[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 16 (Wednesday, January 25, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S79-S80]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 CRIME

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, on another matter, here are just a few 
scenes from across our country in the last few weeks.
  Thirty people were shot in Chicago this past weekend alone. That is 
up from 21 the weekend before.
  In Philadelphia, police are investigating a carjacking spree that is 
reportedly being carried out by armed juveniles:

       They put a gun to my head and they took the van. [And] I 
     haven't found it back again.

  Out in San Francisco, just one neighborhood has seen a beating, an 
attempted robbery, a 2-year-old suffering fentanyl poisoning after 
playing in the park, and 17 car windows smashed--all on one street, all 
on one night.
  Streets, neighborhoods, and cities across our country are being 
swamped--literally, swamped--by a level of crime that is unsafe, 
uncivilized, and totally unacceptable.
  My hometown of Louisville, KY, saw 10 homicides in just the first 10 
days of 2023, and already 5 more since then--the latest additions to 
the list of 500-plus homicides we have seen since the start of this 
violent crime wave 3 years ago.
  As Louisville's mayor said a few weeks ago, ``these are not just 
numbers; these are people.''
  Many of the individuals our city lost were young, just starting out 
their careers and families. Far too many were children, including a 14-
year-old boy we lost just 10 days ago.
  Of course, for every victim who lost their life to violent crime, 
there are even more who have been injured or traumatized or literally 
forced to live in fear. As one resident said, ``I got to lock my doors 
all the time . . . I'm worried about my children going outside. It's 
not fair.''

[[Page S80]]

  It is not fair. Of course, he is absolutely right. It is not fair 
that once-safe neighborhoods have become war zones. It is not fair that 
children are being murdered.
  Or look at what is happening right here in the Nation's Capital. 
Right here in Washington, law and order have been in a free fall. Over 
the weekend, in broad daylight, a rideshare driver had his car stolen 
by a group of men brandishing rifles. City-wide, Washington is 
averaging a carjacking every day. Homicides this year are up 17 
percent. Just yesterday, two 18-year-olds, fresh off a carjacking spree 
in a nearby county, came right here to the capital, ran into two 
separate Capitol Police vehicles, and then tried to flee on foot. 
Fortunately, the Capitol Police brought them into custody.
  Yet the DC City Council is so completely captured by the woke far-
left, they have responded to the crime wave with a new criminal code 
that--listen to this--reduces penalties even further. That is the 
response of the DC City Council.
  Just last week, the council overrode the mayor's veto and pushed 
through a measure that shreds--shreds--the maximum punishment for gun 
crimes. It eliminates almost all mandatory minimum sentences. It will 
clog up the court system with massive expansions of new jury trials for 
misdemeanors.
  Well, the good news on this front is that the U.S. Congress gets to 
have the final word over reckless local policies from the DC 
government. Senate Republicans will have a lot more to say on this 
subject. Stay tuned.
  The American people know crime is getting worse, and they know it 
hasn't happened by accident. From Los Angeles to Philadelphia, to 
Chicago, the Democratic Party has backed radical district attorneys who 
have tried to unilaterally take parts of the local criminal code 
offline. They simply decline to prosecute serious crimes, from drug 
possession to criminal threats, as a matter of principle. In some cases 
these woke prosecutors are seeking early release for felons convicted 
of violent crimes.
  Many other Democrats have spent years fanning the dangerous flames of 
the far-left's antipolice rhetoric. Of course, studies have proven that 
public hostility to police leads directly to more crime, including more 
homicides, in the at-risk communities that need law and order the most.
  Furthermore, the Biden administration and Senate Democrats have spent 
2 years working to stack the Federal judiciary with former public 
defenders and others whose sympathies lie more with criminal defendants 
than with innocent victims.
  Nobody is arguing that criminal defenders should never become judges, 
but this has been a dramatic, deliberate transformation project that is 
skewed overwhelmingly in one direction. Even the New York Times has 
admitted it has been ``a sea change in the world of traditional 
nominations.''
  The Biden administration never misses an opportunity to make crime 
even worse. Deaths from cocaine have quintupled over the past decade, 
but, just a few weeks ago, this President and his Attorney General took 
the radical and borderline lawless step of unilaterally reducing the 
penalties for dealing crack.
  These liberals respond to soaring overdose fatalities by going even 
softer on drugs.
  Democrats are struggling with the basics. Actually, this shouldn't be 
that hard. Drugs belong off the streets. Career criminals belong behind 
bars, and far-left politicians who put innocent citizens last belong 
far away from the levers of power.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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