(Photo by City Year)

D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine announced a series of settlements and lawsuits against property owners in Deanwood, Eckington, Anacostia, and Petworth today that he says are aimed at reducing criminal activity.

Racine has reached settlements with two residential buildings and two businesses in Deanwood that require them to install new security measures, according to a press release.The sites have drawn hundreds of calls to MPD for drug and firearm offenses, according to the attorney general’s office. The two apartment buildings, which are owned by the same landlord, have drawn more than 700 calls in the last two years, and were also the site of two murders, says the release. The settlements call for full-time security personnel, security cameras, better lighting, and fencing. The owners must also ban non-residents of the properties who previously “participated in illegal activity” on the site.

Racine also has filed four ongoing lawsuits against property owners of apartment buildings, two in Anacostia, one in Eckington, and one in Petworth.

The two properties in Anacostia are small buildings with the same owners near Anacostia High School and Kramer Middle School. MPD has reportedly seized cocaine and drug paraphernalia, as well as illegal firearms, from the property many times. The OAG calls the property in Eckington a “drug haven,” from which 234 grams of marijuana, three vials of PCP, and 68 zips of crack cocaine have been seized in the last 10 months. The attorney general’s office characterized the Petworth property as a “heroin den.”

None of the property owners have taken enough action to address the illegal activity happening on their properties, Racine’s office alleges.

“Apartment buildings and store fronts can become havens for dangerous drug and firearm activity when building owners don’t put in place basic security measures to deter criminals,” Racine said in the press release. “Today’s actions respond to ongoing community complaints about crime in their neighborhoods and hold neglectful property owners accountable for keeping District tenants and residents safe.”

D.C.’s Drug-, Firearm-, or Prostitution-Related Nuisance Abatement Act allows the attorney general to bring suit against owners whose properties are being repeatedly used for illegal activity. An attempt earlier this year to expand the law to cover commercial tenants was met with resistance by activists who argued that it would have the effect of “criminalizing our communities.”