Should protections for law enforcement officers be expanded for the DC Metropolitan Police Department?

Crime and Law Enforcement (e.g., Gun Laws)
Protecting Our Nation’s Capital Emergency Act (H.R. 2096)
This bill has Passed the House of Representatives
Bill Summary

H.R. 2096 expands protections for law enforcement. Congressional findings as of September 25, 2023, found increased rates of violent crime, homicides, sexual abuse, robberies, and motor vehicle thefts in Washington, DC, coinciding with a fifty-year low in law enforcement staffing levels. The bill reinstates law enforcement’s ability to collectively bargain with the city over disciplinary procedures and restricts disciplinary challenges against law enforcement by creating a statute of limitations of ninety business days for the Metropolitan Police Department to take action on pending cases. By providing law enforcement with increased protections, the bill aims to incentivize employee recruitment and retention in the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department. Sponsor: Rep. Andrew Garbarino (Republican, New York, District 2)
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Opponents say

•    "Crime goes up and down for a million reasons that are completely independent of the police… While crime rates and officers per capita vary widely from city to city, scholars have begun to try to get an overall picture by using data on federal policing grants that were established in 1994. One additional officer reduced between .06 and 0.1 homicides per year — in other words, it takes 10 to 17 new officers to save a life… The gains were not uniform. Overall, more Black lives were saved than white lives when police officers were added, but in Southern cities with larger Black populations the homicide rate did not budge. And more officers made arrests for low-level offenses like alcohol-related infractions, which are not typically seen as contributing to public safety. More police officers may also mean that cities incur the cost of more police violence, more legal settlements and more protests." Source: Aaron Chalfin, Criminologist at the University of Pennsylvania


•    "Police departments don’t solve serious or violent crimes with any regularity, and in fact, spend very little time on crime control, in contrast to popular narratives… Records provided by the sheriff’s departments in Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego and Riverside showed the same longstanding pattern of racial disparities in police stops throughout the country for decades. Black people in San Diego were more than twice as likely than white residents to be stopped by sheriff’s deputies, for example. U.S. police spend much of their time conducting racially biased stops and searches of minority drivers, often without reasonable suspicion, rather than ‘fighting crime’ … Overall, sheriff patrol officers spend significantly more time on officer-initiated stops – ‘proactive policing’ in law enforcement parlance – than they do responding to community members’ calls for help. The practice is a fundamentally ineffective public safety strategy." Source: Catalyst California and the ACLU of Southern California


•    "Police reform won’t fix a system that was built to abuse power… Police reform is supposed to help police improve their technical capabilities to ensure order and disarm critics who charge that governments do not care about abuse. It is intended to increase police legitimacy, shoring up public support for the government. But by earning this support at home, police leaders have transformed their agencies into a power unto themselves. Greater police legitimacy means greater ability to shape governing priorities. The result is today’s larger, technologically sophisticated police department, which gobbles up increasing shares of budgets and seems to answer to no one. When police commit an outrage, reformers step in to reject calls for reducing police power. They offer reform as a way to maintain it." Source: Stuart Schrader, Associate Director of the Program in Racism, Immigration, and Citizenship and Lecturer at Johns Hopkins University

Proponents say

•    "D.C.’s police officers shouldn’t have to decide between keeping our capital safe with no support or protecting themselves. The best way to ensure residents of and visitors to our nation’s capital can explore D.C. safely is to invest in the Metropolitan Police Department and make sure they have the resources and support necessary to keep crime off the streets – not antagonize them and take away their rights. Congress has a duty to oversee the governance of D.C. and make sure the MPD has what they need to effectively fight crime and keep Washingtonians and visitors safe. House Republicans are bringing legislation to make sure our men and women in blue feel supported by restoring fairness in the disciplinary process… D.C. can’t afford to lose more good police officers – House Republicans will always stand with our men and women in uniform who risk their lives every day to keep our communities safe. Who will Democrats stand with: the police or the criminals?" Source: Rep. Steve Scalise (Republican, Louisiana, District 1), House Majority Leader


•    "When the Washington, D.C. City Council enacted the ‘Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act (CPJRAA),’ they stripped away the right of officers serving the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) to bargain collectively with the city over disciplinary procedures—a right that every other city employee has. It also repealed the requirement that the MPD must commence discipline against their officers within 90 business days, which will result in abusively long disciplinary investigations that violate the Constitutional rights of these officers… The legislation you have introduced will undo the most egregious and harmful provisions in the D.C. law. The bill would restore the collective bargaining rights, non-disclosure protections, and disciplinary protocols of MPD officers that were lost in the implementation of the CPJRAA. This legislation is of great importance to the men and women of the MPD and the safety of the residents, visitors, and workers in our nation’s capital." Source: Patrick Yoes, President of National Fraternal Order of Police


•    "The District of Columbia ended 2023 with violent crime up 39% from 2022. D.C. residents and business owners are under siege. Everyone — including members of Congress, staff and tourists — is bearing the consequences… Since January 2020, MPD has seen over 1,300 officers separate from the force, with more than 500 of those officers resigning, leaving for other jurisdictions or exiting the profession altogether. Congress has the authority to ensure the safety of the District of Columbia and reinstate these protections. Given the alarming rise in crime in every part of the city, there is no better time to support the police officers and give them the resources they need. These two provisions are regularly cited as the reason officers are leaving MPD, and this narrow approach will offer the best opportunity to recruit and retain highly qualified police officers to enforce the laws of Washington, DC." Source: D.C. Police Union

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