Trending
A federal lawmaker serving the Greater Williamsport and his staff have been victims of crime and the legislator is introducing a bill seeking to force weak-on-crime prosecutors to do their jobs by upholding state and federal laws.
U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Dallas, said in a news release that in the past several years three of his office staff have been robbed at gunpoint and his vehicle parked outside of his Washington, D.C. residence was vandalized with its windows smashed out.
In 2023 compared to 2022 in Washington, D.C., homicides were up 35%, armed robberies were up 67%, motor vehicle thefts were up 82%, carjackings were up 103%, arson was up 175% and violent crime as a whole was up 39%.
Meuser, who represents the state's 9th district, introduced H.R. 6999, the Holding Prosecutors Accountable Act.
Specifically, this legislation would make prosecutors' offices that fail to prosecute at least 67% of arrests for violent crimes ineligible for Department of Justice Byrne Grants, which is the leading source of federal justice funding to state and local jurisdictions.
Increasingly in the country's major cities, ideological prosecutors are allowing criminals to go unpunished, according to Meuser's statement.
For example, in the nation's capital, only 44% of arrests were prosecuted last year.
This 44% prosecution rate in D.C. in-fact higher than the prosecution rate in nine of the last 10 years in the city, he stated.
In 2022, the prosecution rate in Washington was 33%.
Additionally, the legislation would require prosecutors' offices that serve jurisdictions larger than 380,000 people to publish their prosecution rate data on an annual basis.
Most jurisdictions do not make such data public, and Meuser said he believes the American people have the right to know how many criminals their local, often elected, prosecutor is releasing without pursuing charges.
"Perhaps the greatest responsibility of a government is to assure the safety and well-being of its citizens," Meuser said.
"But far too often in recent years, woke prosecutors have failed to pursue charges against criminals that police officers have often risked their lives to arrest. Instead, prosecutors have inserted their own ideological, political agenda into the justice system and deemed themselves judge and jury. The failure to prosecute such an alarming number of arrests has emboldened criminals as they now believe their illegal, violent actions will go unpunished. We have seen the devastating result of this soft-on-crime mentality as violence skyrockets in our nation's major cities," he said.
Meuser said the bill seeks to hold prosecutors accountable and helps ensure George Soros-backed ideologues are not releasing criminals back onto the streets without consequence.
"Common sense says that when you increase the prosecution rate of dangerous criminals there will be fewer offenders in our communities to commit acts of violence," Meuser said.