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Remember when D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier told the Washington Times that she believed the District of Columbia could end up with fewer than 100 homicides in 2009?
Oops!
More official crime stats from the MPD can be found here.
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Remember when D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier told the Washington Times that she believed the District of Columbia could end up with fewer than 100 homicides in 2009?
Oops!
More official crime stats from the MPD can be found here.
well, time to set the goal as less homicides than last year now, right?
i'd say not. let's just say that every homicide is one too many, and fight for that.
Lofty goals will accomplish little. What's needed here is a broad redefinition of the term "homicide" to exclude any body that has a bullet hole in it. The police should also expand their effort to discourage reporting more categories of criminal activity. Officer Friendly should make an appearance at local gradeschools to teach kids the time-honored technique of stepping over corpses on the sidewalk while whistling nonchalantly.
Okay, so maybe we didn't hit the under-100 mark. But wow - the drop over the past 15 years is pretty amazing. Even in 2004 (the year I moved here) there were almost twice as many homicides as this year! Here's hoping the trend continues.
Yup- a 39% drop in homicides (and in a tough economy!) is pretty impressive.
"Oops!" ... really?
Of course we could still meet that goal if we started reanimating corpses, but when did we ever listen to my ideas?
never.
Maybe MPD has reclassified what constitutes "homicide." A recent multiple-gunshot incident in my 'hood was filed in MPD's stats as "theft of a bicycle." Who's to say this isn't happening with other crimes?
I. Am. So. Surprised.
really, though, don't we go through this every year? are they not always wrong?
next year i advocate a new program: want to commit homicide? turn in your potential murder weapon of choice and you get a free vacation anywhere outside of the area.
And the longer we have to look at that flashing American Apparel model in the horizontally-striped bodysuit, the more murders there will be.
Did she mean fiscal year?
Jesus Christ, what the hell was going on in 1993?!
Those were the days...when DPR was but a wee lad and the streets were awash in blood and crack.
Oh, it wasn't that bad. Most of the blood was washing the streets of Ward 8, with only a minimal spillover downtown. You had the occasional shootout at Malcolm X Park and driveby on Georgia Avenue, but whitey wasn't getting shot at so it didn't really matter. The most irritating part were the perpetual handwringing stories in the Washington Post about "creating a living downtown." So glad that $h!t's over.
Here is your answer. You have no idea what DC was like back then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayful_Edmond
The 454 dead only tell part of the story. Most crackheads weren't very good aims, and there were a lot more wounded. I used to see a lot of kids in wheelchairs. It wasn't entirely limited to the hood, either, there were people getting shot and stabbed in the park in front of my apartment in Adams Morgan. And this was after the riot. Things seem so peaceful now, not that I'm getting complacent.
Someone told me those kids in wheelchairs are now the adults you seen in electric wheelchairs... wonder if that's true.
i'm sure it's part of it. part of it is probably just because you're seeing the results of some poorer people who never had good health care to start with.