Photo by Brandon Anderson.
After three shootings yesterday inched D.C.’s homicide rate closer to 100, Mayor Muriel Bowser and Metropolitan Police Department Chief Cathy Lanier initiated new measures today to address the rising gun violence.
At a press conference, Bowser said that a majority of gun-related crimes in D.C. this year were linked to illegal firearms. Yesterday, Bowser and Lanier talked to residents and community members in Congress Heights after a triple shooting in an apartment left 31-year-old Tenika Fontanelle dead. Bowser called the experience one of the saddest days of her life.
“This is simply unacceptable,” Bowser said. “We need to get guns out of our homes.”
To address the issue, the MPD announced increased reward amounts. They’ll now pay $2,500 for any tip leading to an arrest and seizure of an illegal gun, and $10,000 for any information about a shooting that leads to a conviction. Both rewards were previously set at $1,000. The MPD is still offering $25,000 rewards for anyone that provides information in a homicide leading to a conviction.
Lanier said that, so far this year, the MPD has confiscated 944 illegal firearms, which is a “significant uptick” from years past. She added that a majority of those firearms were confiscated in the past three or four months. Thus far, the homicide rate this year is up 34 percent from last year. Lanier said that some of the motives behind recent shootings have stemmed from as little as someone throwing rocks at another person, disputes over craps games and, in one case, a baby crying too loudly.
In the midst of this summer’s recent surge in violent crimes, community members are desperately asking for answers as to what may be causing it. But Lanier and Bowser couldn’t attribute the violence to any one thing, saying that there’s many factors at play.
The rise of synthetic drugs is certainly contributing to the issue, Lanier said, but added that without proper testing, it’s hard to collect enough data to pinpoint that as a sole contributing factor.
Recently, the D.C. Police Union said that the rise of synthetic drugs as a reason for the uptick in violence was a “red herring” implemented by the MPD and Bowser to downplay the nearly 125 officers removed from their vice assignments. Lanier addressed this theory, saying that those vice units were no longer effective in the communities they were assigned.
“Vice units were very, very effective in the ’90s, she said, “but not today.”
