ANC Zeroes In on Public Safety
By • March 11, 2024 0 679
Public safety, criminal detention and sentencing (including of juveniles) and police reform were the focus of the monthly meeting of ANC 2E, the advisory neighborhood commission for Georgetown, Burleith and Hillandale, held in person at Georgetown Visitation and via Zoom on Monday, March 4.
In fact, public safety in D.C. has been getting national attention lately, despite indications, including the ANC police report, that crime is down in the District. However, homicides of juveniles in recent weeks have fixed the spotlight on enforcement, sentencing, treatment of DNA samples and the like.
Ward 2 Council member Brooke Pinto attended the Monday-evening meeting virtually to give a long, patient explanation of the various facets of her Secure DC Omnibus bill, which passed the first vote of the Council in February and would be facing the second and final vote of the Council as a whole on March 5. (The District Council acts something like a bicameral government, with two votes on all legislation.)
For the second round, some advocacy groups were expected to show up in an attempt to pressure the Council to vote “no.” Citizens Association of Georgetown Executive Director Brittany Sawyer urged Georgetown residents to write emails to Council members and attend on March 5 in support of the bill’s passage.
Spoiler alert: The Secure DC Omnibus bill passed the Council with a couple of new amendments and only one negative vote. According to Pinto, the mayor will sign the legislation as soon as she receives the final package.
At the ANC meeting, Pinto also announced that she had sent her list of priorities for the fiscal 2025 budget to the mayor, warning the commissioners that budget makers “were facing different sets of limits than in the past few years. We can’t have 30-to-40-year plans at this point.” In response to commissioners’ questions, Pinto seemed to be downplaying funding expectations for some long-planned projects, and a few short-term ones, such as free parking at Rose Park.
“We don’t have the resources for that,” Pinto commented. There is more demand for parking enforcement, for efforts to stem rampant absenteeism in certain school districts and for merging some youth crime prevention programs with serious offense reduction efforts, she said. And staffing concerns and caseloads are ever-present factors.
“Be careful not to take anything for granted,” Pinto added, which immediately raised some hackles. What about the Jelleff Recreation Center modernization, a project already long-delayed? “At this point I can’t confirm anything,” Pinto said. “It is still set aside.”
But Commissioner Kishan Putta, who has been close to that project, told the Georgetowner: “Really, everything is fine with Jelleff. Council member confirmed that there is no reason to worry.”
The ANC meeting then moved on to an extended, seminar-style presentation by Deputy Attorney General for the Public Safety Division Elizabeth Wieser. She covered many details about sentencing, starting with the question of treating a juvenile as an adult for certain offenses.
