By WMAL.com
DC Police Union Head, Gregg Pemberton joined O’Connor & Company Friday morning to discuss the rising crime rates in DC, and Mayor Muriel Bowser’s failure to support the city’s police force. Thursday, Mayor Bowser said the carjacker who murdered the doctor earlier this week, “probably didn’t intend to kill anybody.”
The mayor was referencing the murder of Rakesh Patel, a 33-year-old intensive care doctor at D.C. hospital. Patel was killed Tuesday night after a carjacker struck him with his own vehicle.
On O’Connor & Company, Pemberton voiced his frustration with the Mayor’s recent comments: “What a political gaffe that is because its not up to the mayor to determine what criminals intent is. We leave that up to our detectives and the prosecutors, and then ultimately up to a jury to determine what someone’s intent is … so for the mayor to jump out after only having read a news article about the tragic incident and said that the person had no intent, I think that’s going to have to get chalked up under the political gaffe column because that was a very unfortunate comment.”
Patel’s tragic murder follows a disturbing trend in DC as carjackings and murder continues to be on the rise in the nation’s capital. Carjackings are up 200% in D.C. from the year prior to the pandemic to 2021, according to The Washington Post. In 2020 the number of carjacking was 142, but rose to 426 in 2021.
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