Victims of crime in the District spoke before Republican leaders on Capitol Hill Thursday, telling the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance their stories and their concerns about the increase in crime in the city.
During the hearing, Gaynor Jablonski, who owns the Valor Brewpub on Capitol Hill, showed a video of a DoorDash driver attacking him then pointing a gun at him as his 4-year-old son sat watching next to him.
“As horrific as that video is, what happened after was even worse,” Jablonski said, criticizing how the case was prosecuted and the perpetrator’s sentence. “He gets eight months and I’m left explaining to my 5-year-old why I had to fight this man. And my 5-year-old tells me when I drop him off at school every day to, ‘Be safe.'”
D.C. resident Mitchell Sobolevsky said that he was a victim of a robbery in the Shaw neighborhood in December of 2020.
“He told me, ‘Do what I say and you ain’t gonna die tonight.’ All I could hear is, ‘You’re going to die tonight.'”
Police caught the man that robbed him. But he said that the sentencing of the man is what brought him to testify in D.C. The man got a year for multiple armed robberies. And after he was released, Sobolevsky said the man robbed more people.
“This light sentence was given despite my criminal robbing six victims and two businesses.”
D.C. firefighter Myisha Richard testified about being attacked by two women when she was on the job responding to a call.
“Both of the females jumped over the banister onto the landing and began to punch and kick me while pulling my hair and holding my head down in place.”
She said she suffered a severe concussion and a laceration above her eye as well as post-traumatic stress disorder. She said she was upset to get a call from prosecutors in D.C. saying that the people who assaulted her were not going to serve time.
“I did not expect that while helping someone during their most vulnerable time in need during a medical emergency that the tables could quickly turn on me.”
Police union: ‘Dangerously low’ staffing levels
The committee also heard from the head of the D.C. police union during the hearing about the rise in violence in the District and the decrease in the number of officers available to respond to calls.
“These dangerously low police officer staffing levels take away valuable resources from our assignments like detectives and investigative personnel and impede the departments’ ability to engage and speak with victims in a timely manner,” Pemberton said.
He said the union has lost 605 members since 2020. He says that many of the officers left because of the D.C. Council’s recent policies on police reform.
“The direct result was a mass exodus of police officers from the department,” he said.
He spoke directly to Congress about the impact of the rise in crime in the District.
“Tourists and visitors, your constituents, are being targeted and attacked,” he said. “For the past 3 1/2 years, our union has been sounding the alarm about this problem to anyone within earshot including the D.C. city council.”
D.C. has surpassed 200 homicides already this year — compared to last year when the District didn’t see that number until Dec. 29.
WTOP reached out to D.C. council members for their comment on the testimony Thursday.
In a statement to WTOP, Ward 7 Council member Vincent Gray said the council already “performs oversight on public safety agencies and related government functions.”
“Congress has enough on its plate, they don’t need to be micromanaging us,” he wrote. “Public safety is the number one issue on my agenda every day and it will continue to be until residents feel safe and crime rates are dramatically decreased.”
