U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro said during a Wednesday interview that she will push for lowering the age for charging violent criminals as adults in the city.
Pirro, who was confirmed to her post earlier this week before the Senate recessed for the summer, told Fox News host Laura Ingraham she has told President Donald Trump about the situation and the need to address it.
“Tell us what we can expect from your time as U.S. Attorney,” Ingraham said to begin the interview.
“First of all, there was another homicide, so we’re now at 99 homicides so far this year. There’s no question that Washington, D.C. has an incredible amount — a incredible number of homicides. You know, you can say that violence and crime is down, but the truth is, violence is more lethal than it’s ever been. And when we say it’s down, down from what, okay?” Pirro, herself a former Fox News star, said.
“We have got carjackings that are up 111%. The problem in D.C. — and President Trump, in his effort to make D.C. safe and beautiful, said to me, ‘I want you to enforce the law, to make sure that there is accountability.’ And I spoke to the president yesterday, at length, about what was going on here,” she continued.
“I said, ‘If you are 14, 15, 16, or 17 years old, you get coddled, as you do in most American Democrat cities. So I can’t charge these people.’ This young kid who worked at the White House was beaten to a pulp, he has got a broken nose and a severe concussion. He is battered all over his head, okay, by a gang of punks, 10 of them, I believe, two have been arrested, two 15-year-olds,” the former New Jersey state judge added.
“None of them come to my office, Laura, because they are not considered criminals. They go to family court where the effort is rehabilitation. The D.C. Council, and the president is right, they have got to stop their coddling. Number one, we’ve got to lower the age of responsibility to 14,” she said. “I’m tired of having these kids commit crimes — and they are crews, not gangs, in D.C. We’ve got intern, you said it in your open, an intern from college, he gets shot going out to McDonald’s at 10:30 at night?”
This kid is trying to help his girlfriend or his friend to a car. He gets assaulted and but for a cop going by, they would have — had they gotten him on the ground, they would have stomped him and finished him. He was able to stay standing. This has to end,” Pirro noted further before placing blame on the Democratic majorities that have governed DC for decades.
“The Council has this Youth Incarceration Act where we had a guy who shot a kid on a bus, not justified, with an illegal gun. Do you know what the sentence was? Probation. The judge said, ‘Go to college.’ Okay? He took an illegal gun. He should be jailed for the illegal gun. Forget about the shooting. You put that on top of the gun. Then what we have got are kids who are out there, who are making fun of all of this, doing carjackings, and I can’t touch them because they want to protect them,” Pirro said.
Ingraham responded by saying that the young perps in the city know they are currently beyond the reach of the law, essentially. “And the older kids send out the younger kids to do the real dirty work because they know they’re fine,” the host said.
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“Accountability. They absolutely understand. It’s time to end it. That’s what the president wants. That’s what we’re going to do,” Pirro added.