Law and order messaging

Daniel Desrochers

On Wednesday night, Congress approved a resolution to overturn a crime bill passed by the D.C. Council that made sweeping changes to the city’s criminal code, including lowering the maximum sentences on crimes like carjackings and eliminating most mandatory minimum sentences.

Congress’ vote, and a statement from President Joe Biden that he would not veto the resolution — were met with protest in D.C. — where more than 700,000 residents don’t have voting representation and, without statehood, can be subject to the partisan whims of Congress.

But the resolution, which was sponsored in the Republican-controlled U.S. House and spurred on by Republicans in the U.S. Senate, seemed familiar to anyone who’s been paying attention to Missouri politics.

In Jefferson City, the legislature has routinely undertaken legislation in recent years that would give the state more control over Kansas City and St. Louis. This week, the state House passed a bill that would put the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department under state control, which would put it in the same position as the Kansas City Police Department.

The common denominator for when the Missouri legislature and Congress believe they should override local control seems to in be one key area — crime.

“The states created the federal government to give it certain powers and then created political subdivisions,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Missouri Republican. “So I think it’s appropriate when the situation you see now with a crisis in violent crime to the legislature to take these actions.”

Politicians have long attempted to position themselves as “law and order” candidates, treating cities like dangerous, war-torn places that are overrun with crime. It has often served as a racist dog whistle, particularly in the era of white flight from the cities.

St. Louis, Kansas City and D.C all have large Black populations (44.8%, 26.5% and 45.8% respectively), far exceeding the percentage of Black lawmakers in the mostly white legislative bodies that have voted to restrict their control of policing.

The most famous example may be the “Willie Horton ad,” from the 1988 presidential election. Vice President George H.W. Bush was trailing Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, before he launched an aggressive campaign of attack ads, including one that criticized Dukakis because of a Massachusetts program that allowed prisoners to take weekend furloughs. The ad featured Willie Horton, who committed armed robbery and rape while on one of those furloughs. Bush went on to defeat Dukakis.

They run these campaigns about crime for a pretty simple reason — it appears to work. Not just in motivating white suburban voters in national elections, but it’s also helped mayoral candidates in places like New York City and Chicago.

But the numbers are often more complicated than the political rhetoric makes it seem.

Nationally, the rate of violent crime was down 79% between 1993 and 2021, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Rape, robbery, aggravated assault and simple assault all went down. Between 2021 and 2022, murders were down 5% nationally.

At the same time, Kansas City had its second highest number of murders on record in 2022. Murders were down in St. Louis in 2022 and 2021 after a 50-year high in 2020. In D.C., violent crime dropped 7% from 2021, according to the Metropolitan Police Department, but motor vehicle theft was up 8%.

Statistics may be helpful for pointing out trends, but they don’t often change how people feel. In October 2022, 78% of Americans said they believed crime was up in the country compared to the last year and 56% said they believed crime was up in their neighborhood, according to Gallup. Both are part of a general trend showing an increase in a perception of crime since 2001 (again, nationally it’s gone down over that time).

That perception makes fear of crime a potent political argument, particularly for Republicans who are generally perceived as tougher on crime.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told the New York Times in January that she believed Democrats would have held onto the House of Representatives if they had paid closer attention to crime in New York.

In Washington, the House resolution painted Biden and the Democrats into a corner. The party has struggled to shake the activist slogan “defund the police,” even as many leaders of the party have denounced it.

The resolution was supported by 33 Democratic senators and 31 Democratic representatives.

Biden has said he supports the measure, even though he’s come out in support of D.C. statehood, likely in an attempt to avoid the “soft-on-crime” tag right as the 2024 presidential campaign seems to be getting into motion.

It will be the first time Congress has overruled D.C.’s home rule since 1991. That time they blocked the construction of a building that would exceed the city’s height cap.

More from Missouri

A federal judge overturned a Missouri gun law that declares certain federal gun laws “invalid” if they don’t have a state equivalent. The U.S. Justice Department sued over the law, called the Second Amendment Preservation Act, last February. The ruling will be appealed by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey.

