Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto unveiled another public safety-focused bill in January — and the full D.C. Council will vote on it for the first time on Tuesday, Feb. 6. It’s a 90-page omnibus combining provisions from a number of previously introduced crime bills the D.C. Council is considering. The hefty bill includes provisions ranging from increased penalties for certain gun crimes to rollbacks of police reforms to a new culinary and hospitality training program at the D.C. Jail.

Pinto, who chairs the council’s judiciary committee, told reporters last month that she was moving the provisions in one mega-bill because the District needs a slate of legislative interventions to reduce crime and violence — and fast. The city saw more homicides last year than any year since 1997, along with a surge in carjackings and vehicle thefts.

“We think that it’s important that we move this forward now as one vote so that we can start to turn things around as soon as possible,” Pinto said.

If the council passes the bill, some provisions – like changes to the city’s criminal laws – could go into effect immediately after D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser signs it, Pinto said. Other provisions would need funding in the next fiscal year’s budget to go into effect.

The bill draws its proposals from legislation that includes two of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s bills, bills that Pinto previously introduced, and a proposal At-Large Councilmember Robert White unveiled in October. Some of its provisions — like changes that tilt the law more in favor of pretrial detention for adults and children – have already gone into effect on an emergency basis, because they were part of an emergency crime bill the D.C. Council passed over the summer.

But the omnibus notably does not include one of the more controversial elements of Pinto’s previous proposals, which would have allowed police to randomly stop or seize people on probation for gun convictions. D.C. judges said it would violate people’s constitutional rights – and Pinto said she ultimately removed that portion of the bill because she realized there would be no way to implement it without risking more unfair and racially disparate police harassment (data already show that about 75% of D.C. police stops are of Black people, even though Black people represent about 45% of the city’s population).

“I heard concerns from returning citizens who talked about what it would feel like after serving time, always looking over your shoulder that you could be searched. I heard from advocacy groups … I met with the police, and we were unclear how this could be administered in a way that we could all be confident would not lead to harassment,” Pinto said.

While the bill has provisions that will likely draw broad council and public support, it also has several provisions that are sure to inspire significant debate — like the steps it would take to roll back police accountability measures that passed the council with broad support in recent years. Public hearings on several components of the legislation featured stark division between residents and business groups demanding more “tough on crime” strategies in response to the city’s crisis, and those who worry city leaders are sliding back into an approach from past decades that produced mass incarceration and cascading trauma in Black communities.

Bowser praised the bill in a statement last month and urged the council to “move with urgency to unanimously pass” it. The ACLU of D.C., meanwhile, slammed the bill, arguing that its measures “open the door for abuse of power.”

Here’s a non-exhaustive overview of the rest of the bill’s provisions. You can read the full bill here, and read a summary of the bill that Pinto’s staff released here. 

“Accountability” and penalties

The bill makes a number of changes to the definitions of crimes and their maximum penalties.

It ups the penalties for certain gun-related offenses, creates new gun-related offenses like “endangerment with a firearm,” and an offense for discarding a firearm or ammunition. It lowers the threshold for retail theft, making it a felony to steal $500 worth of merchandise (the current threshold for retail theft felony is $1,000). The bill also creates penalty enhancements for crimes targeting certain groups of people, like transit workers, seniors, and adults with disabilities. It also creates a penalty enhancement for crimes committed near a recreation center.

It makes strangulation — which can be a precursor to domestic violence-related homicides – a felony. And it includes a provision that would allow police to force people who evade Metro fare to provide their true name and address, or be detained and subject to a fine.

It also revives an anti-mask provision that D.C. did away with during the pandemic (when masks were introduced as a public health measure); Pinto argues that bringing back a law that prevents people from wearing masks for the purpose of committing a crime or creating fear or intimidation will provide police with “a basis for a stop, for articulable suspicion” that could prevent crimes like carjacking.

“Drug-free zones”

The bill maintains a previously introduced provision – part of Bowser’s “ACT Now Act” — that would revive a version of a 1990s-era policy that allows police to create “drug-free zones.”

Under the policy, the police chief could declare a small, defined area as a “drug-free zone” and decree that for up to five days, it would be illegal to gather there “for the purpose of participating in the use, purchase, or sale of illegal drugs.” Then, police could order people who they believe are involved in drug activity to disperse — and arrest them if they ignore those orders.

Opponents of the policy argue it would enable harmful police harassment, and have questioned why the city is returning to a policy it did away with (when she was a councilmember, Bowser herself voted to repeal the policy). Others argue that police can already enforce the city’s drug laws – and don’t need the “drug-free zone” policy to do so. But Pinto and Bowser argue that D.C. police need this additional tool to stop open-air drug activity.

The version of the policy in the omnibus bill is largely the same as Bowser’s, but it does carve out some additional exceptions – like explicitly stating that police can’t stop people who are in the area because they’re seeking drug treatment at a facility that lies within it.

