsed in recent years. One of the prosecutors basically says they are understaffed and could be prosecuting twice as many cases as they do today but there’s no follow up on that pretty major concern:
It took me only a few minutes to look up the DC Sentencing Data to contextualize the work of this unit within the broader collapse in prosecutions at the USAO; but that kind of context is largely lacking in local media pieces. USA Graves has consistently proven that he can announce a new investigation, initiative or just provide quotes slamming other parts of the justice system and get glowing coverage that bolsters his “tough on crime” persona from most DC media outlets. DC media is fully capable of reporting on specific crimes, specific arrests and specific trials. But once we move from specific examples to statistics most outlets seem to lose interest. The (probably apocryphal) Joseph Stalin quote “If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics” seems to be the guiding principle for how most DC media outlets cover crime. Individual crimes are tragedies but once they are aggregated and tied to specific failings of the justice system they become “only statistics.” But those victims are still real people and their lives matter.
Gun violence is such a terrible and self-perpetuating problem in DC that every level of government ought to be doing everything within their power to stop the shootings. Every shooting can be the start of a viral “cascade” of violence that disproportionately harms our most vulnerable neighborhoods. DC’s approach has been flawed but at every step our efforts at deterrence and rehabilitation have been undermined by the USAO’s lack of vigorous prosecution. I challenge anyone to review USA Graves’ record and say that MPD or our violence prevention programs have had a strong prosecutor partner.
US Attorney Matthew Graves’ record on local DC crime:
Declined to prosecute a record-high 67% of cases in Fiscal Year 2022
Declined to prosecute 38% of Assault with a Dangerous Weapon, 27% of Robbery cases and 27% of Carjacking cases in 2022 but said “he has prosecuted most violent felonies”
2,262 gun cases were never prosecuted, dropped or pled down to misdemeanor charges from 2022-2023
Reduced 60% of Carrying a Pistol Without a License convictions in 2023 to misdemeanors; up from just 25% in 2018-2021
There’s more to stopping gun violence than prosecution. But right now prosecution is the single biggest bottleneck for all of our enforcement efforts and without new leadership at the US Attorney’s Office, DC is fighting gun violence with one hand tied behind our back. If you want to reduce gun violence in DC, help us get a new U.S. Attorney by taking action:
If you know people in the Biden Administration, the Department of Justice or Congressional circles speak up about this problem and demand a change at the USAO. DC’s lack of statehood means we have to rely on indirect power and the social connections of Washingtonians can be quite powerful.
Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes can be contacted here and while she lacks voting power in Congress she is our elected representative
Contact people you know in the media (local and national) and ask them to cover these issues. This can include submitting a Letter to the Editor or Guest Opinion to the Post.
If you are an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner (ANC) consider passing a resolution calling for a change in leadership at the USAO. Such resolutions have no legal impact but if they were to reach a critical mass it would demonstrate public support and be itself newsworthy.
Share this post (and/or the relevant data points) with people you know in your neighborhood, on social media, listserves, group chats etc. When people discuss gun violence make sure they know about the USAO’s role in the problem. Even a year after the USAO’s scandalously low prosecution rates were exposed there are still many Washingtonians who don’t know about the USAO’s failures or understand that the USAO is an unelected Federal appointee. The USAO’s relative obscurity has helped them avoid accountability. Increasing awareness of these basic facts about DC’s criminal justice system is necessary to inform effective action.
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Greetings! I've learned so much from your newsletter updates, and wanted to flag an event several ANCs have organized with some local partners about the need for a citywide gun violence reduction strategy. If it feels appropriate, we'd be grateful if you shared it with your readers: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dc-community-public-safety-forum-on-gun-violence-reduction-strategies-tickets-1043166126967?aff=oddtdtcreator&keep_tld=1