Reply to How to get rid of Charles Allen?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you have a neighbor/ANC commissioner/etc. who may have a more balanced approach to crime, please encourage them to consider running or at least making some serious noise. I'm tired of Charles Allen's "it's literally never their fault when they point a gun in your face" approach.[/quote]

Have you called his office to voice this? I have. They very courteously tell you how much you are misunderstanding the worthiness of his approach. I mean, I guess they have to defend it since its his platform, but I've had some pretty Seussical conversations with his staff.[/quote]

Good for you for calling him. But this is why I don't even try - I just don't think it would change a thing unless he (and politicians in general) is at risk of losing his seat or comes under serious political/PR pressure. I just don't know how to get that going, especially around such a sensitive topic. Any time you bring up violent crime as a problem, you get flamed as a racist within three seconds, when all I want (and the vast majority of AA residents want) is to not worry about getting carjacked or shot at by 14-year-olds who will be released to their guardian in a day.[/quote]

With all due respect, that’s not *all* that most people want.  We want to see a productive future for our kids, grandkids, etc. which does take some understanding of why they are committing crime.  Of course no one wants to get carjacked or shot.[/quote]

But once people get carjacked or shot, Allen's sympathies seem to lie more with the person doing the the carjacking or shooting than the victim. How is that at all sane?[/quote]

Maybe it’s just a difference in perspective.  Of course carjacking is wrong.  What do we do about it?  Lock up a 14 year old kid for 30 years?  Or give that kid better choices to make?  Frankly, I trust that people will make overall good decisions when they have good options to choose from.  Some of these kids don’t have good options in front of them.[/quote]

What Allen and people like him do not seem to realize is that there's middle ground between locking up a 14-year-old kid for 30 years and releasing them without any sort of corrective measures, which is exactly what is happening now. [/quote]

This +1,000. There’s a big difference between locking a kid up as an adult for decades (which DC can’t do if the kid is under 16 no matter what the crime), and wanting people held accountable for the crimes they commit. The amount of violent crime committed by teens in DC is at an all time high, but no one will talk about the fact that this uptick directly correlates with the implementation of policies designed to be softer on crime committed by kids. There is a whole generation of kids in DC now who know that if they are running the streets and they are under 16 nothing of significance will happen to them.[/quote]

Kids have a criminal field day in DC up to 18. Then they don't know another lifestyle and keep going and get locked up for much longer (though Allen is working on that!).[/quote]

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