Ballou HS Rocks the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
Morning Roundup: Black Friday Edition
Photo of the Day: November 27, 2009
Caps Thankful for Varly in 2-0 Win
Thanks to This Week's Advertisers
In a story in the Washington Times today, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier boldly claimed that she believes the District could end up with fewer than 100 homicides in 2009. We have already had at least 88 to date (not sure if yesterday's Pizza Mart killing was included here), which is roughly 25 percent fewer killings that the city had recorded at this time last year. And that's fantastic, a real achievement. But fewer than 12 homicides over the next four+ months? It seems certain to be an impossible goal.
As Times reporter Kristi Jourdan notes, the last year the District recorded fewer than 100 homicides was 1963, when there were 95 killings.
So why would Lanier set her department up to fail like this? The generally more violent summer season is soon drawing to a close, so maybe Lanier is counting on things to cool off. But still, all it would take is one particularly violent weekend between now and December 31 for the chief's target to be blown. Or maybe we're looking at this the wrong way: are pie-in-the-sky goals what we actually want from our police force? It's certainly different, and D.C. residents have long grown weary of the status quo.
What do you make of the chief's statements?
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Jinx
My thoughts exactly...
this seems a little optimistic considering last year at this point there were 118 homicides out of a total of 186 on the year, or only 63% of the year's homicides.
Lanier should save us the time and contact FailBlog by submitting a picture of herself with 'FAIL' stamped all over that picture.
We should warn her by saying, "They're all going to laugh at you!"
Well, that depends. Do we get anything if there's less than 100 murders? I could be persuaded to stop homiciding if there were free tacos or something equivalent on the line. But I'm not giving it up for nothing.
I hate to say it, but I'd be curious to see a comparison of all shooting incidents (not just homicides) between this year and last. Perhaps gang bangers are suffering from a marksmanship fail?
Mmmmm....no.
Yes, homicides may be down, but dog knapping and Metro based suicides are up 300%. The police have serious work to be doing.
In all seriousness, this is something that people often overlook when they are raging on and on about crime in this city...We were once considered the murder capital (per capita) and now while we might not be below 100, we could be pretty darn close by the end of the year and that's HUGE. There were 454 murders when I moved here in 1993...454!
@adamsmorgan, it's huge, but it's not unique to DC:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/19/AR2009071902154.html
Lanier has already taken credit for it, of course, but it's a national trend. Her puny parlor games such as "All Hands On Deck" are insignificant compared to the major factors that drive crime, such as gentrification, poverty and economics, and drugs. The article discusses theories about the crime drop.
Yeah, back in the days of Rayful Edmonds the airborne lead particulate level was much higher.
seriously, though, i understand that it's all snark, all the time around here in the comments, but we have to set a goal, right? i mean, clearly, that goal should be zero homicides, but if we lower expectations, we're never going to see things improve.
I think 99 homicides is a realistic goal. Tough $h!t for those 99 dead people and their families, but you can't make an omlette without killing a bunch of people. And it's definitely important to set goals so that the rest of us can feel like we're accomplishing something. Then again, maybe we'd be better off with a "moving target" goal of, say, between 99 and 400 homicides per year. That way, we can still say there were fewer homicides in DC than the peak in 1990. I know the real estate agents would be really happy with that. Besides, you'd never buy something that's $1, but make it 99 cents and people line up for that $h!t.
I think there are more important goals to set than some arbitrary number. Like how about we set a goal to stop re-arresting the same criminals time after time after time? But then, cops and juries and neighbors who continually demand that something be done so long as they don't have to co-operate with the police would actually have to, y'know, STFU and take responsibility.
Nah. Let's just stick with some nice low number.
Did Lanier watch The Wire?
Bunny: "You can reclassify an agg assault and you can unfound a robbery. But how do you make a body disappear?"
Burrell: "Anyone who can't bring the numbers we need will be replaced by someone who can."
Legit or not, if they make less than a hundred I suppose some majors will become colonels.
I think it's great the chief is setting such an ambitious goal. There is no reason DC residents have to accept murder as a fact of life in the district. I hope we can do it.