Unfortunately, she has little experience inside the department; she joined the force only 14 months ago as chief equity officer to oversee diversity programs. Before that, she served barely a year as chief of the U.S. Park Police.
While murders are falling in Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Atlanta and other major cities, they’re up 15 percent in D.C. year over year. For the first time in decades, D.C. is on track to exceed 200 homicides for a third year in a row. Violent crime was high last year, but it’s 36 percent higher in 2023. Robbery is up 59 percent. Sex abuse is up 32 percent. Car thefts are up 116 percent. In June alone, 139 people were carjacked in D.C.
A relatively small number of people commit most serious crimes in the District, and the best predictor for whether someone will act violently is if they’ve done so before. Taking them off the streets will have an outsize impact in bringing down crime. Ms. Smith promises to quickly deploy more resources to hot spots and to target the worst troublemakers.
Wards 7 and 8, east of the Anacostia River, are the sites of two-thirds of the city’s homicides. The acting chief lives in Ward 8, so she has insight into the concerns of residents there. “The community wants the police to be the police and do so in a constitutional, safe and respectful manner,” she said.
One piece of good news for Ms. Smith is that Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) signed emergency legislation on Thursday that will help close a revolving door which has allowed many violent offenders back on the streets within hours of their crimes. This has contributed to repeating cycles of retaliatory gun violence. Robert J. Contee III, the previous police chief, who left for an FBI job in April, often complained about people who were wearing ankle bracelet monitors continuing to terrorize their neighborhoods even as they awaited trial for violent crimes.
The new law, in effect for 90 days, will make it easier to hold violent criminals pending trial. Council member Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2), who sponsored the bill as chair of the Judiciary and Public Safety Committee, says 30 suspects or victims of D.C. murders last year were out of jail awaiting trial. Police say the average person arrested for homicide in D.C. has previously been arrested 11 times.
Younger and younger children are being arrested for the first time for very serious offenses. Under a compromise hammered out by Ms. Pinto, juveniles will now face a presumption of pretrial detention if a judge finds “substantial probability” they committed a violent crime. Many of the most horrifying cases of carjacking are being perpetrated by kids who aren’t old enough to have a driver’s license.
Addressing the issue of young offenders, the new chief points out that the city already offers many programs to help children. Instead, her focus will be on the parents of delinquent minors. “There has to be some accountability for the parents,” said Ms. Smith. “That’s the part that we’re missing.” This is a sensible approach.
Another challenge facing the new chief: The department she now leads has 3,237 sworn officers, not including recruits, down from 3,929 in 2014. This is the fewest in half a century. It’s delaying response times and forcing expensive and exhausting overtime.
Ms. Smith’s path to becoming the first Black woman to permanently lead the Metropolitan Police Department began in Arkansas, where she lived briefly in foster care. In 1998, she joined the Park Police as a patrol officer and rose through the ranks, including stints as a canine handler and a union steward.
Ms. Smith took over the Park Police in February 2021 amid continuing fallout from the fatal 2017 shooting of unarmed motorist Bijan Ghaisar in Virginia. In November 2021, the officers involved received notice that they would be fired within 30 days. The union filed a challenge, saying they hadn’t received due process. According to internal emails obtained by The Post’s Tom Jackman, Ms. Smith told officers in roll-call meetings that she was not consulted on the termination and that she supported the union’s challenge.
A spokesman for Ms. Smith said this week that she never got fully briefed on the shooting, which happened while she was based in Atlanta, and never expressed any position on whether the officers should keep their jobs. She also never spoke with the Ghaisar family about the case, which she had said she would do when she started as chief. The federal government negotiated a $5 million settlement with the family, but the two officers remain on desk duty and continue to collect paychecks nearly six years later.
Council members should press Ms. Smith on all this. It’s a red flag for her approach to accountability if she doesn’t believe those officers should be fired for the unjustified killing of a motorist. To her credit, Ms. Smith began requiring Park Police officers to wear body cameras before other federal agencies did.
Around 500 officers work for the Park Police, about 15 percent the size of MPD. The Park Police is an arm of the National Park Service, which reports to the Interior Department. Colleagues of Ms. Smith say she felt hamstrung by federal bureaucracy there. But running a big-city department is vastly more difficult than overseeing the people who patrol federal parks.
With the council on summer recess, the earliest a confirmation hearing can be scheduled is fall. Ms. Pinto promises a “thorough” process with “robust community input.” Until then, Ms. Smith will serve as acting chief.
Her allies promise she’ll be a constant presence who will go everywhere and talk to everyone. They say she’ll improve officer morale, inspire young women of color to go into law enforcement and woo residents who remain skeptical of law enforcement. Ms. Bowser calls Ms. Smith “resilient and ready for this role.” We hope she’s right.
