As crime continues to skyrocket in the nation’s Capitol, Metropolitan Police Department Police Chief Robert Contee has come up with a truly radical idea for addressing the problem: stop releasing criminals back onto the streets and keep them behind bars.
“What we got to do, if we really want to see homicides go down, is keep bad guys with guns in jail. Because when they’re in jail, they can’t be in communities shooting people,” Contee told reporters during a press conference alongside Mayor Muriel Bowser, Fox News reported.
“So when people talk about what we gonna do different, or what we should do different, what we need to do different, that’s the thing that we need to do different,” he explained. “We need to keep violent people in jail. Right now, the average homicide suspect has been arrested eleven times prior to them committing a homicide,” the chief continued. “That is a problem. That is a problem.”
Yes. Yes it is.
What’s sad is the Chief’s innovative approach is hardly new, and it’s something many of us have been shouting into the void for the last three years. Cities and states released criminals in response to the COVID pandemic and as part of decarceration policies and “rethinking” criminal justice.
What happened? To the surprise of absolutely no one, crime skyrocketed. Violent, recidivist criminals were given more opportunities to re-offend. And they did, in spectacular fashion.
It’s possible that even those on the left are finally starting to recognize this, if only because it’s becoming a political problem for them. A Soros-backed “progressive” prosecutor was thrown out in San Francisco. Another one barely survived a recall effort in Los Angeles. The state of Missouri is likely to remove St. Louis’s non-prosecuting prosecutor as well.
In addition, more than four out of five Chicago voters just fired their far left, soft-on-crime Mayor. And New Orleans’ leftist Mayor will likely face a recall election prompted by rampant crime and the highest murder rate in the nation.
Maybe, just maybe, we should go back to the radical idea of prosecuting criminals, jailing them, and reestablishing law and order to protect law-abiding citizens.