As RedState reported back in March, DC Council Chair Phil Mendelson (D) spoke before the House Oversight Committee during a hearing on “Overdue Oversight of the Capital City.”
The hearing came in the midst of the heated debate at the time over whether the DC Council’s unanimously-passed 450-page overhaul of the city’s criminal code, which was rejected by both the GOP-run House and the Democrat-run Senate – and Joe Biden – was too woke in a city already plagued with alarmingly high rises in crime rates, including for homicide and sexual assault offenses.
Unfortunately for Mendelson, while he was busy gaslighting the committee by telling them at the hearing (and on the Twitter machine) that “there is not a crime crisis in Washington, DC,” there was a carjacking about a mile away. Even worse, there was a double shooting that Metropolitan police officers were responding to where one of the victims died.
Fast forward four months and, sadly, not much has changed – not for Washington, DC residents and not for Mendelson, who blurted out an inconvenient truth about the city’s murder rate during an interview with Fox 5 DC on Councilmember Brooke Pinto’s Mayor Muriel Bowser-approved emergency legislation that Pinto claims would among other things “prevent repeat offenders from further harming and traumatizing our community, hold perpetrators accountable, and protect and support victims.”
“You can get away with murder in this city,” Mendelson told the reporter, Stephanie Ramirez, who seemed stunned by the admission before pointedly asking him if the city bore any responsibility for that sobering reality.
Mendelson, whose girlfriend was the victim of a brazen gas station car theft in broad daylight back in 2018, told her that the roughly 50 percent of murder cases that went unsolved “within the year they occur” had nothing to do with the council, an incredible statement to make considering the Met PD, though under federal jurisdiction, is charged with enforcing the laws the council and mayor approve:
D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson: "You can get away with murder in this city — but that's true a lot of places!"
Q: "I'm sorry, did you just say you can get away with murder in this city?"
Mendelson: "That is what I said" pic.twitter.com/XuS0A5oscS
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 7, 2023
Needless to say, frustrated residents and officers strongly disagree with his claim that he and the other council members are not at the very least partially responsible for the crime issues plaguing the city:
If @ChmnMendelson believes that detectives closing cases is the key to reducing crime, why doesn’t he care that there are 150 fewer detectives now than there were in 2020, before he and @charlesallen decided to decimate MPD? https://t.co/frnLzcFQ8r
— DC Police Union (@DCPoliceUnion) July 7, 2023
“He’s been a total failure,” security expert Hank Thomas said in response to Mendelson’s comments, echoing what the DC police union wrote. “We need to throw the kitchen sink at the problem. He and his crew helped trash the police, which is why there are not enough cops, which is why they can’t close cases.”
Another asked, “So what exactly does the council’s judiciary & public safety committee do? Oversight = responsibility.”
The problem, though, is that responsibility and Democrats are like oil and water. They simply don’t mix.
There’s one thing people in Washington, DC can do about problematic Democrats in powerful positions who keep letting them down, but like most major Democrat-run cities across America, voters keep electing the same types of entrenched politicos while hoping for a different result.
Wash, rinse, repeat. And tragically, it’s innocent people who end up paying the price.