Changes to pretrial detention, DNA testing, and access to GPS data

Similarly to emergency legislation the council passed over the summer, the bill makes changes to D.C.’s laws governing pretrial detention for people accused of crimes. The changes tilt the law in favor of pretrial detention for both adults and children accused of certain violent or dangerous crimes. While only a small percentage of people on pretrial release are arrested for violent crimes while awaiting trial, Bowser and Pinto argue that even small numbers of reoffense can have devastating consequences. Opponents, like Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George – the sole “no” vote on the emergency bill over the summer – argue “there is no credible evidence that pre-trial detention would make D.C. safer.”

The bill also makes other changes to procedures related to arrests and evidence collection – like allowing authorities to collect DNA evidence from people earlier in the legal process, and clarifying that certain GPS records for people under pretrial supervision are permissible to use as evidence against them in court.

More cameras

The bill takes some steps to increase the amount of available video evidence and video surveillance in the city, like creating a pilot that would install video surveillance systems at one transit station in each ward, and expanding the camera rebate program that allows D.C. residents to get reimbursed for installing private security cameras at their homes.

Police reform rollbacks

The bill also rolls back several police reforms the D.C. Council has passed in recent years, incorporating pieces of Bowser’s “ACT Now Act.” The changes include allowing officers to view their body-worn camera footage as they’re writing police reports, except in cases where the officer is accused of using serious force against someone or killing them.

The bill also loosens the city’s prohibition on police neck restraints. Police leadership, the police union, and individual police officers themselves have argued that the law passed by the council as part of a slate of police reforms is overly broad, leading officers to be penalized or disciplined for times when they accidentally touched someone’s neck or touched their neck in an effort to protect them from self-harm. The change to the law clarifies that incidental touching is not prohibited, and also allows police to use a neck restraint for the purpose of limiting a person’s movement. (Mike Tobin, who heads D.C.’s Office of Police Complaints, testified this fall that he agreed the policy needed to be tweaked to carve out incidental neck touching, but said allowing the use of a neck restraint to restrict movement goes significantly too far).

Other police reform rollbacks include eliminating a requirement that police inform contact subjects that they’re being recorded by body-worn camera and allowing police vehicular pursuits to continue if there is a risk of death or serious bodily injury to a person fleeing a crime (the policy would continue to prohibit vehicular pursuits that endanger other members of the public).

The bill would also pare back an expansion of public access to certain police disciplinary records that the council previously approved.

Food at the D.C. Jail

The bill incorporates provisions from a previously introduced bill that tries to improve the quality of food at the jail (which residents have for years said is inadequate and in some cases inedible). The omnibus bill would create a new hospitality and culinary arts training program for D.C. Jail residents, and mandate that DOC adhere to higher nutrition standards for meals. But the provisions in the omnibus don’t include everything from the original bill, and pare back some of the inspection requirements; that’s likely to draw pushback from advocates who pushed for the measures.

Data and government transparency

Several provisions in the omnibus bill would force the D.C. government to make more data available to the public. It would make permanent new requirements that the city’s Office of Unified Communications post data on 911 call wait times and mistakes on its website. It would also make permanent some other data reporting requirements passed in emergency legislation, like requirements that the city’s Criminal Justice Coordinating Council publish data on the outcomes of diversion programs. It would also require the city to collect and post data on where illegal guns are coming from, and require MPD to post the percentage of nonfatal shootings its detectives are solving.

Services for crime victims

The bill attempts to boost accountability and public awareness for crime victims’ services in the city by adding a victim services coordinator position to the city government, requiring the city’s victim services division to report how many people it’s serving and what services they seek, and requiring the city to launch a public awareness campaign to advertise services for crime victims within 180 days of the law going into effect.

Government coordination for violence prevention

The bill also mandates some meetings that are already supposed to be happening in D.C. government under the emergency bill passed last summer – like a regular coordination meeting that is aimed at targeting services to people at high risk of being shot or shooting someone else. It also requires MPD to hold a “shooting review” with police no less than twice a month to “identify the interpersonal dynamics that led to each shooting, the potential for retaliation, and law enforcement or other government agency contacts or interventions with persons involved in the reviewed shootings that may help to prevent retaliatory criminal conduct.”

It also requires the city to create a new “Director of Emerging Adults” position to help coordinate the city’s efforts to serve people in their late teens and early 20s, who have aged out of services targeted at children but who are often not adequately served by adult systems.

Mandated studies and research

The bill also directs the government to conduct research and make recommendations on certain public safety-related topics. First, it would create a “prearrest diversion task force” that would study how the city could better implement diversion programs that could provide addiction and/or mental health treatment for people who are arrested for low-level crimes. The task force would also, according to the bill, identify ways that police could interact more effectively with people experiencing homelessness, mental or behavioral health issues, or substance abuse.

Pinto’s initial version of the omnibus bill also directed a study on the impact of a recently passed law that decriminalized vending without a license, but that provision was removed in between Pinto’s introduction and the bill getting voted out of the council’s judiciary committee.

This story was updated to reflect changes made to the bill in between its introduction and committee vote in the council.