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.
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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.
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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.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
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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.
Associated Students of GCU President Judah Floyd (left) and Vice President Gracie Zimbardi (right) participated in a workshop with Arizona Congressman Eli Crane at the Campus Victory Forum conference in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., has been a popular spot this summer, especially since it’s the nation’s 250th anniversary. And it’s where many Grand Canyon University students have traveled, including the campus’s student body leaders.
Associated Students of GCU President Judah Floyd and Vice President Gracie Zimbardi traveled to Washington, D.C., to participate in the Campus Victory Forum conference and celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary of signing the Declaration of Independence.
“It was a humbling opportunity to be able to represent GCU and be poured into by so many admirable Christian leaders,” Floyd said. “It reminds me of the leader I want to be as a Christ follower and as someone who’s been put in a position to have influence on the students of GCU.”
Outside of conference sessions, Judah Floyd and Gracie Zimbardi explored Washington, D.C.
The three-day conference was organized by Campus Victory, an organization empowering collegiate leaders to step into civic engagement. It featured workshops, sessions and activities that equipped students with practical tools to step into their leadership roles.
Roughly 250 student leaders from universities all around the country traveled to the nation’s capital for the conference, where they met and heard from politicians and community leaders, including U.S. Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona.
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He addressed the young crowd with a personal testimony about his experience in public leadership and gave an empowering message from 1 Timothy 4:12, which reads, “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.”
He encouraged students to boldly press on in their positions despite their young age.
Sharing a home state with Crane was made extra special to Floyd and Zimbardi when Crane invited all Arizona students backstage to meet and have conversations with him.
“He was phenomenal,” Zimbardi said. “He talked about how being firm in our faith is so important in this time, and though we are young leaders, we do have the knowledge, experience and people to look up to, so use it. It was so inspiring to hear from him.”
Gracie Zimbardi (left) displayed her patriotism with student leaders from other universities.
When sessions concluded, students explored significant landmarks, including memorials, museums, and federal and local government buildings.
Everything was decked out in red, white and blue, with flags and banners hanging everywhere to commemorate the milestone anniversary.
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Celebratory events unfolded one after another on Independence Day, finishing with the largest fireworks show in history. Some 850,000 pyrotechnic effects were detonated over 40 minutes, with thousands gathered for the once-in-a-lifetime event.
Floyd waited five hours in line to attend Salute to America 250, which concluded yearlong celebratory festivities. The six-hour event on the National Mall featured presidential remarks, musical performances and military flyovers.
While in Washington, D.C., Judah Floyd (center) met with other student leaders.
“President Donald Trump talked about how America is really a land of people of faith and people who overcome challenges time after time,” Floyd said. “It really rekindled in us the spirit of liberty that we all carry as Americans and the importance of defending that liberty for generations to come.”
Military veterans were brought onstage and honored for their commitment to serving the country. Flags from every generation of America were displayed, and singer Lee Greenwood led the crowd in singing “God Bless the U.S.A.”
The World Cup was happening at the same time. While Floyd and Zimbardi were in Washington, D.C., they witnessed another level of patriotism when a Team USA vs. Bosnia and Herzegovina watch party, complete with a projector screen, was organized in front of the U.S. Congress.
“Thousands of people all wearing U.S.A. jerseys were shouting and screaming and spraying water in the sky when we scored a goal. It was deafening,” Floyd said.
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Judah Floyd and Gracie Zimbardi celebrated the Fourth of July in Washington, D.C., with student leaders from around the country.
As the start of academic year approaches, Floyd and Zimbardi’s tenure as student body president and vice president will soon commence.
The duo said that participating in the Campus Victory Forum conference, networking with student body presidents and vice presidents from other universities, and witnessing everyone’s patriotism prepared them to lead with passion and boldness.
“It means a lot to me that someone in this organization thought of us, GCU, and said, ‘We need them there.’ Zimbardi said. “It was really unique hearing from other students about how they do things at other universities.
“We got to sit down and spitball back and forth. We talked about things like, ‘Wow, that’s what works for you? We are struggling in that area, do you mind if we try it?’ Having conversations like that is extremely helpful, and it is cool how unified we can all become.”
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Dozens of Iowa National Guard soldiers leaving Iowa today will spend the next six months serving in Washington, D.C..
Last August, President Trump issued an executive order declaring there was an epidemic of crime in the nation’s capitol and he immediately mobilized National Guard troops from the District of Columbia. The Pentagon then started asking state guard units to deploy to D.C. and made a request of Governor Kim Reynolds last year. “They asked earlier and I said no because we had one of the largest deployments that we’ve had for a long, long time and I just felt we were stretched pretty thin,” Reynolds said.
In May of last year, nearly 2000 Iowa National Guard soldiers were deployed to the Middle East. The final group of those soldiers returned to Iowa last month. Reynolds said the Pentagon “circled back” recently and asked her to send a group of Iowa Guard soldiers to D.C. and she’s deployed 120 Iowa Guard soldiers to D.C. “to ensure the safety and security” of people who are in the nation’s capitol, “especially with everything that’s going on with the 250th birthday of our country,” Reynolds said, “and so we were able to participate and do our share.”
Reynolds told reporters the federal government will pay the entire cost of the deployment. Reynolds will speak this morning at a private send off ceremony for the Iowa Guard soldiers before they leave for D.C. There were over 5000 National Guard troops in Washington this past Sunday, including 185 from Nebraska and over 100 from Minnesota.
