A monumental failure of leadership in DC

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser has spent over $5 million since 2020 building and maintaining Black Lives Matter Plaza, three blocks of 16th Street leading down to the North Portico of the White House. This costly political statement of support for a fraudulent organization has been made while the mayor’s real job of running the nation’s capital has been neglected. Carjackings and murder have skyrocketed on her watch.

The cost of Bowser’s misplaced priorities was underlined when the owner of the NHL’s Capitals and NBA’s Wizards announced that he would leave Washington and take his teams to neighboring Virginia.

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But her performance after hearing the news was not encouraging.

While making an attempt to belittle the transportation options for the new Potomac Yards development, which is serviced by the Yellow and Blue Metro lines, Bowser falsely claimed that the teams’ current Metro station, Gallery Place, was serviced by “every line.” In fact, Gallery Place only has the Red, Yellow, and Green lines. The Silver, Blue, and Orange lines do not service the station. One should be able to assume that the woman who has been serving as mayor for the past eight years would have a firmer grasp on her city’s premier transportation system. But no.

Not wanting to touch on a controversial topic, Ted Leonsis himself has not said publicly that rising crime around Washington’s Capital One Arena is a reason he is looking to move his teams elsewhere. But at a town hall meeting in August, one of his organization’s managers did just that. “Our revolving door and lack of prosecution has had a negative effect on the community,” Crispus Gordon, Monumental Sports and Entertainment’s government relations director, told city leaders. He went on to describe how after one Monumental Sports employee was assaulted in broad daylight, the perpetrator was arrested but was then released shortly thereafter.

If Washington is unwilling to prosecute criminals who prey on its workers, why would any company stay in the city?

That is why the Capitals and Wizards leaving Washington is more than just a sports story. The complex around Capital One Arena used to have a movie theater, a bowling alley, and many bars and restaurants. Now, three years after COVID-19, the summer of BLM riots, and Bowser’s subsequent decision to defund the police, the movie theater is gone, so is the bowling alley, and many storefronts are bare.

The hollowing out of the capital’s business community is not limited to that area, Chinatown. Vacancy rates across the city are rising as more and more businesses conclude that the cost of dealing with attempted theft and other daily inconveniences and outrages just isn’t worth it.

The first thing Bowser should do to stop the bleeding is rip up Black Lives Matter Plaza and recommit the city to arresting, prosecuting, and incarcerating people who break the law, regardless of their skin color. No one suffers more from lawlessness than low-income racial minority communities. Not only are they hit by the loss of jobs as businesses flee Washington, but the criminals the police release most often live in these communities, and their neighbors are their first victims.

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President Joe Biden could do his part by forcing federal government employees to return to their offices. The more people downtown, the more dining, shopping, and entertainment people will do in the city.

Washington still has Nationals baseball and the Mystics WNBA team, and it could land the Commanders, too. There is even still time to get the Capitals and Wizards back. But it is going to take far more than money to turn the tide. District leaders are going to have to start prioritizing law and order over misguided social justice. If they don’t, more businesses will leave.