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D.C. Council member Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) released a set of proposals Monday intended to shape the council’s response to a surge in crime across the city — including provisions to allow police to randomly search people charged with violent offenses who are on pretrial release, which drew immediate pushback from judges.

While the council passed a stopgap emergency measure amid spiking crime in July, Pinto’s combination of preexisting plans and new ideas seeks to provide a more robust response by, for example, increasing crime prevention and surveillance in highly trafficked areas and forcing people convicted of gun crimes to submit to more onerous restrictions or penalties. Pinto, who chairs the council’s public safety committee, also plans to move a permanent version of the emergency legislation that passed in July, which expanded pretrial detention for adults and juveniles charged with violent crimes.

“This package certainly does not solve all of the inequities and challenges that we’re experiencing in our city, many of which play a major role in leading to more crime,” Pinto said. “What I will say is that this bill and package has a number of initiatives that will prevent crime,” such as setting up a hospitality industry program at the D.C. jail and increasing emergency communications and surveillance along public transit.

But some provisions Pinto put forth Monday are likely to provoke significant debate this fall, underscoring the complexities of reform in the District as homicides remain on track to surpass a quarter-century high.

In a letter sent to Pinto just hours after she released the legislation, chief judges on the D.C. Superior Court and Court of Appeals warned that the measure allowing police to conduct warrantless searches without probable cause — at any time, anywhere in public — could be illegal. The searches also could apply to people on post-conviction probation, parole or supervision.

Without understanding the legal basis, “the proposed legislation appears to violate the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on warrantless searches of individuals without probable cause,” D.C. Superior Court Chief Judge Anita Josey-Herring and Court of Appeals Chief Judge Anna Blackburne-Rigsby wrote in a letter to Pinto on Monday.

D.C.’s leaders have faced increased scrutiny as they have struggled to strike a balance between holding violent offenders accountable and not over-incarcerating or over-policing neighborhoods — especially in a liberal city that has sought to come to terms with the racially disproportionate impacts of its criminal justice system.

The D.C. Council <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/07/11/dc-council-passes-public-safety-legislation/" target=_blank>this summer</a> sought to combat what Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) described as a public perception that the council isn’t taking crime seriously, even though Mendelson argued the way to decrease crime is to close more cases and make more arrests. Homicides in D.C. are on track to surpass a two-decade high, while carjackings and robberies have dramatically increased. National political pressure has mounted, with Republicans in Congress repeatedly bashing D.C. as soft on crime or “anti-police” while blocking a policing bill and a major criminal code revision.

And on Monday that pressure continued: During a security briefing for House staffers who were concerned about keeping themselves safe, Greggory Pemberton, chairman of D.C.’s police union, blamed the D.C. Council for rising crime and 50-year staffing lows in the police department.

“We have a city council that’s gone a little bit rogue against law enforcement,” he said, decrying the legislation that restricted certain policing tactics and that Congress voted to block but <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/joe-biden-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">President Biden</a> intervened to protect.

Rep. John Rutherford (R-Fla.) asked if he could have the council members’ phone numbers so he and others could call them to raise concerns about crime. “Frankly I don’t know who they are, but I’d like to know,” he said. “We need to start calling them and talking to them about what’s going on.”

Pinto said she wanted to release the package of bills and schedule hearings so that the public could see what the council plans to do about crime. She said she consulted with police and prosecutors to draft many of the provisions.

The provisions that would allow random searches of people released on bond or probation for certain offenses were part of the Addressing Crime Through Targeted Interventions and Violence Enforcement Act, or Active Act. And the Active Act, in turn, was part of a broader framework that Pinto called her “Secure DC Plan.” The plan included seven proposals from Pinto coupled with a host of actions she plans to take this fall that are typical for the chair of the public safety committee. They include holding hearings on retail theft and problems at the Office of Unified Communications, which handles 911 calls — which she said she considered emergencies — and grilling the executive branch about its violence prevention efforts.

