00:00We spoke with Bloomberg Law editor at large, Keith Alexander.
00:03So last August, the president sent in 400 National Guard troops to basically canvas Washington, D.C. in hopes of
00:12bringing down crime.
00:13Also sent in other federal troops, immigration officials, things of that nature, custom border people as well.
00:21And the idea was to really reduce crime.
00:24Now, remember, at this time, crime was already down year over year about 25 percent.
00:32Now, fast forward, going into a year later, crime is now up year over year 2 percent, despite thousands of
00:41National Guard troops patrolling the streets of Washington, D.C.
00:45What was the reaction to the surge in the city?
00:47I mean, I was living there at the time.
00:49And let's start with a case.
00:51Start with Sandwich Guy, who became like a little bit iconic.
00:54And it's easy to laugh at the specifics of the case, but this actually kind of ruined this guy's life
01:00in the end.
01:00Can you talk us through kind of that case and why it's being used in your article to kind of
01:04illustrate what this push to charge folks has done to both the system and these individuals?
01:10Sure, Christine.
01:11A lot of your viewers may remember the Subway Sandwich Guy, Sean Dunn.
01:15This gentleman was arrested for throwing a turkey sandwich from Subway that he just purchased after leaving a D.C.
01:24nightclub at an officer.
01:27He was angry.
01:28He was frustrated.
01:29These officers were on the streets of Washington, D.C., and he just threw a sandwich at the officer.
01:35Well, he was arrested, and he was charged with a felony, a felony assault on an officer.
01:42Prosecutors tried to—federal prosecutors tried to make that charge stick.
01:46They couldn't get a grand jury to indict, of course.
01:49So what they did was they lowered the charge to a misdemeanor.
01:53After he was arrested, right before he went to trial, he lost his job with the Department of Justice, and
01:59he went to trial, and, of course, he was found not guilty of assault.
02:04I talked to Mr. Dunn.
02:06I was the first reporter to talk to Mr. Dunn after this whole ordeal, and his life, he says, is
02:11now in ruins.
02:12He has left the Washington, D.C. area.
02:14He's trying to find a job.
02:16He is thinking about suing the federal government for being dismissed without merit.
02:22He was denied unemployment insurance by the city of Washington, D.C., and he said that the arrest and people
02:31like him who've been arrested, it wasn't about charges and it wasn't about reducing crime.
02:38Instead, he said it was about making a statement, that the administration wanted to make a statement against the people
02:44of Washington, D.C.
02:46Keith, I want to pull a thread there, which is you saw these kind of dramatic charges being leveled at
02:49him, and then they were reduced.
02:51And you have done this analysis of folks who were charged since August of last year.
02:55Just walk us through those data as well, because this one anecdote is illustrative of a broader story here, that
03:01we've seen the government kind of walk back a lot of these charges.
03:03That's right, Dave.
03:04What I discovered, we did a year-long investigation, and what we learned was that 27 cases involving felony assault
03:13on an officer were charged in federal court.
03:17This charge, if people were found guilty, would have meant people would have spent years in prison.
03:22What happened after the first two months, defense attorneys pushed back and said, you are charging individuals with a federal
03:32crime of assaulting a federal officer when members of the National Guard are not federal officers.
03:39D.C. police, not federal officers.
03:42These charges should not be federal charges.
03:45So what they did was they dismissed a majority of the cases, and what they did was they reduced the
03:52charges to misdemeanors in a lower court.
03:55They only got four convictions, four convictions out of all these cases.
04:02And one case, they got actual, went to actual trial.
04:07As you all know, that was the Dunn case.
04:09I spoke to so many people whose lives were completely disrupted.
04:14You know, it's interesting if you look at some of the charges that these people had.
04:18A lot of charges of people spitting on officers charged with a felony assault.
04:22Kicking an officer charged with a felony assault.
04:26All these cases were dismissed.
04:28Now, these are federal prosecutors out of Jeanne Perro's office here in Washington, D.C.
04:34And we all know what just happened with the Washington pool that just happened, the dismissal of that case.
04:42All these coming out of Jeanne Perro's office.
04:46So it's very interesting to see what's happening with these prosecutors.
04:48I talked to defense attorneys who said these prosecutors should not have been filing these cases the way they have
04:56in federal court.
04:57You saw that with the reflecting pool.
04:59Again, charge was dismissed.
05:01Yes, prosecutors are saying they're doing with the best they can under the orders that was coming from on high,
05:07trying to get these indictments on felony charges.
05:10What usually rises to level of felony assault?
05:13And are you seeing any pushback from the DOJ attorneys themselves who are having to deal with these very, like,
05:19thin cases and trying to figure out what to do?
05:23That's a great question, Christine.
05:24Here's the issue with these prosecutors is that they could be brought up on charges of ethical violations if they
05:31are filing charges that don't have merit, that the evidence does not support the charge.
05:37And so a lot of prosecutors, I've been told, have actually quit the U.S. Attorney's Office.
05:42This one case that's profiled in my story that your viewers can actually read was a woman who was charged
05:49at the National Zoo.
05:50She went into an employee-only entrance at the National Zoo.
05:54The woman suffered from PTSD and anxiety.
05:57She was surrounded by officers, and she told them that she had anxiety.
06:02They grabbed her.
06:03When they grabbed her, she spat on one and kicked him.
06:06She was charged with a felony assault.
06:08That prosecutor who handled that case dismissed the charge, sent it over to Superior Court, a lower court, and he
06:16resigned from the office.
06:18So a lot of these prosecutors are just saying, I'm not going to go through and do what I'm being
06:23told to do.
06:24Keith, in the last minute we have here, I wonder sort of what's changed as a result of all of
06:28this, if anything.
06:29I think we were last in D.C. a couple of months ago.
06:31National Guard is still there.
06:32My sense is they're going to continue to be there.
06:34That's been renewed.
06:36And they just got some new hotel rooms.
06:37Got some new hotel rooms as well.
06:38Also, is there any change that you've noticed here in terms of both the manpower on the streets and the
06:43way that prosecutors are looking at these cases?
06:46That's a great question, Dave.
06:47Yes.
06:47What I did have noticed, there's about more than 4,000 National Guard officers now roaming the streets of Washington,
06:54D.C.
06:55For a minute there, we saw National Guard members picking up trash on the streets of Washington, D.C.
07:02The Guard members will be here through January of 29.
07:08That's been the order by the president.
07:10So I don't think they're going anywhere anytime soon.
07:12But also what's interesting, and I said this before, crime is now up despite having the National Guard members patrolling
07:20Washington, D.C.
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