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In 1992, then-Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., sounded much like President Donald Trump does today, repeatedly warning about Washington, D.C.’s crime crisis — the same issue that ultimately led the current Republican leader to take control of the city’s authorities.
Biden argued in favor of the need to crack down on crime in Washington, D.C., as he took to the Senate floor that September to warn against stopping at red lights late at night and urged his colleagues to support what became the “Biden Crime Bill.”
The clip resurfaced as the Democratic Party, in which Biden has been the de facto leader, lambasted Trump’s takeover of Washington law enforcement agencies to quell what the clip itself laid out to now be a multi-decade crisis.
Biden addressed Senate Presiding Officer Robert Byrd, D-W.V., saying when he could not catch an Amtrak train back to the Wilmington station that now bears his name, he would either “get in my car outside this great citadel of justice and freedom and drive out to the Baltimore-Washington Parkway” or rent a room at the Hyatt Hotel on New Jersey Avenue.
WHITE HOUSE BLASTS FAR-LEFT DA’S WARNING THAT TRUMP ‘BETTER NOT TRY’ DC TAKEOVER ‘IN PHILLY’
Biden said he never worried about getting jumped, until one night a representative for the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms stopped him from walking to the hotel.
“Now I am not any more than my friend (Byrd) from West Virginia very big on perks here in the United States Senate. I don’t think either one of us have ever been accused of seeking the perks of office,” he said. “And I felt it was kind of silly.”
Biden said he was warned that a congressman “had been stabbed in the gutter outside the Hyatt” a short time prior and that “two people had been shot in the park.”
“Driving home, my staff, who lives here on the Hill, reminded me don’t stop at a stoplight until I’m out of town.”
AS TRUMP INTERVENES IN DC’S CRIME CRISIS, ANOTHER VIOLENT CITY’S DA GETS A CHALLENGER FROM INSIDE THE TENT
The future president said crime risks in Washington had gotten so bad that he would “slow up” halfway down a block when the next traffic signal turned red and “never come to a full stop” at the intersection.
“Because of carjackers: stopping at the light, people standing on the corner, walking up with a gun.”
Biden recounted a Sergeant-at-Arms official telling him that he unsuccessfully interrupted a carjacking at a 7-Eleven in Washington – as the official watched a woman pump gas and walk over to pay the attendant when someone jumped in her car and attempted to take off until the official intervened. The crook produced a pistol and the official relented.
“What’s changed, Mr. President, is it used to be at least the women and men in this country, if they were very prudent about how they behaved… and didn’t walk certain places at night; didn’t do certain things that put themselves at risk, that they had a pretty good prospect of avoiding becoming the victims of violent crime.”
“Not today, Mr. President. Prudence in no way will determine whether or not you can avoid being the victim of violent crime — It may increase your chances of not being a victim, but there’s no place to hide, Mr President. And let’s look at what’s happened just in the last several years here [in Washington].”
In separate floor remarks, Biden slammed then-President George H.W. Bush for reportedly helping prevent passage of crime-crackdown legislation – and bragged that “we do everything but hang people for jaywalking in this bill.”
While Biden’s “Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1993” he was lobbying for never passed, the successful “Clinton Crime Bill” from Rep. Jack Brooks, D-Texas, the following year shared much of its substance.
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