One of Pinto’s proposals — the Government Recruitment and Retention Act — would seek to fill critical vacancies up and down the ranks of D.C. government that could be affecting public safety, such as at the 911 call center. Another would seek to enhance emergency communication stations and surveillance technology in public transit corridors, including at bus stops and train stops.

The Active Act, however, will probably set the stage for the biggest discussions about policing and responding to violent crime.

The legislation would further beef up penalties for gun crimes, creating a new offense for illegal disposal of a gun or ammunition — for example, while a person is fleeing police — while increasing penalties for endangerment with a firearm and firing many bullets at once. Seeking to expand alternatives to incarceration, the bill also would set up a task force to examine possibilities for diversion programs so people can avoid jail time for nonviolent misdemeanor offenses such as drug possession.

“We have the beginnings of the infrastructure for what diversion can look like,” Pinto said, “but it’s often delivered, in my view, too late,” such as after a person has been arrested and booked in jail.

The Active Act also would create more hurdles for pretrial release in cases involving people charged with violent or dangerous offenses. For example, it would require judges to issue written explanations if they decide to release before trial a person charged with committing a violent offense — something Josey-Herring and Blackburne-Rigsby objected to Monday, noting that judges are already overburdened. There are 11 judicial vacancies on D.C.’s Superior Court.

Pinto’s emergency legislation in July created a presumption that adults charged with violent or dangerous offenses be held in jail before trial — something council member Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4) unsuccessfully sought to strike from the bill.

The Active Act would require that judges make it a condition of release that a person charged with violent or dangerous offenses “consent to be subject to search or seizure by a law enforcement officer at any time of the day or night, with or without a search warrant or with or without cause,” when that person is outside their property or place of business. The requirement would be rebuttable, meaning a person could argue to a judge why they shouldn’t have to be subject to these conditions.

Pinto said she worked on the provisions to expand searches, including for those on post-conviction supervision, with the U.S. attorney’s office. She pushed back on the idea that it was an expansion of “stop-and-frisk,” preferring to describe the searches as a condition of release from jail or prison.

“Like all things, it’s a balancing act. We want to set people up for success. We want to give people second chances to come home and reenter society safely,” she said. “But I think that this may be an appropriate condition to place on people who, in lieu of serving a sentence behind bars, are welcome to come home. But this is a condition that you cannot have an illegal firearm. And we’re going to make sure that you’re abiding by that condition.”

Patrice Sulton, executive director of the DC Justice Lab, echoed concerns raised by the pair of D.C. judges. She described the bill as intended to “hunt and hold people who look like they’ve been hunted and held before. In D.C., that’s exclusively Black people, poor people and native Washingtonians.”

Pinto, who is a lawyer, said she was committed to hearing out constitutional concerns raised by the judges or others, as well as any concerns about judicial workload.

Speaking to reporters Monday, Mendelson said he hadn’t yet reviewed the individual measures introduced by Pinto, but he said the council should constantly be looking at how it can adjust the law in ways that will better aid police and prosecutors.

Still, he reiterated his belief that the key to reducing crime is closing more cases; the U.S. attorney’s office last year declined to prosecute roughly two-thirds of arrests.

“We should be continuously looking at whether there are adjustments to the law that will help with law enforcement; surely that’s what we did in July,” Mendelson said. “But I’m very sensitive to folks looking to the council and then putting blame on the council for not solving the problem when the primary solutions are outside of what a legislature does.”

Drake University, BAJMC in magazine journalism; BA in writing

Meagan Flynn covers D.C. government and politics on The Post's Metro team.

Meagan Flynn

University of Maryland, College Park, BA in journalism

Michael Brice-Saddler covers D.C. government and politics for The Washington Post's Metro desk. He joined The Post in June 2018 as a crime reporting intern after graduating from the University of Maryland. Before moving to local politics, he covered national and breaking news on the general assignment desk. 

Michael Brice-Saddler

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