Days after Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) staffer was brutally stabbed over the weekend, Washington, DC, Council Chairman Phil Mendelson testified before Congress on Wednesday that the soaring crime rate in the district is not a crisis.

Overall crime has soared across the district by 22 percent since 2022, D.C. crime statistics from Wednesday show. Sex abuse is up 110 percent. Homicides are up 19 percent. Property crime is up 27 percent, and motor vehicle theft has soared 108 percent.

Mendelson dismissed soaring crime statistics by claiming before House Oversight Committee, “There is not a crime crisis in Washington, DC.”

Mendelson previously spearheaded a district law that would have reduced punishment for criminals. That bill was vetoed by the mayor but the council overrode the mayor’s veto with a dominant number of votes. Congressional Republicans ultimately prevented it from becoming law.

Mendelson’s claims were in response to House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer’s (R-KY) statement that crime is soaring in the nation’s capital.

“Carjackings in have increased 105% compared to this time last year — 56% of these carjackings are committed by juveniles. Totally property crime is up 28%. Homicides are up 37% since 2019,” Comer explained.

The local crimes have even caught the nation’s attention. Just on Monday, news reports surfaced that just blocks away from the Capitol Building, Sen Rand Paul’s (R-KY) staffer was randomly attacked on the 1300 block of H Street Northeast.

The suspect, identified as 42-year-old, black district resident Glynn Neal, told law enforcement he launched the attack because “voices” in his head told him to do it, according to NBC4 Washington.

The attack occurred on the same street where Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN) was assaulted in her apartment building on February 9. Months prior on H street, a Washington Football Team player was shot in an attempted carjacking.

The attacks did not appear to faze Mendelson, who took no responsibility for the attack on Paul’s staffer. “This is something that was horrible and yet it’s something of which we have no part,” he of the council.

The crime spike in Washington, DC, comes after Biden-appointed United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, Matthew Graves, has refused to prosecute 67 percent of those arrested who would have been put on trial in the D.C. Superior Court.

Graves admitted to the Washington Post on Wednesday the lack of prosecutions has mostly applied to those arrests for gun possession, drug possession, and burglaries.

Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.