President Donald Trump’s crackdown on crime in Washington, DC, is already yielding delicious results. One man was arrested for assaulting federal officers … with a sandwich. It was violence on — I mean, with — a Subway.
I’m not kidding, though I’m only bringing it up because it’s so darn funny.
Evidently, DC Man agreed. “He thought it was funny,” said Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, in a video. “Well, he doesn’t think it’s funny today because we charged him with a felony: assault on a police officer.”
The man reportedly told police, “I did it. I threw a sandwich.” He allegedly threw a submarine-style fastball after hurling obscenities at the officers, whom he smeared as “fascists.”
I’m not sure why he thought that was funny, but he’s in a pickle now. His ignorant assessment also means we know where this cold-cut criminal belongs on the political spectrum.
Throwing sandwiches isn’t exactly the kind of crime besetting the nation’s capital, and it happened Sunday night — before Trump’s Monday press conference announcing his plans. Evidently, the clown in the pink shirt couldn’t wait to ham it up.
As much fun as it is to make sandwich puns, the real meat of this story is the reaction to Trump’s plans. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser provides a great example of talking out of both sides of her mouth. The Democrat first called the president’s move “unsettling and unprecedented,” adding, “I can’t say that given some of the rhetoric of the past that we’re totally surprised.”
In the same remarks, however, she conceded the crux of the issue: “The fact that we have more law enforcement and presence in neighborhoods, that may be positive.”
The next day, she was back to typical Democrat resistance. “This is a time where community needs to jump in and we all need to,” she told community leaders, “to do what we can in our space, in our lane, to protect our city and to protect our autonomy, to protect our Home Rule, and get to the other side of this guy, and make sure we elect a Democratic House so that we have a backstop to this authoritarian push.”
Police generally support the move.
“Their average homicide rate has doubled in the last 10 years. They used to average less than 100 homicides. Now they average over 200,” said National Fraternal Order of Police President Joe Gamaldi. “And it’s because you have a radical element on that city council that has defunded their police. They have embraced revolving door criminal justice policies. And frankly, they treated the hardworking men and women of law enforcement in that town like crap. So, of course, they need help. You have to do something, otherwise it’s going to get out of control.”
DC Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith agreed, saying she wants to “work together” with the president and federal officers on a plan to fight crime. “We have been working collaboratively,” she also said in a press conference. “I think this is going to be a good effort … supported by both teams.” She added, “We’re here to work with our federal partners.”
Those comments are welcome, but they were drowned out by an exchange at the end of her time at the microphone.
Reporter: “Can you tell us what the chain of command is now?”
Smith: “What does that mean?”
Mayor Bowser jumped in to avert total disaster, but the damage was done. The video clip generated a lot of attention on social media. She doesn’t know what “chain of command” means? gasped the Internet collectively.
That’s arguably the most plausible explanation for her question — that she’s unfamiliar with that term. I’ll admit, however, that it’s also possible the question caught her off guard after she had just explained what working together would look like and who she still reports to.
That doesn’t mean she isn’t out of her depth. Bowser knew it, as evidenced by her practically shoving Smith aside at the microphone. Chief Smith is the poster child for DEI hiring practices. Before taking over as chief in 2023, she was literally the chief “equity officer” of the DC police department, which she joined in 2022. That’s a meteoric rise, and I’m guessing there was more than “equity” at play.
Smith also hasn’t exactly addressed crime in the city. Yes, we’ve heard the incessant talking point from Democrats and their Leftmedia propagandists that “crime is at a 30-year low” in the District. But I addressed that on Tuesday, noting that those statistics are questionable at best and that a DC police commander was suspended last month and is under investigation for manipulating DC crime statistics.
It was more than one commander cooking the books. “Instead of taking a report for a carjacking or a stabbing or a shooting,” commentator Matt Walsh notes, “officers would classify the incident as ‘taking an injured person to the hospital’ or a ‘theft’ or a ‘felony assault.’ Apparently, according to the police union, when an incident is classified as a ‘felony assault,’ it doesn’t get counted in the D.C. police department’s daily crime stats, or the FBI’s uniform crime reporting system.”
Besides misclassification, another way to deflate crime stats is to simply not have officers respond to crimes at all, a tactic Smith’s department increasingly used. The same dysfunction can be observed in other major police departments around the nation, many of which are — in defiance of statistical probability — headed by female chiefs.
Another welcome tidbit: Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, said, “DC under federal control is not going to be a ‘sanctuary’ city. We’re working with the police hand-in-hand — and when we encounter a criminal illegal alien, they’ll be turned over to ICE.” That’s great news.
In any case, back to Trump. He has 30 days under the Home Rule Act to direct the DC police department, but he wants longer and needs congressional approval. “We expect to be before Congress very quickly,” Trump said on Wednesday. “And again, we think the Democrats will not do anything to stop crime, but we think the Republicans will do it almost unanimously.”
Unanimity among the 53 Senate Republicans won’t be enough to meet the 60-vote threshold, so then he’ll face a choice. He indicated how that would go when he asserted, “I don’t want to call a national emergency. If I have to, I will.”
