A desperate mother in the District of Columbia pleading with carjackers to let her grab her baby before driving away. Mourners on a Northeast sidewalk hit by a hail of deadly bullets outside a funeral service. A Virginia woman brutally slaughtered inside a New York Avenue hotel room. A homeless man stabbed to death in front of a family in the Petworth Neighborhood Library.
Move over, New York, Chicago and San Francisco. The blood-soaked wave of lawless, often random, violence that has swamped America’s largest cities in recent years is flooding the streets of the nation’s capital.
Residents are on edge, national lawmakers are frustrated and local leaders are scrambling for answers.
D.C. resident Sandra Seegars said growing worries about crime have impacted the quality of life in the city.
“There’s a lot of people I’ve talked to who are fearful of even going out of the house,” the anti-violence activist told The Washington Times.
The sense of lawlessness, especially among young people, is pervasive. “There’s no law to rein them in, and they’re out of control,” Ms. Seegars said.
Since January, the District has recorded a 13% increase in robberies, a 43% increase in carjackings and a 53% increase in sexual assaults from last year. Most alarming is the 12% increase in homicides after the District recorded more than 200 killings in 2021 and 2022. It is the first time the city has had such high levels of violence in nearly 20 years.
“The whole criminal justice system is broken right now,” Ronald Moten, a longtime anti-crime activist and gang peacemaker, told The Times.
The mayhem has fueled a 10% increase in violent crime and a 27% increase in overall crime this year.
“People should feel safe in our nation’s capital, and, quite frankly, they don’t,” Rep. Russell Fry, South Carolina Republican, said during a March 29 Capitol Hill hearing on crime in the District.
The crime wave has shown no sign of slowing. Mayor Muriel Bowser and outgoing Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee are expected to return to the Capitol on Tuesday to face more questions from Congress.
Lawmakers were particularly unnerved by the unprovoked stabbing of an aide for Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican. Police said Mr. Paul was attacked outside a restaurant on H Street Northeast on March 25 by a man who had just finished a lengthy prison stint.
“He didn’t ask for anything. He didn’t say anything. He just started stabbing him,” Christopher Barnard, who was with his friend and victim Phillip Todd during the stabbing, told a Seattle radio station.
Rep. Angie Craig, Minnesota Democrat, was assaulted inside her apartment building in February by a man with 12 convictions, most recently for assaulting a police officer.
Ms. Craig told a home-state TV station days later that the assailant trapped her in her building’s elevator.
“He wasn’t going to let me out … if I hadn’t fought my way out,” she said.
D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, a major proponent of the District’s failed criminal code rewrite that would have reduced penalties for some felonies, insisted at the March congressional hearing that “there is no crime crisis in Washington.” Lawmakers were unconvinced.
“The crime statistics alone are shocking,” said House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer, Kentucky Republican.
Fear, loathing and parking tickets
Signs that something has gone profoundly wrong in the city are everywhere.
Frustrated by shoplifters brazenly hauling stolen goods out the front doors, some D.C. businesses are locking down and forcing customers in and out through a single chokepoint.
A Giant grocery store in the Brentwood neighborhood did that last month.
Shopping carts blocked secondary exits to the grocer. A notice from Giant Food President Ira Kress said the changes were “due to a significant increase in crime and theft.”
Police data showed that the area around the store had reported a 150% increase in theft from the same period last year. A fire inspector told a local media outlet that nearby Giants Food stores have started doing the same.
Luxury retailers also have become targets.
A Lululemon store near the U Street Corridor had its front door smashed in February by thieves who quickly snatched up items. Days earlier, a mob of juveniles bum-rushed the Chanel store downtown. They used a fire extinguisher to fluster patrons and employees while making off with high-priced merchandise.
Chanel has responded by locking its doors and having guards queue shoppers in a line outside until a staffer is ready to receive the customer.
Ted Leonsis, the owner of the Wizards and Capitals, is so unhappy about crime around the bustling Capital One Arena that he has hired more off-duty D.C. police officers, according to a report.
