July 13, 2006
Morning Roundup: Crime Recrimination Edition
Discussion of recent crime activity continues today, but not in an encouraging way. The Post focuses on Chief Ramsey's comments yesterday, which noted that criminals are increasingly leaving their own neighborhoods and coming to wealthier places in the city, including areas of the National Mall. Ramsey says this is new and striking behavior, but it's hard to imagine that no one saw this coming.
Luckily for Ramsey, the mayor is back and ready to begin taking the lion's share of the public frustration, which is sure to bubble over after reading things like this:
D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D), back in town after a two-week trip through Africa and Europe, said he and his deputies are working on a strategy to deal with crime and underlying social problems.It's good that after holding his office for nearly a decade, a third of which he's spent outside the city, the mayor is getting around to noticing that the city is not without its social problems.
The Washington Times also has plenty of coverage of the scramble to explain the situation, but adds the interesting detail that this is the third summer in four years the Chief has issued a Crime Emergency, though the other two were focused on stopping rampant auto theft. Times columnist Tom Knott also weighs in, using his inches to defend the cop who was recently reassigned for urging Georgetowners to be suspicious of groups of blacks (it's cool, Knott has a black friend, according to the column).
Oh, and the D.C. Council, who we yesterday castigated, responded by approving $31.5 million for use in hiring new beat cops.
Residency Requirement Irks Cabbies: In a fascinating Examiner article, we learn that District taxi drivers are irate over recent enforcement of a D.C. residency requirement the city didn't even realize existed until stumbling across it a few months ago. The rule only applies to independent cab operators, and since enforcement began in March, 15 new cab companies have sprung up to employ affected drivers. The piece notes that 80 percent of D.C. cab drivers live outside the city.
Briefly Noted: Long delays expected on Wilson Bridge during work on Saturday...Montgomery County adding jobs by the handful...Massive gun, drug sting in Prince William County.
This Day in DCist: We brought you the shocking news of Borf's arrest, and we turned up a handful of historical curiosities while searching for the Whitehurst behind the Whitehurst Freeway.
Picture taken by James W. Bailey.
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hmmm...maybe that's why none of the cabs I seem to get in know how to get to my destination. ugh!
Tell you what. How about if we enforce the law that cab drivers not refuse any customer inside the city, regardless of their destination, and then we can look the other way on the residency requirement, huh?
The politicians/police chief can’t come up with “lame excuses”, “observations” and “plans of action” fast enough. There are many neighborhoods in DC that have been complaining about this issue but at the very least I know for a fact that the police chief has been to several meetings/press conferences where the residents of Logan Circle / Shaw have been trying to draw attention to this problem for well over a year. Our armed robberies spiked over a year ago. At all these meetings we were told that our biggest problem was Theft From Auto. How many armed robberies or armed robberies that become homicides does it take for the police to notice a trend? How much common sense does it take to know that it is more profitable to rob rich people than poor ones?
I got two words for DC police - beat cops. We've been promised walking beat cops for a decade now. Chief Ramsey even had the gall, in an online chat, to insist that my 'hood has beat cops. If so, it's the tiniest beat ever. I work from home, and in 10 years I've NEVER seen a DC cop actually walking a beat.
NYC cops walk beats. Philly cops walk beats.
It takes an act of Congress, a busload of nuns getting machine-gunned, or the cop's dry cleaning being picked up to actually get a DC cop to step foot out of their vehicle.
No wonder they are reactive. They don't know any of the neighborhood residents, they only show up AFTER a crime, and they isolate themselves in their cars all day long.
Beat cops. This is NOT a difficult concept. But it requires actual interaction and work on the part of DC cops (and their managers).
Cabbies are complaining about a residency requirement?
Cabbies in London often study for years before getting a hack license. And they are tested rigorously and required to know every single street in town.
Cab service in DC is a joke. It's not viewed as a serious part of public transportation. Our cabs are often deathtraps, the cabbies are rude, often don't speak English, and certainly don't know the city. Often they literally can't find the Capitol building.
Why is it that DC has cab service that would shame a banana republic? Because we allow it.
DC needs to adopt a medallion system like NYC. We need to regulate it highly, and include mandatory driver training and basic English competency. And cars should be reasonably modern and inspected rigorously.
Unfortunately, none of that happens now.
criminals from DC have been leaving south east to commit crime in PG county for years. It's been a significant problem in southern PG county for a long time.
i dont think its the fact that they are migrating to commit crime that's troubling, it's how bold many of these criminals have become. i think much of this has to do with a lack of consequences. Unless these cases are super-high profile, many of these criminals get off with very minor penalties, due poor/apathetic prosecution and indifferent and ignorant juries.
i like my neighborhood because Vatos Locos runs pretty much all the street crime, and that they don't really want anything to do with me. They tend to keep the drive-by's and gang rapes inside their own community. And if they get arrested they always seem to slip through the cracks and make it back on the block before long.
oh borf.
Knott was a little less crazy than usual this time. In fact, I thought maybe he had changed his medication or something until I got to this sentence: "There is a kind of sad acceptance to [murders east of the river], which is why those killings sometimes are granted no more than a few paragraphs in the newspaper. Those slayings are often seen as almost 'routine.'"
Um, Tom: I think it's the newspapers that accept the murders, not Anacostia. Now if only we knew somebody at one of the newspapers... maybe a responsible journalist...
Well, no. I'm coming up blank.
I've noticed a few recent BORF tags in my neighborhood (West Adams Morgan/North Dupont) and today saw a poster on a utility box announcing a BORF rally on June 29th?
There was also a reference to www.borfyou.com, but that doesn't seem to work.
