00:00Completely unrelated topic, regarding the President's efforts in Washington, D.C.,
00:05do you have any specifics about how homeless people will be dealt with, where they would be moved to?
00:11What does this look like?
00:13I do, yes, and it's an important question, so thank you for raising it.
00:16The Metropolitan Police Department, with the support of the new federal agencies
00:21who have been surging on the streets of the District of Columbia,
00:24are going to enforce the laws that are already on the books here in Washington, D.C.
00:29For far too long, these laws have been completely ignored,
00:32and the homelessness problem has ravaged the city.
00:35So D.C. Code 221307 and D.C. Municipal Regulation 24100
00:41give the Metropolitan Police Department the authority to take action
00:45when it comes to homeless encampments.
00:48So homeless individuals will be given the option to leave their encampment,
00:52to be taken to a homeless shelter, to be offered addiction or mental health services,
00:57and if they refuse, they will be susceptible to fines or to jail time.
01:01Again, these are pre-existing laws that are already on the books.
01:04They have not been enforced, which is part of the reason for this nationalizing,
01:10federalizing of the National Guard to bring in this assistance for law enforcement.
01:15While we are targeting criminals and trying to remove criminals off of the streets,
01:19we also want to make D.C. safe and beautiful,
01:22and that involves removing mentally disturbed individuals and homeless encampments as well.
01:28So we will be using these regulations and code that already exists to clean up our streets.
01:32And we've already had great success.
01:34Not many of you picked up on this,
01:36but the United States Park Police has actually done remarkable work
01:39in terms of removing homeless encampments from the city.
01:42Since the President signed this executive order in March,
01:4570 homeless encampments have been removed by the U.S. Park Police.
01:48There are only two homeless encampments remaining in D.C. federal parks
01:53under the National Park Service's jurisdiction,
01:55and the removal of those two remaining camps is scheduled for this week.
01:59So the U.S. Park Police will be leading this effort alongside MPD.
02:02Just very quickly, he had talked in one of his social media posts
02:05about moving them very far outside of the city.
02:09Is that off?
02:10No, it's not off.
02:11We're exploring how we could do that.
02:13But again, homeless shelters offered addiction and mental health services.
02:18Or jail, if they refuse, are the options on the table right now.
02:22And we'll continue to explore that option.
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