D.C.’s carjacking context
Carjackings exploded in 2023 but began falling after a multi‑agency crackdown. Metropolitan Police Department numbers show robberies down 23 percent year‑to‑date and motor‑vehicle thefts essentially flat, yet officials concede that armed youth crews remain a headline risk.
Last month, MPD chief Pamela A. Smith formed a Juvenile Investigative Response Unit, stressing that “one brazen attack on a federal marshal can undercut a year’s worth of progress.”
Security after Dobbs and extremist threats
The attempted heist came two years after a California man was arrested near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Maryland home with guns and burglary tools—events that spurred Congress to beef up U.S. Marshal Service budgets for judicial protection. Deputy marshals now guard all nine justices’ residences around the clock, rotating in unmarked SUVs much like the one Flowers targeted.
Although investigators found no evidence Sotomayor herself was singled out, former marshal‑in‑charge Andrew Borg testified at Thursday’s sentencing that “target or not, the risk matrix is identical once a gun appears.” Flowers’s bullet scar, he said, “owes to the split‑second training we drill every day.”
While Flowers heads to a medium‑security facility, the two men believed to have ridden with him remain unidentified. The stolen minivan was later recovered with wiped fingerprints. Prosecutors hinted that phone extractions revealed Instagram messages discussing “U‑Hauling exotics” and “Fed pops”—street slang for robbing federal agents. Those chats may yet yield indictments.
