DC Council

The world judges a country by its capital. Paris, London and Rome are showcases of national ambition and a source of pride. How might one judge the United States after visiting Washington, DC? Corrupt, lawless and increasingly unsafe after dark? In a city meant to project strength and stability, one finds instead great domes and marble colonnades sharing the streets with open-air crime scenes. This July, a 21-year-old congressional intern, Eric Tarpinian-Jachym, was shot to death after being caught in an ongoing dispute between two rival groups. In 2023, Phillip Todd, a staffer for Senator Rand Paul took a knife to the chest.

DC Council member Charles Allen is facing a recall effort from fed-up citizens as carjackings in the nation’s capital nearly doubled last year while violent crime rose by 39 percent. Murders hit their highest level in two decades in 2023.  The campaign to recall Allen is being led by Jennifer Squires, a former federal government worker who says she voted for Allen previously but found herself troubled by the councilman’s attempts at so-called criminal justice reform. Allen was behind the attempts to revise DC’s criminal code last year. His changes would have eliminated nearly all mandatory minimums and lowered some mandatory maximums, including for carjackings.