“What we have seen over the past four years is nothing but mayhem.”
WASHINGTON, DC — In remarks this past Thursday afternoon before a luncheon meeting of The Ripon Society, Chairman of the District of Columbia Police Union Gregg Pemberton decried a law passed in 2020 by the DC City Council, saying it has fueled the current crime crisis in our nation’s capital and produced “nothing but mayhem” over the past four years.
“On June 8, 2020,” Pemberton stated, “the DC City Council introduced a bill called the Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Act. It was an 84-page bill with 26 subtitles that sought to remove the rights of police officers. It removed their collective bargaining rights and their disciplinary rights. It changed the way that they’re able to stop people. It changed the way they’re able to pursue people. It changed the way that use of force is measured. And the list goes on and on and on.
“What this bill did was shut down all of policing in the city. We tried to make this known to the City Council. Unfortunately, in June of 2020, the City Council was not interested in listening to the police union’s position on anything. As a result, this bill passed, and it’s been in effect for almost four years now. What we have seen over the past four years is nothing but mayhem. If you look at the crime stats, just last year we ended up with 274 homicides — the highest we have seen since 1997 — which was a 35% increase from the year prior, which was yet another record year.
“We had a 60% increase in robberies — I think something like 2,600 robberies. We had almost 1,000 carjackings, which was a 109% increase over the prior year — doubling the number of carjackings that went on in the city. Violent crime overall was up 40%, and property crimes were up 26%. Burglary, thefts, shoplifting, stolen cars — every crime category that we measure in the city was up by double digits. Everything. That is exactly where we are right now.”
Pemberton has spent nearly two decades working for the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Department and currently serves as a Detective Grade 1. He was elected Chair of the DC Police Union in 2019. In this position, he represents more than 3,500 rank-and-file officers, detectives, and sergeants serving in the DC MPD — all of whom, he noted, have been impacted by the June 2020 bill.
“This bill has had such a negative impact on policing,” he said. “It makes it impossible for officers to do their jobs, and exposes them to administrative, civil, and even criminal penalties for doing their job appropriately … Because of that, over the same time frame, going back to that June 2020 date, we’ve lost over 1,400 police officers from an agency that at the time had 3,800 officers. Of those 1,400 who have left, 45% of them have resigned. That is an astronomical number of police officers to just walk into HR and say, ‘Here’s my gun and badge — I’m done.’”
The result, Pemberton added, is that the police officers who have chosen to remain on the force are being overworked.
“We’re using 1.1 million hours of overtime,” he stated. “The 10-year average prior to 2020 was 250,000 hours — a quarter of that. So we’re now using four times the amount of overtime hours in order to make up for that shortfall. A million hours of overtime is equivalent to 500 full-time employees. This shortage of police officers is causing the remaining police officers to be overburdened with extra work.”
Ultimately though, the solution to DC’s crime crisis is not simply to add more police, Pemberton said. The solution is to get rid of the June 2020 legislation that keeps the police officers from doing their job.
“There needs to be pressure put on the City Council,” Pemberton declared. “They need to undo the mistakes they made in 2020 … I think a lot of what you’ll hear out of the Council is, ‘We’re working to fix it.’ But most of these bills are window dressing. It’s not going to do anything to hire 500 cops.”
Following his remarks, Pemberton was asked a number of questions, including one about whether he believes there are any elected officials in city government who have the police union’s back.
“Mayor Bowser gets a lot of flak for the crime in the city,” he observed. “But she has been an advocate [of the police] and has spoken against the defund the police movement. She has vetoed or not signed many of the pieces of legislation that came across her desk. And she has never once suggested that we need less police officers. So she has been an advocate of ours.”
Pemberton also singled out DC City Council Member Brooke Pinto, who serves as Chair of the Committee on the Judiciary & Public Safety. “I think she’s trying to do her best to solve these problems. But she’s having to tap dance around these 12 other council members who are pushing her in the other direction.”
Pemberton was also asked what Republicans in Congress can do to address DC’s crime crisis. He pointed to the Protecting Our Nation’s Capital Emergency Act of 2023, a bill introduced this past September by U.S. Rep. Andrew Garbarino (NY-2) and is currently being considered by the House Oversight Committee, as a good place to start.
“If we can get that out of committee and get it voted on,” he said, I think we’ll probably have a companion bill in the Senate to go with it. It’s something that I believe the White House will have an appetite for.”
To view Pemberton’s remarks before The Ripon Society Thursday afternoon, please click the link below:
For more information on Pemberton’s work and ways to support our capital’s law enforcement officers, please visit https://www.enoughisenoughdc.com/, and dcpoliceunion.com.
The Ripon Society is a public policy organization that was founded in 1962 and takes its name from the town where the Republican Party was born in 1854 – Ripon, Wisconsin. One of the main goals of The Ripon Society is to promote the ideas and principles that have made America great and contributed to the GOP’s success. These ideas include keeping our nation secure, keeping taxes low and having a federal government that is smaller, smarter and more accountable to the people.