Editorial: What’s Behind the “Recall Charles Allen” Campaign?

by Larry Janezich

Posted March 20, 2024

Editorial:  What’s Behind the “Recall Charles Allen” Campaign?

Last December, several well-connected political professionals who live on Capitol Hill launched an effort to recall Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen from office, citing Allen’s role in creating policies which they say resulted in a significant increase in crime in DC during 2023. 

If the recall organizers succeed in getting 7,500 registered voters in Ward 6 to sign the recall petition by August 12, 2024, that recall question will appear on the ballot on November 5, 2024.

The founders of the recall campaign are Jennifer Squires, former DOD and Booz Allen analyst and now a consultant, and her husband Ned Ertel, former President and CEO of the data processing company RegScan and former treasurer for Chander for Council.  Others close to the leadership who are volunteering their time and effort include recall campaign treasurer April Brown, a realtor; Tonya Fulkerson, a Democratic fundraiser; Moses Mercado, a lobbyist with Ogilvy Government Relations; Rich Masters, a VP for Public Relations, BIO; Michael Hacker, an in-house lobbyist for TikTok and a former House Democratic leadership aide to Rep. James Clyburn; and Mitchell Rivard, chief of staff for Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.).

The recall proponents’ focus has been on five positions Allen supported while serving as chair of the DC City Council’s Judiciary and Public Safety Committee: 

• The Revised Criminal Code Act passed by the DC Council in 2022, which modernized the District’s criminal laws.  The bill was overturned by Congress and that nullification was sustained by President Biden after he initially threatened to veto the Congressional override.   

One of the most frequently cited objections to the revision was that it would have lowered penalties for carjackings and other crimes.  (The bill’s supporters said the changes brought the penalties in line with actual sentencing practices.)  Regardless, the bill never became law.  As a result, the recent spike in carjackings has taken place during a time when the District has some of the harshest penalties anywhere for carjacking already on the books.

A recent community meeting on the spate of carjackings on the Hill https://bit.ly/3VnAhVH discussed at length the difficulty involved in apprehension and prosecution for this particular crime.  In that light, it is worth noting that the proposed-but-never-passed Criminal Code revision broke the crime of carjacking down into several grades based on seriousness of the crime, to better align sentencing with the degree of harm inflicted and to supply achievable thresholds of evidence for each grade to facilitate prosecution.  A U.S. Attorney confronted with a lesser grade of carjacking who might be reluctant to charge under the current, harsh law might be willing to do so under a charging scheme that better reflected the particulars of the crime in question.  As it stands, carjacking remains a difficult crime to prosecute in the District.

• An expansion of eligibility for the Youth Rehabilitation Act, from those under the age of 22 years to include those under the age of 25, except in cases of rape, murder and sexual abuse.  In order to fall under the provisions of the YRA, offenders must plead guilty and the prosecutor must be charging them as an adult.  It is always the decision of a federal judge whether to sentence under the YRA or not. 

One benefit of the YRA is the ability to seal the record of a conviction following successful completion of a sentence.  Research conducted by the independent Criminal Justice Coordinating Council of Washington DC demonstrates that juvenile offenders unable to seal their convictions are three-times more likely to re-offend.  Another benefit of the YRA gives the court flexibility to sentence an offender under the age of 25 below the mandatory minimum, provided the court takes certain factors under consideration and provides a written reasoning if the decision is to sentence under the YRA.  Research demonstrates https://bit.ly/4apfrcP that increasing the length of a sentence has no deterrent effect on crime.  Nor does it affect recidivism:  when looking at the YRA, the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council also found that being sentenced or not being sentenced under the Youth Rehabilitation Act had no effect on the likelihood of that offender to commit a crime following release.

• Expanded the Second Look Act to promote sentence reduction mandates for violent offenders under the age of 25.

Once again, research has shown that increasing the length of a sentence does nothing to deter crime.  https://bit.ly/4apfrcP Sentence reduction programs have been examined by the independent and non-partisan Council on Criminal Justice and found to have no effect on re-arrest for violent or serious crime, mostly because whether someone has benefited from the program or not, most people returning to their communities have “aged out” of criminal offending after serving a substantial sentence. https://bit.ly/498ux5c

While no one can claim sentence reduction actually reduces crime (as opposed to sealing convictions for juveniles, which does), no one can claim that it increases crime either. 

• A 2020 $15 million reduction in the increase in the mayor’s proposed FY 2021 budget for MPD which redirected most of that cut ($9.6 million) to violence preventers – community-based criminal justice related services.  $6.1 million of the cut was to reduce the size of the police force – which, along with the Mayor’s proposed $44 million in “vacancy savings” (preventing the filling of vacant positions) resulted in a one-year hiring freeze for fiscal year 2021.  Recruits dropped that fiscal year from over 200 to 37, and though the number of recruits rose again in FY 2022, they continued a decline which began in fiscal year 2019, falling from the recruitment high of 261 in fiscal year 2018.  This decline in new recruits began well before the Council passed the $6.1 million reduction – a reduction which paled in comparison with the Mayor’s own cuts – and it continues despite the Council’s strong efforts to incentivize hiring.  https://bit.ly/3IwFWB2 

