Washington, D.C
Crime is way up in DC because US Attorney Matthew Graves won’t do his job
Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, must be grateful that the Justice Department will “surge additional law enforcement tools and resources” to tackle violent crime and carjackings in the nation’s capital. But he should also be embarrassed. The announcement is a tacit admission that the city’s chief prosecutor has failed abysmally at tackling crime.
In the department’s press release, Graves is quoted as saying, “We have been surgically targeting and prosecuting those driving violence within our community.” That’s a lie, and everyone knows it: from police and community members to prosecutors in his own office and those who, disgusted by his policies, have left for other employment. One of us (Stimson) testified before the House Judiciary Committee last August about Graves’s appalling record and what needs to be done to protect visitors and residents.
Last year in Washington, D.C., there were 274 homicides (a 35% increase over 2022), 3,470 robberies (a 67% increase), 6,829 car thefts (an 82% increase), and 13,349 thefts (a 23% increase). Overall, violent crime was up 39%, and all crime was up 26% year over year.
Carjacking is a huge problem in Washington, D.C. Last year, there were 958 carjackings — 77% of which involved guns — and the police closed only 260 cases, resulting in 173 arrests. Sixty-two percent of those arrests involved juveniles, the majority of whom were 15 or 16 years old, yet Graves refuses to prosecute most violent juveniles as adults.
Despite this crime tsunami, Graves’s office of 330 prosecutors has a declination rate of 67%. Graves tries to blame everyone but himself for this problem, from the crime lab to the courts to the police, the latter of whom he says bring weak cases to his office.
The police aren’t buying it. Robert J. Contee III, the district’s former police chief, said his officers are not to blame, calling Graves’s finger-pointing “BS,” adding, “I can promise you, it’s not MPD holding the bag on this.”
Under Graves, cases are now “no papered” (i.e., rejected) at the intake stage if those cases are essentially not trial ready the day after the arrest. That makes no sense whatsoever, as virtually no case is ready for trial the day after an arrest. As he well knows — or certainly ought to know — further investigative steps are necessary in most cases to get them ready for trial, including locating other potential witnesses, forensic evidence testing, and the like.
Contrast that 67% declination rate with the San Diego district attorney’s office, which also has 330 prosecutors. That office had a 22.6% declination rate from 2000-2019 involving over 500,000 cases; meaning they charged 77.4% of the cases that were brought to them by law enforcement authorities during those two decades.
And just to be clear, this isn’t a resource problem. San Diego County has one prosecutor for every 9,927 residents of the county; Washington, D.C., has one for every 2,035 residents.
The real problem is Graves. He refuses to prosecute every case to the fullest extent of the law, pure and simple. As long as his charging policies remain the same, sending his office more prosecutors from Justice won’t make a difference. The vast majority of violent crimes are committed by a few hundred armed career criminals who act with impunity because they know the local prosecutor won’t put them in prison for their crimes. Full stop.
The quickest way to tackle the gun crime problem in Washington, D.C., is for Graves to prosecute every single felon in possession of a firearm in federal district court under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), under which most, if not all, felons would get prison time.
According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, of the 64,142 cases prosecuted under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) in fiscal 2022, 97.4% were sentenced to federal prison. The average sentence for all section 922(g) offenders was 63 months, just over five years. The length of sentence depends in large part on the criminal history category of the defendant. Some 15% of section 922(g) offenders were convicted of one or more statutes with a mandatory minimum penalty.
But instead of taking gun crime seriously, Graves directs his prosecutors to send gun cases, including those committed by convicted felons, to the Superior Court for the District of Columbia. They bargain those cases down to next to nothing, and most criminals end up with probation instead of the years behind bars that would have resulted had he taken them to federal district court. This is a policy choice which Graves could change today.
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By hiring woke social justice warrior pseudo-prosecutors, refusing to send felon-in-possession firearms cases to federal district court, forcing his prosecutors to decline cases at intake because they aren’t “trial ready” the day after an arrest, and refusing to prosecute every violent gun-toting juvenile as an adult, Matt Graves has failed as the city’s chief prosecutor.
What Graves needs is a spine. The Justice Department can’t give him that.
Zack Smith is a legal fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Cully Stimson is the center’s deputy director.
LANDOVER, Md. – Bruno Mars is bringing The Romantic Tour to the Washington, D.C. region this spring!
The Grammy-winning star will stop at Northwest Stadium on Saturday, May 2, 2026.