Concerns about basic safety in the city are not limited to the relatively affluent and protected elites who live and work on Capitol Hill or in the high-profile entertainment or retail corridors.
Across the District, everyday residents are packing community meeting rooms to share their frustrations with the chaos.
“Right now, there’s no moral compass in the streets — there’s no moral compass anywhere — and that’s the problem that we have in society,” Mr. Moten said during a March community meeting at the Petworth Library.
On social media, D.C. residents share photos and stories of how crime affects their neighborhoods and families.
Developer Marcus Goodwin, a lifelong D.C. resident who ran unsuccessfully for an at-large council seat in 2020, tweeted a photo Tuesday of the shattered driver’s window in his family’s car.
“Someone just broke into our car, while we were in our house,” he said. “It’s frightening raising a young child when you’re constantly in fear of who’s targeting your community. It’s time for DC to assemble a task force focused on reducing these crimes and protecting families.”
Fewer badges, more crime
Crime is rising as D.C. police staffing reaches its lowest levels in decades.
Chief Contee said the District has about 3,400 active-duty officers, the fewest in roughly 50 years.
The chief is a short-timer. The D.C. native, who joined the department as a cadet in 1989, announced that he is leaving for a job with the FBI. His final day is June 3.
Veteran police officers have left in droves, and the city has struggled to fill the vacancies — even after the mayor pumped up the signing bonus for recruits to $25,000.
Finding a qualified replacement for Chief Contee, who clashed with council members pushing for a more lenient criminal code in the city, won’t be easy, said D.C. Police Union chief steward Adam Shaatal.
“The violence you’re witnessing right now needs to be addressed,” he said in a recent interview. “That’s going to make a real challenge for whoever is the new police chief.”
Critics blame the crime problem partially on “defund the police” rhetoric, which city leaders have embraced. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a ratio of more than 10-to-1, and no Republican has been elected to public office since 2009.
At the March hearing, Rep. Nancy Mace, South Carolina Republican, cited anti-police comments made by Ward 6 council member Charles Allen while decrying the District’s loss of more than 400 officers since 2019.
“‘Our strategy is to reduce our force size — “force size” — in a responsible way by turning off the spigot plus adding in natural attrition,’” Ms. Mace said while reading June 2020 tweets from Mr. Allen, a former chair of the D.C. Council Judiciary and Public Safety Committee. “What do you mean by ‘reducing our force size’ if you don’t mean defunding the police?”
The Washington Times reached out to the council member for comment.
Prosecution statistics show that criminals aren’t held accountable in the courtroom.
Justice Department data revealed that 67% of cases brought to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District were not moved along the legal process during fiscal 2022, which ended in September.
The numbers climbed steadily from 31% during the final year of the Obama administration to 48% during the final year of the Trump administration, according to local crime blog DC Crime Facts.
Federal prosecutors nominated by the White House and confirmed by the Senate litigate the District’s most serious crimes. U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves assumed his role in 2021.
Mr. Graves’ office has an even lower prosecution rate than the District Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia, headed by Larry Krasner. Left-wing billionaire George Soros backed Mr. Krasner for office.
Prosecutors under Mr. Krasner dismissed 63% of the cases brought to them last year.
A U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesperson told the Washington City Paper that the lower prosecution rate results from the District’s forensics lab’s loss of accreditation and dropped cases after prosecutors review police-worn body cameras.
Charles “Cully” Stimson, a former prosecutor in the District and San Diego who now works for The Heritage Foundation, had a different diagnosis for the lagging prosecution rate.
“What you have is a bunch of woke prosecutors who don’t want to take anything to court,” Mr. Stimson told The Times, referring to some of his old connections to the office. He said “80 to 90% of the cases brought to D.C. would be prosecuted” in the San Diego office.
Even some of the most basic laws governing civil interaction in the city are unenforced, leading to deadly consequences in at least one high-profile case.
One of the drivers involved in a fatal two-car crash on Rock Creek Parkway in March had racked up more than 40 speeding tickets and more than $12,000 in fines.
The District has more than $1 billion in unpaid traffic and parking fines spread across more than 6 million tickets since 2000, a Washington Post analysis says. Over the past five years, the report said about 1,200 cars are linked to fines of more than $20,000.