Anyone else seen evidence of a BORF resurgence? Anyone know to whom to report the recent vandalism and whether it will make any difference?
Murder in SE, doesn’t equal the ratings and websites hits that a murder in Georgetown does. Upper/Middle income fear in more profitable than poor fear. The media is a capital enterprise: "Report what makes the money".
I agree with the poster that said beat cops are the answer to street crime. I've been living in DC for ten years and I blaze up with impugnity while walking down the street because I know that there is ZERO chance of running into a cop. I would gladly restrict my herb smoking to indoors if it meant that I didn't have to worry about getting robbed at gunpoint at 4 in the afternoon while walking home from work.
Hillman - I completely agree with you comments on the cab situation. It is a mystery that people don't view a comprehensive cab system as an essential part of an urban mass transit system.
Metro and buses are great (Well, maybe not great, but they get the job done), but sometimes hoofing it from the stop to where you're headed isn't an option. I coudl honestly care less about where cabbies live, or about the zone system, its the conditions of the cabs, the level of knowledge of the drivers and the general semi-anarchistic nature of the system that bothers me.
Hillman hit the nail right on the head, in my ten years of living in DC I've only seen cops in their cars or chilling at a 7/11. When I got jacked at 4 in the afternoon many years ago, there were four cops less than two blocks away kicking it at the 7/11.
Metro PD is close to useless, two Summers ago I witnessed a sexual assault. I got out of my car to accost the perpetrator and was immediately surrounded by a group of a-holes who told me to mind my own business. I beat a hasty retreat to the previously mentioned 7/11 and don't you know it, there were three cop cars there. I quickly outlined the situation to the first cop I saw. He responded that they had had reports of trouble on that corner earlier in the evening. WTF? Why were they at the 7/11 instead of keeping a presence in a known trouble spot?
There is one small upside to all of this: I blaze up with impugnity while walking down the street at any time of the day or night. Bat hits, joints, or bowls it's all good; hell I could probably walk down the street puffing on a 3-foot Graffix and not be noticed by the cops unless I was walking past an illegally parked car.
Hillman hit the nail right on the head, in my ten years of living in DC I've only seen cops in their cars or chilling at a 7/11. When I got jacked at 4 in the afternoon many years ago, there were four cops less than two blocks away kicking it at the 7/11.
Metro PD is close to useless, two Summers ago I witnessed a sexual assault. I got out of my car to accost the perpetrator and was immediately surrounded by a group of a-holes who told me to mind my own business. I beat a hasty retreat to the previously mentioned 7/11 and don't you know it, there were three cop cars there. I quickly outlined the situation to the first cop I saw. He responded that they had had reports of trouble on that corner earlier in the evening. WTF? Why were they at the 7/11 instead of keeping a presence in a known trouble spot?
There is one small upside to all of this: I blaze up with impugnity while walking down the street at any time of the day or night. Bat hits, joints, or bowls it's all good; hell I could probably walk down the street puffing on a 3-foot Graffix and not be noticed by the cops unless I was walking past an illegally parked car.
I like that he draws a parallel between "black youths" and "white skinheads."
The only cops you ever see walking the streets are Park Police. I'd like to not be so cynical about MPD, but they cloister themselves in their cars without ever getting out. Maybe if they didn't have A/C, they'd get off their asses.
What nobody has mentioned is that Georgetown has the lousiest cops so that they can deploy the decent ones to the worst areas. You want a young, fit, on the ball DC cop, you have to go to SE DC.
The only cops you ever see walking the streets are Park Police. I'd like to not be so cynical about MPD, but they cloister themselves in their cars without ever getting out. Maybe if they didn't have A/C, they'd get off their asses.
What nobody has mentioned is that Georgetown has the lousiest cops so that they can deploy the decent ones to the worst areas. You want a young, fit, on the ball DC cop, you have to go to SE DC.
DC needs a Bernie Goetz
While we are talking about cops & residency - what percentage of DC cops live in the District? Is there a requirement or any incentives? Perhaps we should stop fussing about where cabbies live (but contimue tofuss onwhere they pick-up and drop-off) and see if we can't connect the cops to the places they protect?
The 3rd District is meeting people halfway on beat cops....instead of having them sit in their cars in front of the new Giant, they have them sitting on a stool inside the doorway of Giant. I want to know how I can get a cop to sit in front of my house and shoot the shit with the locals.
The 3rd district met people half way on beat cops...instead of sitting in front of the new Giant in a car they sit on a stool in the doorway or hang out inside buying junk food. If I buy a stool and set in front of my place, will a 3rd district cop guard my house for me?
I do have one good thing to say about DC cops: when I'm looking for someone to unlock the @#$% soap case at CVS so I can buy some bodywash, the cop is always quick to run over with the keys.
It's like he has ESP or something, how did he know from where he was sitting at the door that I was desperately scanning the store for an employee to unlock the stupid door so I could get my soap get the heck out of the smelly store? Uncanny.
Damnit, I thought I lost the comment...sorry for the double post....
Damn, a couple of whiteys get offed and the DCist message boards explode. Looks like crime is the new church parking.
Re: Bernie Goetz. Imagine for a second that the woman who was attacked in the Georgetown crime had instead pulled a Glock from her handbag and shot the thugs. Do you think there's anyone in DC who would have faulted her for that? Answer: Of course! Faulted, hell, the cops would have arrested HER. If Marion Barry had his way, she'd get a ten-year mandatory minimum sentence. And don't forget the civil lawsuit!
Yes, precisely, in that "when it was only black folks I didn't care, but when it threatens the well-being of me or my Honda Accord it's time to act" way. And by act I mean post a comment on DCist.