On October 12, 2023, Chairman of the DC Police Union Gregg Pemberton testified at a House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee.  Pemberton claimed that, as the direct result of the actions and rhetoric of the DC City Council, “the MPD has lost 1,329 officers, more than one-third of the department.  501 of these separations, nearly 40%, were resignations; employees who just walked away from a career with MPD.”  The figures cited by Pemberton are misleading, at best.  There were 101 resignations in FY 2018 and 103 resignations in FY 2019, before the budget cuts passed in 2020.  Resignations from the MPD for FYs 2020 – 2023 amounted to an additional average of 27 officers per year above the 100 or so for each of the two previous fiscal years.  Regarding the pandemic-era addition of about 27 officers to the preexisting exodus of officers from MPD, DCist reported in October 2023 https://bit.ly/3TFZCJ3 that many factors were at work, including the pandemic itself as well as increased scrutiny of police, but that many officers “ultimately left because they said they were profoundly overworked and felt disrespected by MPD managers,” particularly mandatory overtime, a finding confirmed in a study conducted by the independent Police Executive Research Forum.

Most important, the police staffing shortfalls appear to be not the resignations, but the inability to hire recruits to replace officers who resigned, retired (including those who moved on to neighboring jurisdictions which pay more) or were terminated.  The average hiring rate for FYs 2018 and 2019 was 248 hires each year.  The average for FYs 2020 – 2023 was 138 a year.  See MPD staffing report here:  https://bit.ly/3IwFWB2  Other cities across the country have also experienced recruiting problems; the Justice Department released a report on the nationwide recruitment crisis in law enforcement in October 2023.   

Like others on the Council and the Mayor herself, Allen supports aggressive measures to recruit new police officers to the MPD. 

• The Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act of 2022, made it easier to fire officers for misconduct, prohibited the hiring of officers with prior misconduct, required the release of names and body camera recordings of officers involved in deaths, and banned chokeholds.  President Biden vetoed the Congressional override of the law, noting that enhancing public trust in the police improved public safety. https://bit.ly/3x0ujjs (Crucially, the Police Accountability Act included two provisions vehemently opposed by the DC Police Union:  a provision which required the creation of a public-accessible data base of police discipline files and another provision which takes discipline out of collective bargaining.) 

There is little in the 2022 Policing Reform Act that is new.  Bans on chokeholds, increased transparency for police misconduct, and making it easier for the Chief of Police to fire officers for cause are all fairly commonplace.  Many jurisdictions ask even more from police when it comes to use of force or explaining their actions. https://bit.ly/494oWgp

Taken together, the features of Allen’s legislative record which the recall leaders claim drove crime higher in DC actually show that Allen has implemented evidence-based criminal justice policy, endorsed basic police accountability measures, and served as a member of a Council that has taken steps to assist in police recruitment and retention that seem modest compared to what the Mayor might achieve in boosting MPD morale by insisting on better police management. 

The recall proponents say they want to send a message to the City Council which has supported progressive criminal justice policies by marginally cutting back funding for policing and increasing funding for community groups involved in criminal justice.  In not offering policy alternatives, their message implicitly endorses less accountability for police and more severe punishment, without acknowledging that such an approach must itself be measured for effectiveness.    

That evaluation would not go favorably for recall supporters.  One of the most consistent research findings in criminal justice https://bit.ly/4apfrcP is that certainty of apprehension deters crime, but increasing the severity of punishment does not.  And, given that questions remain about how best to design and implement police accountability, no serious person can suggest that poor police accountability serves the public interest.

From CHC’s coverage of many community crime meetings, it is clear to me that real debates exist on questions of policing and crime reduction.  The recall effort contributes nothing to any of them.  Setting aside the broader, mostly economic factors that drive crime, the two “local” criminal justice factors cited by experts as affecting crime in the District are 1) the fact that the US Attorneys who work for the federal Department of Justice and are tasked with charging adults in the District actually have one of the lowest charging rates in the country (recently, the Office of USAG has increased the number of prosecutions); and 2) the probably-related appalling state of the DC Department of Forensic Science, aka our “crime lab,” https://wapo.st/3TJGqKl which only recently has won back accreditation and the ability to process evidence.  Stepping back from just criminal justice policy but still focused on local factors, DC’s current chronic school absenteeism and truancy rate https://wapo.st/3PwCLxc is scandalous and clearly bears a relation to crimes committed by school-age young people. 

If you follow the evidence, care about criminal reduction and review the record, it makes more sense to recall the Mayor – but even that would founder for lack of substantive justification.  Or it might make more sense to support DC statehood and sovereignty over those who serve as our District Attorneys so that the office could properly be staffed and supervised with DC priorities in mind.  What would make the most sense of all, according to the independent and non-partisan Council on Criminal Justice, is to urge an intergrated, whole-of-government approach to crime reduction consisting of evidence-based policies.  https://bit.ly/3INeH5o

Something Charles Allen has done.  https://bit.ly/43tV4Ji

As a criminal justice intervention, the recall of Charles Allen makes no sense.  Then how should we view it?  I discuss this in Part II of this editorial: Who’s Behind the “Recall Charles Allen” Campaign?