Here are headlines from across the state:

And across Kansas

When the Kansas Legislature met in 2022, lobbyists spent more than $433,000 on food and beverages for legislators and other public officials. It apparently wasn’t enough. In response to a campaign finance investigation by the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission, lawmakers are proposing a bill that would expand their ability to get campaign contributions during the session.

The latest from Kansas City

In Kansas City …

Have a news tip? Send it along to ddesrochers@kcstar.com

Odds and ends

Hawley and Jan. 6

Sen. Josh Hawley said he didn’t watch all of Tucker Carlson’s show when the Fox News host presented clips of the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol and downplayed the violence that occurred that day, even though Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, called it “bullshit” and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, called it a “mistake.”

The bit he did see? When Carlson said the House Select Committee looking into the Jan. 6 attack took a “cheap shot” at Hawley by showing him fleeing from the Senate chamber after they showed a picture of him raising a fist to a crowd rallying outside the Capitol that day.

“I saw his segment on me,” Hawley said. “I’ve seen that part. I thought it was good.”

The video showed that Hawley wasn’t the only one who ran from the Senate chamber that day and that he was one of the last to emerge.

But when pressed on whether he agreed with Carlson’s view that you couldn’t call that day a “riot,” Hawley wouldn’t say.

“There were definitely people who weren’t tourists,” Hawley said. “I mean, there’s no doubt about that there are people who committed crimes. So I mean, people who committed acts of violence and who engaged in crime should be prosecuted.”

The Capitol was closed to the public on Jan. 6, 2021 both because of COVID-19 pandemic and because Congress was certifying the 2020 presidential election. That means anyone who entered the building that day committed a crime, like one Missouri man who walked into the building and stayed there for six minutes and pled guilty in January.

Hawley didn’t appear to agree.

“You’ve got people saying I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to be in here,” Hawley said. “They didn’t do anything wrong. They didn’t they didn’t assault anybody. They didn’t engage in any acts of violence. They stayed within the velvet rope lines or whatever. And they’ve been charged with with trespass. I mean I imagine those people have got good claims, I assume, to litigate cases.”

WOTUS

The House on Thursday passed a resolution that would reject the Biden administration’s new rules surrounding whether the federal or state governments have jurisdiction over certain waterways.

The new version of the rules — widely called Waters of the U.S. — are opposed by Republicans, who generally have said they believe that states should be in charge of the waterways in question (water that may not directly touch navigable water, but is part of the larger system).

Rep. Sam Graves, the chairman of the Transportation Committee, which has jurisdiction over the rules, has said he believes it should be settled in a case the U.S. Supreme Court heard this fall.

“American families, farmers, small businesses, and entire communities are suffering under the economic crises caused by the disastrous Biden policies of the last two years,” Graves said in a press release. “The last thing they need is this Administration’s inexplicable decision to move the country back toward the overreaching, costly, and burdensome regulations of the past, which is exactly what this WOTUS rule does.”

The resolution would now need to pass the Senate and get a signature from Biden.

Cori Bush’s security team

Rep. Cori Bush was criticized this week in conservative news media for paying more than $137,000 to a security guard who has expressed anti-Semitic views on social media.

The criticism comes after news broke that in February Bush, a Missouri Democrat, married a member of her security team, who her campaign has paid more $62,000 in 2022.

Bush has spent more than $570,000 on security since joining Congress in 2020. Bush, like many members of Congress, has faced death threats in the past. She paid the fourth most for her security detail in 2021, according to Axios.

Happy Friday

Read this about how a Catholic group was trying to expose gay priests. Try a cocktail named after a line in King Lear (“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!”). I’m in a music rut lately, so here’s the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I will accept any and all recommendations.

Enjoy your weekend.

Daniel Desrochers is the Star’s Washington, D.C. Correspondent
Daniel Desrochers is the Star’s Washington, D.C. Correspondent

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