A 30-year-old mother was killed and her small child seriously injured on Tuesday afternoon when four teenagers driving a stolen car ran a red light and rammed the driver-side door of their car. Local police had noticed the stolen car but were ordered to stop following it, based on local non-pursuit policies. The incident occurred only seven miles east of the U.S. Capitol in Prince George’s County, Md., depicting the tragic consequences of the same lax crime policies that Trump’s temporary takeover of D.C. police briefly interrupted in the federal district.

At 3:41 p.m., emergency responders were called for a two-car accident at the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Highway (Md. 704) and Sheriff Road, where a stop light regulates eight thru-lanes and eight turn-lanes. There, a stolen car containing four juveniles, ages 17 to 14, had run into a car carrying a young mother and her child.

The woman was killed, and her child (variously reported to be either two years old or between the ages of four and eight) sustained “critical, life-threatening injuries.” Three of the teens were also taken to the hospital for “serious but non-life-threatening injuries,” and all four are now in police custody. Police found another stolen vehicle that had crashed nearby, and they arrested another juvenile in connection with that vehicle.

Investigators cordoned off the entire intersection and all approaches to it, which were still closed at 6 p.m., snarling evening commuter traffic. The next morning, a pile of debris remained on the side of the road, including what looked to be the mangled remains of a car door.

“Today is just a very sad day in Prince George’s County,” stated County Executive Aisha Braveboy. “Young people have to be in school. They have to be focused on learning and their education, and their future. When they take their eyes off that, they end up in situations like this.”

While generally true, this statement did not necessarily apply to this tragic case (not to fault Braveboy, who was responding to the tragedy soon afterward with limited information). Classes at the local high school, which began Tuesday, dismissed at 3:10 p.m., making it entirely possible that a group of students left school, jacked a car, and wrecked it in a fatal accident only half an hour later. Keeping kids in school does not prevent them from committing crimes; it only restricts their hours on the streets.

Sadly, other policy failures also played a role in this tragic accident. First, officers with the Seat Pleasant Police Department (a town directly adjacent to D.C.) saw a vehicle in their plate reader identified as stolen from a nearby neighborhood. They began following the vehicle at a distance to “keep eyes on it until we got the helicopter in the air,” said acting Prince George’s County Police Chief George Nader. The officers were then told to stop following the car, “because if it’s just a stolen vehicle, we don’t follow,” he explained.

“Just a stolen vehicle” is a curiously coldhearted way to describe an auto theft. For the victim, a stolen automobile represents a loss of an investment worth multiple thousands of dollars, one of which is difficult and costly to replace in the current market, especially for the predominantly working-class residents of Prince George’s County. The victim also loses their primary means of transportation, making it more difficult to reach their place of work, especially for those who work shifts at odd hours.

The victim may be highly motivated to recover their stolen automobile, but the county’s progressive law enforcement agency is merely content to observe the law-breaking and then do nothing until the stolen car stops — often because it has been wrecked.

This highlights the fact that failure to intercept stolen cars is not only an injustice to the car’s owner, but also to other drivers on the road. Those who are willing to steal a car rarely shrink from violating other traffic laws, which exist for the safety of all drivers. In the case of juveniles, car thieves may not even be qualified to drive a car, making them even a greater danger to others. As the Tuesday wreck tragically demonstrates, this laissez-faire approach to car-stealing can even prove fatal to innocent bystanders.

This is not to say that car chases completely avoid the same danger. In March, Prince George’s County police did chase another stolen car, resulting in another fatal crash at the very next stoplight. (Perhaps that incident initiated the police department’s no-chase policy.)

The difference lies in the incentives created and the duration of the dangerous situation. If police officers choose the first safe opportunity to intercept a stolen car, they could potentially save lives that would have been lost if that car was involved in a fatal accident. If police officers are not allowed to chase a car, a would-be car thief is much more likely to believe the lie he tells himself to rationalize his crime, “they’ll never catch me.”

Much like a mass shooter, the driver of a stolen car is free among the public with a deadly weapon. In mass shooting situations, police are trained to charge and neutralize the shooter as quickly as possible, before they can harm any more victims, not observe from a helicopter until the shooter runs out of ammunition. The same logic applies to chasing stolen cars.

The second policy failure is the lenient way that progressive prosecutors and judges have treated juvenile perpetrators of carjacking and similar crimes over the past five years. Despite the seriousness of their crimes, progressive prosecutors have pursued and judges have imposed probation instead of stricter penalties. This has convinced these young people that they will not face serious consequences for their crimes, so they go and commit more. In October 2024, two PG County teenagers were indicted on 74 counts related to seven armed carjackings, one attempted armed carjacking, and one stolen vehicle, all committed over a five-week span from June to July. As The Atlantic contributor Jamie Thompson wrote, police have seen “the same perpetrators arrested for carjackings again and again, even after getting caught.”

Even in Tuesday’s high-profile crash, acting State’s Attorney for PG County Tara Jackson (D) seemed reluctant to press charges against the joyriding teens. “We will bring whatever charges are, um, required,” she said with hesitation. “Whatever violations of the law we see, we will charge for that.” (Jackson was appointed to fill the vacant post after former State’s Attorney Braveboy successfully ran for County Executive, a post that became vacant when former County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D) successfully ran for U.S. Senate. During a crime spree in 2022, Alsobrooks criticized Braveboy for failing to hold young people accountable.

The same policy failures that afflict Prince George’s County also afflict Washington, D.C. — or at least they did until Trump’s takeover. Although D.C. code technically allows police to pursue a vehicle in limited instances, it is hardly ever practiced. In more than seven years living in and around D.C., I cannot recall a time that I saw a vehicle pulled over by the Metro Police Department.

Likewise, D.C. has struggled with a wave of teen violence following lax prosecution. In 2018, D.C. reduced the punishments faced by “youth offenders” (those under 24 years of age), imposing probation in more cases, allowing judges greater discretion to reduce sentences, and later setting aside their criminal records. D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb (D) said he didn’t believe charging youths as adults because “kids are kids.”

Even former U.S. Attorney for D.C. Matt Graves, who was himself accused slow-walking prosecutions under President Biden, called out the problem of repeat youth offenders in the district. “In our experience, it is uncommon for a defendant to commit just one robbery or one carjacking and never commit either offense again,” he said in 2023. “I have instructed our career supervisors to strongly consider prosecuting juveniles as adults when they are involved in a series of armed carjackings or armed robberies. These are not the impetuous crimes of a child who temporarily lost control. They are the calculated crime of someone willing to hold a gun to someone's head for life for money or property.”

These are the failed policies to which the nation’s federal district will return once Trump’s 30-day federal takeover expires, unless Congress acts to prolong his authority.

Even still, an effort to clean up crime in D.C. cannot ignore the rampant lawlessness among teens just over the border in Maryland. In fact, teenage criminals regularly cross the boundary line between D.C. and Maryland, with many committing carjackings in both jurisdictions. Even the case that prompted Trump’s crime crackdown, the assault of DOGE staffer Edward Coristine during an attempted carjacking, involved a gang of youths, some of whom were from Maryland.

A clear-eyed perspective on the youth problem will also admit that government policy can only have a limited effect. Partly, government must rely on parents to keep their children in check. But, partly, the problem can only be solved by the fear of God. In August 2023, a D.C. resident named Gloria said that, when she was growing up in D.C., “people feared God, and people feared the police,” but now “they just don’t care.” It’s difficult to find a more profound analysis of a case in which teenagers leave school, steal a car, ignore traffic laws, and kill a young mother.