One D.C. leader is laying out her plan to curb crime in the nation’s capital. Ward 2 Council Member Brooke Pinto has announced her Peace D.C. plan, which through multiple pieces of legislation she believes will “drive down” crime and provide more support for kids who wind up on the wrong side of the law.
“We as a city have had so much success over the last year with really driving down crime and violence after the passage of my Secure D.C. omnibus, and so we knew that this year we needed to build on that success and work with stakeholders across our city to continue building on that success, to build more peace,” Pinto told WTOP.
She said her new legislative plan focuses on four main areas that include; empowering youth and strengthening neighborhood harmony, preventing violence, supporting public safety workers and reducing recidivism.
To empower youth, Pinto said she wants the council to get behind a bill that would provide more “wraparound” support for kids who get in trouble with law, but who enter into deferred disposition or differed prosecution agreements, which can delay or postpone prosecution.
“To make sure that there’s actually follow up with those young people to help get them to school, to help get them to after school programming, to create structure around what that return to the home is going to look like, and create some more clear guardrails if they don’t show up to those meetings, which unfortunately, we’re seeing too much of now with our efforts to prevent violence,” Pinto said.
Other proposals include adding more protections for neighborhoods against “excessive noise and projectiles,” changing D.C. law to make a kidnapping charge available for someone accused of holding someone for 24 hours, right now the law states someone must be held against their will for 72 hours.
With the aim of preventing violence, the council member is calling on the merger of the city’s two violence interruption programs; the Office of the Attorney General’s Cure the Streets and the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement’s Violence Intervention Initiative. Pinto said having both doesn’t make sense.
“That is not an efficient use of resources, and it is not yielding the best results, in my view, because of the infrastructure challenges of having two agencies do very similar work,” she said.
Pinto said a transitional advisory group would also be set up to monitor the merger, over a three-year period.
“We can’t have one agency try to be all things to all people. That’s not going to work. And so I’m really working during this transition to make sure that office of neighborhood safety engagement stays laser focused on their core mission, which needs to be driving down gun violence,” Pinto said.
To support public safety workers, Pinto is calling on the passage of “differed retirement” legislation for police, fire and corrections officers, which she believes will help retain first responders.
“We need to continue building up our police and fire and EMS departments. I have new proposals around retention, so that officers and firefighters can still earn their retirement benefits when they’re eligible, but still stay on the force,” Pinto said.
The plan also calls for college credits for police training and more funding for the hiring of first responders.
To address recidivism, Pinto is also proposing a pilot program, which would help those who are newly released after serving their sentences.
“We have legislative proposals for a new pilot program for housing stipends to support job employment opportunities and offer incentives to private employers to hire returning citizens, as well as breaking down barriers for returning citizens to have jobs in the public sector,” Pinto said.
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