Yesterday, Martin wrote a compelling post on D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams’ proposed strategy for addressing crime, noting that the city’s recent crime emergency provided an excellent opportunity for District politicians to search for real solutions to some of the city’s fundamental difficulties. Instead, he wrote, it seems that the Mayor and the D.C. Council are content to reach for superficial strategies, addressing, perhaps, the immediate upsurge in criminal activity but failing even to acknowledge that deeper rifts lurk in the District’s social fabric. That conclusion was reinforced today, as the Post reported growing support for the mayor’s plan, which reaches for the most utilitarian and short-sighted crime fighting tools available, as if the root cause behind crime was the freedom of District residents to move about.

Williams may succeed in passing these measures, and he may succeed in reducing crime by 50 percent over the next 30 days, as he says is his goal. If he does, I believe those victories will ultimately prove Phyrric. Williams may not only be failing to address the difficulties of distressed populations within the city; he may be making them worse.

The contrast in today’s Post is striking. On the one hand the mayor, in a letter to council chair Linda Cropp, touts the city’s falling crime numbers and asserts his intention to head off the uptick in criminal activity by beefing up security measures and working more closely with the FBI and ATF. On the other hand, the Post covers a panel discussion on the difficulties facing young black men today, how families fail them, schools fail them, and governments seem interested only in locking them up. Listening to Williams, you’d think the two issues hadn’t the least bit to do with each other.