The U.S. attorney in Washington, Jeanine Pirro, has instructed her prosecutors to maximize criminal charges against anyone arrested in the administration’s crackdown on street crime, and charge them with stiffer federal crimes whenever possible.
Ms. Pirro held a staff meeting on Monday, as did her deputy overseeing criminal cases, to emphasize that going forward, there would be far less prosecutorial discretion to allow for charging lesser offenses in any case, according to people familiar with the remarks.
“In line with President Trump’s directive to make D.C. safe, U.S. Attorney Pirro has made it clear that the old way of doing things is unacceptable,” said Tim Lauer, a spokesman for Ms. Pirro. “She directed her staff to charge the highest crime that is supported by the law and the evidence.”
The new directive comes as an influx of hundreds of new federal agents are deployed in Washington, suddenly thrust into street patrol duty. Many federal agents have never done such work before, have little training in the use of force and are inexperienced in what types of suspicious behavior justifies a search of a stranger on the street.
Ms. Pirro’s decree also reflects the unique role that her office holds in local law enforcement. She oversees prosecutions in Superior Court, which pursues categories of crime usually handled by local district attorneys, and she also oversees prosecutions in Federal District Court, which handles more serious violations of federal criminal statutes.
Ms. Pirro’s instruction amounts to a declaration that her understaffed office will now seek to ramp up criminal charges arising from the president’s takeover of law enforcement in the nation’s capitol and shift more defendants into the federal courthouse, where prison terms are often much stiffer.
Ms. Pirro has publicly complained that she is short-handed by some 60 prosecutors, a situation that current and former members of the office said was largely because her predecessor, Ed Martin, fired more than a dozen prosecutors and spurred many others to quit.
As part of the administration’s takeover, Ms. Pirro and other Justice Department officials have been distributing cards to law enforcement officers and agents with a 24-hour-a-day phone number to call prosecutors in her office with any legal questions about how to handle suspects or arrests.
Typically, prosecutors in Washington have had to drop or abandon many criminal cases because the evidence is insufficient to win a conviction. Ms. Pirro’s new, more aggressive approach seems to signal that when in doubt, her office will file felony charges first and let the cases proceed to court.