The stadium’s website lets fans sign up for presale access now. Tickets go on sale Thursday, January 15 at 12 p.m.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 02: Bruno Mars performs onstage during the 67th Annual GRAMMY Awards at Crypto.com Arena on February 02, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording Academy)
Bruno Mars – The Romantic Tour 2026 DatesApril – October 2026
Apr 10, 2026 – Allegiant Stadium, Las Vegas, NV
Apr 14, 2026 – State Farm Stadium, Glendale, AZ
Apr 18, 2026 – Globe Life Field, Arlington, TX
Apr 22, 2026 – NRG Stadium, Houston, TX
Apr 25, 2026 – Bobby Dodd Stadium at Hyundai Field, Atlanta, GA
Apr 29, 2026 – Bank of America Stadium, Charlotte, NC
May 02, 2026 – Northwest Stadium, Landover, MD
May 06, 2026 – Nissan Stadium, Nashville, TN
May 09, 2026 – Ford Field, Detroit, MI
May 13, 2026 – U.S. Bank Stadium, Minneapolis, MN
May 16, 2026 – Soldier Field Stadium, Chicago, IL
May 20, 2026 – Ohio Stadium, Columbus, OH
May 23, 2026 – Rogers Stadium, Toronto, ON
May 24, 2026 – Rogers Stadium, Toronto, ON
Jun 20, 2026 – Stade de France, Paris, FR
Jun 21, 2026 – Stade de France, Paris, FR
Jun 26, 2026 – Olympiastadion, Berlin, DE
Jul 04, 2026 – Johan Cruijff ArenA, Amsterdam, NL
Jul 05, 2026 – Johan Cruijff ArenA, Amsterdam, NL
Jul 10, 2026 – Riyadh Air Metropolitano, Madrid, ES
Jul 14, 2026 – Stadio San Siro, Milan, IT
Jul 18, 2026 – Wembley Stadium Connected by EE, London, UK
Jul 19, 2026 – Wembley Stadium Connected by EE, London, UK
Aug 21, 2026 – Metlife Stadium, East Rutherford, NJ
Aug 22, 2026 – Metlife Stadium, East Rutherford, NJ
Aug 29, 2026 – Acrisure Stadium, Pittsburgh, PA
Sep 01, 2026 – Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia, PA
Sep 05, 2026 – Gillette Stadium, Foxborough, MA
Sep 09, 2026 – Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis, IN
Sep 12, 2026 – Raymond James Stadium, Tampa, FL
Sep 16, 2026 – Caesars Superdome, New Orleans, LA
Sep 19, 2026 – Hard Rock Stadium, Miami, FL
Sep 23, 2026 – Alamodome, San Antonio, TX
Sep 26, 2026 – Falcon Stadium, United States Air Force Academy, CO
Oct 02, 2026 – SoFi Stadium, Los Angeles, CA
Oct 03, 2026 – SoFi Stadium, Los Angeles, CA
Oct 10, 2026 – Levi’s Stadium, Santa Clara, CA
Oct 14, 2026 – BC Place, Vancouver, BC
More information on the tour can be found online.
D.C.’s mayor and interim police chief took questions on immigration enforcement after an ICE agent shot and killed an unarmed woman in Minneapolis.
“If we don’t want ICE in our communities, we have to stop funding ICE – and that decision isn’t made here; it’s made at the Congress,” Mayor Muriel Bowser said.
The mayor was asked about her reaction to the killing.
“To me, it just is reflected, when you have people who are unaccustomed to urban policing trying to police in an urban environment. What it looked to me like – very bad, and I’m not a police officer, I’m not in law enforcement – but what I saw was completely avoidable, and a woman died,” she said.
“ICE is patrolling American cities. If we don’t want that, the Congress has to stop funding ICE, because thousands of agents who are untrained to police in urban environments are on our streets,” Bowser added.
In two recent incidents in D.C., federal agents opened fire on drivers who the agents claimed were trying to hit them with their vehicles. In those cases, no one was injured.
Interim Chief of Police Jeffery Carroll was asked about public concerns that might happen here again.
“A lot of these individuals, they don’t work in urban policing. So, us working with federal authorities in the policing operations, being out there, actually helps us make sure that we can work in those areas to help control what’s going on,” he said.
“Obviously, I can’t assure you of anything. Obviously, I can assure you every situation is different, right, that officers encounter out there,” he added. “But I think having the relationship and having the federal authorities working with the officers does help to mitigate some of the challenges that we have with that.”
Nadeau’s report on DC cooperation with immigration enforcement
Departing D.C. Councilmember Brianne Nadeau released a scathing report Thursday that’s critical of how MPD and the Bowser administration have cooperated with federal immigration enforcement.
“The primary finding is the loss of trust between the public and MPD,” she told News4. “The challenge that we’re finding is that the mayor and the chief’s interpretation of the Sanctuary Values Act has opened up a vulnerability whereby they are essentially cooperating with ICE in a manner that does not match with the intent of the law.”
Bowser declined to comment on the report.
Carroll said he has not decided whether to make any changes to MPD policies on cooperating with immigration enforcement.
Last month, Councilmember Brooke Pinto, who oversees public safety, sent a letter to the then-chief requesting detailed answers to several questions related to MPD’s cooperation with federal law enforcement. Carroll said Thursday that he will provide a response, which is due to the council by Friday.
In this 4 More Context, News4’s Ted Oberg explains how many people in the D.C. area have been arrested by ICE and why.
Sign up for our free deep-dive newsletter, The 4Front, to get standout News4 stories sent right to your inbox. Subscribe here.
WASHINGTON – A dry and mild Thursday is ahead for the Washington, D.C., region, with highs in the mid‑50s before a rainy start to the weekend.
What we know:
The morning begins on the chilly side with some patchy fog. FOX 5’s Taylor Grenda says conditions stay dry as temperatures climb into the afternoon, with clouds building by evening.
Rain showers may develop late Friday afternoon into the evening, with highs in the upper 50s.
What’s next:
Steadier rain moves in Saturday morning. Temperatures rise into the 60s, but on‑and‑off rain is expected through the afternoon and evening.
Sunday turns much drier, though highs fall back into the 50s. By Monday, colder air returns with highs in the 40s.
The Source: Information in this article comes from the FOX 5 Weather Team and the National Weather Service.
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