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?