At a recent hearing of the House Oversight Committee, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser didn’t sound particularly thrilled at facing predictably ignorant-sounding questions from Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), who repeatedly sounds like she’s trying to assemble her line of argument on the fly.
Asked by the Congresswoman about whether she felt a claimed decrease to the budget for local police facilitated claimed spikes in crime, Bowser remarked: “I think a lot of things have contributed to increases in crime across the country.” She pointedly stopped talking at that point.
Bowser, as Boebert’s questioning continued, eventually shared her interest in adding to the size of the city’s police force. After the Congresswoman questioned her commitment to the idea, Bowser continued: “I’ve advocated for more police every day as mayor of the District of Columbia. When I became mayor, we were facing a retirement bubble, and we set a course at that time for hiring and retention.” Bowser also shut down the idea from Boebert that a drop in numbers of new officers meant there’d been some kind of decrease in recruitment by city authorities, explaining that local officials have encountered what she summarized as lessening interest in starting a career in policing.
Boebert asked Bowser what she’d say to ostensibly struggling D.C. residents, and Bowser was clearly still frustrated. “Congresswoman, I don’t have to come here, to talk to you, to talk to the residents of the District of Columbia,” Bowser said. “I talk to them daily… What I tell them is that as their mayor, regardless of what’s happening nationally, regardless of what’s happening in our very complicated criminal justice system, as their mayor, I am charged with making it work.” Boebert ended her questioning in part by babbling about the need for new police as though that wasn’t what Bowser had just been saying she herself supported. Watch it below:
