MSNBC justice and legal affairs analyst Anthony Coley asserted on Wednesday that Washington, D.C., residents are vexed by juvenile crime in their city.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro of the District of Columbia said on “Hannity” Monday that there are “crews” of teens between the ages of 14 and 17 who commit crimes because they are “below the age of criminal responsibility unless they commit the crime of murder, rape one, armed robbery or burglary in the first degree.” Coley said on “Morning Joe” that residents are irritated that stores lock products behind plexiglass to prevent theft.
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“There is a gap between what the data shows and how many Washingtonians feel. And I live in Washington. This is personal for me. Many people are frustrated with crime that we see, particularly committed by juveniles in the city of Washington,” Coley said. “People are frustrated … that when they go to CVS to buy deodorant, they have to get it from behind locked plexiglass.”
“These are not just random anecdotes. What we see in Washington Post polling, among others, is that roughly half of D.C. residents, mostly half of D.C., view this as a serious problem or an extremely serious problem,” he continued. “And the question then becomes why … juvenile arrests are down in the District of Columbia, but we don’t see that in Baltimore, where year over year juvenile arrests are up.”
Coley blamed lawmakers for the juvenile crime issue getting out of hand.
“[MSNBC host] Jonathan Lemire rightly pointed out the $1 billion that Congress is withholding, which would allow Washington, D.C., to hire more officers,” he said. “But the D.C. Council has a role to play here as well, because some of the laws that they have passed are not as strong as they could be for juvenile offenders and for re-offenders.”
However, Coley still argued that President Donald Trump’s crackdown on violent crime in the nation’s capital was still “disproportionate” and “a political stunt.” The crackdown followed a rash of high-profile violent crime cases in the district, including former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee Edward Coristine, also known as “Big Balls,” receiving a brutal beating when he intervened in a carjacking of a woman at around 3 a.m. on Aug. 5.
The suspects for the alleged unarmed carjacking are a 15-year-old juvenile male and a 15-year-old juvenile female from Hyattsville, Md, according to officials.
Although legacy media outlets have reported that crime plunged by 35% in 2024, their numbers rely on local police statistics that exclude crimes like felony and aggravated assault.
Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) only includes homicide, sex abuse crimes, assault with a dangerous weapon and robbery in its overall “violent crime” data that demonstrated a decline in 2024. Aggravated assault and felony assault without the use of weapons are also excluded.
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