Carrots and sticks
Republicans on Capitol Hill echo the scores of parents and city residents who say it’s time for the city to end the post-George Floyd policies that have hamstrung police and emboldened criminals.
“With this George Floyd incident, all the police in the whole world are accused of killing him,” said Ms. Seegars, the anti-violence activist. “It didn’t happen here. [Local leaders] should not treat the police here as if they killed George Floyd.”
Communities across the county, including the District, responded to the death of Floyd by reassessing criminal justice policies, including those covering young offenders.
Attorney General Brian Schwalb, whose office handles cases involving juvenile offenders, told D.C. residents last month that he opposes charging minors as adults, even with serious crimes.
“I don’t think kids should be treated as adults,” he said at a community forum on juvenile crime. “Kids are kids, and when you’re talking about teenagers, in particular, their brains are developing, their minds are developing and they’re biologically prone to make mistakes. That’s what we’ve all done as we’ve grown up.”
The Chevy Chase resident, who has been in office less than five months, has taken over where his predecessor, Karl Racine, left off. Mr. Racine was one of the city’s most vocal champions of “restorative justice” — an approach to juvenile crime that emphasizes rehabilitation and deemphasizes punishment.
The increase in the number of children with guns committing robberies and carjackings over the past two years has stunned residents.
The 15-year-old who shot Washington Commanders player Brian Robinson Jr. during a robbery last summer also pleaded guilty to killing another teen in an unrelated shooting in October. He will remain in custody until he turns 21, the longest time a juvenile can serve under D.C. policy.
His accomplice, 17, pleaded guilty to his role in Mr. Robinson’s shooting and was briefly at large after skipping his April sentencing hearing. The teen had his hearing last week after he was re-arrested on drug distribution charges.
“They’ve got parents that’s afraid of their own child — [or] their grandchildren,” Bishop Donald Peters from the Potomac Baptist Church in Southeast told The Times.
Mr. Moten, the conflict resolution specialist, said there should be no hard-and-fast rule that every minor involved in crime should go to jail.
Anacostia resident Ari Theresa said officials have to consider locking up repeat offenders before they commit violent crimes.
Mr. Theresa said the District is seeing the inevitable result of the failure of local schools during the pandemic. School closings left many children to their own devices and caused some of them to pick up unlawful and often violent habits that are proving hard to break.
“I feel like this is almost a lost generation that we may be dealing with,” Mr. Theresa told The Times. “I don’t see a lot of creativity to make up for that.”
Others argue that any solution to crime in the District has to go beyond more police and tougher penalties.
Anthony L. Minter, pastor at First Rock Baptist Church in Southeast, said doing more to handle residents’ basic needs would reduce lawless behavior.
“To have your own house gives you a sense of dignity, it gives you a sense of pride, it changes your life and changes your outlook on life,” Mr. Minter told The Times. “Those are the kinds of things we’re doing working around [and] working to get folks decent jobs. Those are the things that I believe, done on a larger scale, will go a very long way in reducing the violence.”
Nazgol Ghandnoosh is co-director of research at The Sentencing Project, a D.C.-based foundation that lobbies for eliminating racial disparities in the criminal justice system. She said the reflexive desire for harsh prison sentences encourages the “punitive madness” that does little to tamp down crime.
Religious leaders say faith also has a role to play.
Bishop Peters told The Times that helping people “understand the love and the power of God” should be a priority.
“They don’t have to throw in the towel, no matter what it is that they may have done,” Mr. Peters said. “There’s still hope for them. Things can change, but they can’t do it by themselves.”
All the people who spoke with The Times agreed that the crime rate isn’t as bad as in the crack-addled 1990s, when the District, with roughly 400 homicides a year, became known as the nation’s “Murder Capital.” Mr. Minter recalled at least one to two weekly funerals at First Rock in Southeast.
After nearly 30 years of declining violence, especially since the onset of the pandemic, crime victims, residents and lawmakers are worried that the District is on track to reclaim that nickname.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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