Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares said Wednesday he has “seismic” concerns about the District of Columbia’s year-long spike in shootings, robberies and carjackings that has soured some residents of the commonwealth on visiting the nation’s capital.
Violent car thefts are of particular concern, said Mr. Miyares, a Republican. He said Virginians commuting to the District are being targeted at red lights, gas stations and along the city’s side streets.
He also lamented the gruesome slaying of a Virginia resident earlier this year in a District hotel.
Christy Bautista was stabbed over 30 times in March inside her Northeast hotel room. D.C. police arrested a blood-soaked George Sydnor Jr. — reportedly a stranger to Bautista — at the scene and charged him with murder.
Sydnor had an active arrest warrant at the time of Bautista’s death for skipping a sentencing hearing for a prior armed robbery conviction.
Mr. Miyares said the steady drumbeat of carjackings and the horror of what happened to Bautista have all contributed to a “spirit of lawlessness” in the District.
The result is a growing number of Virginia suburbanites keep their trips to the city short — if they even go at all.
“I know so many people who now I say, ‘I used to love working downtown D.C. I would stay, maybe go see a play at the Kennedy Center or go and stay for dinner. Now I cross the Potomac, try to get out before it gets dark and I don’t come back in the District until I have to for work,’” Mr. Miyares said.
D.C. Metropolitan Police data shows a 40% jump in violent crime so far this year, with large increases in homicides (up 32%), robberies (up 70%) and carjackings (up 107%) serving as major culprits in the relentless crime wave.
The 253 homicides recorded through Wednesday are the most the District has seen in 20 years. The 925 carjackings are on pace to double 2022’s record-setting number of 484 before year’s end.
Despite D.C.’s disorder, Northern Virginia police departments aren’t seeing the crime come their way.
An official with Fairfax County police told The Washington Times that there hasn’t been an uptick in D.C.-based criminal suspects coming into the county.
But Mr. Miyares said the District’s crime is a concern to the frontline officers in bordering counties Fairfax and Arlington as well.
He also said the Sinaloa Cartel’s growing fentanyl trade in Virginia spells trouble for the District and its suburbs when it inevitably expands north.
The Mexican gang has gained a foothold in Richmond, according to the attorney general, and could come to blows with international gang La Mara Salvatrucha when the Sinaloa Cartel tries to set up shop in the D.C. area.
“There’s always a fight over the drug distribution network, and it gets really bloody and really violent, really fast,” he said.
Mr. Miyares, 47, was elected in 2021 along with fellow Republicans Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears on a wave of voter dissent over the state’s handling of COVID-19, critical race theory curricula in classrooms and public school policies on transgender students.
Mr. Miyares was in the District on Wednesday to tout the Protecting Americans Action Fund, a new political committee aiming to unseat left-wing prosecutors throughout the country that he said are “criminal first, victim last.” Many of the prosecutors being targeted are backed by billionaire George Soros.
Mr. Miyares has a track record of calling out the District’s crime woes.
After Bautista’s death in the spring, Virginia’s top prosecutor called out the District for failing to keep murder suspect George Sydnor and other repeat violent offenders locked up.
D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb shot back days later, saying the commonwealth is a major source of illegal guns that flow into the District and are used in crimes.
Mr. Schwalb cited data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that said 667 of the 1,580 illegal guns recovered in the District in 2020 came from Virginia. In 2021, 619 of the 1,574 illegal guns recovered in the nation’s capital came from Virginia, per the ATF data.
Mr. Miyares said Wednesday that comparison was akin to blaming Indiana gun laws for Chicago’s violence problem.
The attorney general also said he knows many of the pretrial detention decisions for adults are hashed out by the federal U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District. So while it isn’t Mr. Schwalb’s office that’s involved in releasing violent adult suspects back onto the streets, Mr. Miyares found it odd to point the finger at Old Dominion.
“I find it a little bit ironic that, instead of calling out the U.S. Attorney in D.C. that’s not prosecuting these categories of crime, somehow he’s blaming Virginia,” Mr. Miyares said. “Talk about misplaced priorities.”
U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves was called out separately earlier Wednesday after a meeting between D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith and the House Oversight Committee.
Rep. James Comer, Kentucky Republican and committee chair, said in a statement that Mr. Graves and the D.C. Council have “failed their basic responsibility to keep Americans safe and criminals off the streets.”
D.C.’s main prosecutor was oft-criticized for declining to prosecute 67% of criminal cases in fiscal year 2022. By the end of fiscal year 2023, the U.S. Attorney’s Office had declined to prosecute 56% of cases — an 11% improvement in one year.
Mayor Bowser’s meeting with the House Oversight Committee comes the same day she announced the formation of a Real-Time Crime Center.
The new initiative calls for MPD partnerships with federal agencies such as the U.S. Park Police, the Secret Service and the U.S. Capitol Police to “monitor and respond to criminal activities in real-time.”
Details of the initiative will be outlined at a Thursday press conference, according to the mayor.
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