The House passed two more bills Wednesday night reconfiguring the District’s public safety system, with lawmakers approving proposals to repeal the city’s cashless bail policy and undo police protocol changes that came about in 2020.
The Republican majority said the bills were necessary to combat the District’s soft-on-crime laws and add some staying power to the White House’s crime crackdown this summer.
“The bills passed in the House build on President Trump’s promise to restore law and order to D.C., keep violent criminals off the streets, and defend residents and visitors alike from the chaos caused by the D.C. Council’s radical policies,” House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, Kentucky Republican, said following the vote.
Lawmakers supported eliminating the District’s cashless bail system by a 237-179 margin, with the proposal ensuring “mandatory pretrial and post conviction detention for crimes of violence and dangerous crimes.”
That translated into adding armed burglary and robbery as automatically jailable offenses in the bill’s text.
The text also says cash bail would be required for “certain offenses that pose a threat to public safety or order” in the District.
Those offenses, according to the text, include fleeing from police, rioting and inciting a riot, destruction of property, unarmed burglary or robbery, stalking, obstruction of justice and failure to appear for court.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, the New York Republican who introduced the bill, cited her own state’s experience with cashless bail to argue her case.
“New Yorkers know that Kathy Hochul’s failed bail reform has unleashed a crime wave across our state by emboldening violent criminals and putting law-abiding New Yorkers in harm’s way,” she said in a statement, referencing New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. “I proudly voted to end cashless bail in D.C which Congress has jurisdiction over, and this is a precursor to next month when Congress will pass my bill to end New York’s failed bail reform.”
The District hasn’t required cash bail since the early 1990s. Instead, judges determine whether a defendant is a public safety or flight risk who should be kept behind bars pending a case resolution.
Ms. Stefanik’s bill leaves it up to the court to decide what price bonds should be set at.
The second proposal, passed by a 233-190 vote in the House, repealed D.C.’s Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Act.
The 2022 law banned chokeholds and certain crowd control tactics and also took away some of the Metropolitan Police Department’s bargaining chips when negotiating with the city.
The D.C. Police Union said the statute removed legal protections for officers on the street and has discouraged people from joining and staying with MPD.
Rep. Andrew Clyde, the Georgia Republican who sponsored the bill, sided with the union’s perspective by saying the law has “prevented our men and women in blue from effectively protecting Americans in our nation’s capital, hindered the MPD’s ability to recruit and retain officers, and exacerbated Washington’s crime crisis.”
Metropolitan Police has hovered at a 50-year-low in officers for nearly three years.
Del. Eleanore Holmes Norton, the District’s nonvoting representative, derided Republicans for being “more interested in forcing their will on D.C. residents than in representing the interests of their own constituents.”
“The bills passed by the House tonight don’t make D.C. safer. They simply substitute the judgment of politicians from New York and Georgia for the judgment of the 700,000 people who actually live here,” Ms. Holmes Norton said in a statement.
Both bills passed on a bipartisan basis as Capitol Hill continues to assert its legislative authority over the District.
Six bills addressing the District’s criminal justice laws have now been moved by the chamber in the months after President Trump deployed National Guard troops and surged federal agents into the city.
Proposals allowing children as young as 14 to be charged as adults, preventing judges from giving juveniles lenient sentences, relaxing police pursuit rules and giving the president greater say in D.C. Superior Court appointments passed the House earlier this fall.
The proposals have sought to extend the life of this summer’s 30-day emergency that brought about a major decline in killings, carjackings and muggings in the nation’s capital.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser praised the effectiveness of the crackdown during a congressional hearing in September but emphasized how the federal operation merely accelerated a trend of falling violent crime that city leaders had already been addressing.
Police data shows violent crime is down 29% year-over-year in the District.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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