Photo by Steve Fernie.
By Alana Wise, WAMU
Washington has seen more homicides so far in 2018 than it did in all of 2017.
As of Tuesday morning, the District has seen 119 killings since Jan. 1. Last year’s homicide total was 116 homicides, marking a 14 percent decrease in deadly crime from the year prior.
In a press conference Monday, Mayor Muriel Bowser blamed the uptick of killings on illegal guns “in the hands of people who have already demonstrated that they’ll use them, because they may have been convicted of gun crimes already and they’re back on the streets using guns again.”
Bowser and Chief of Police Peter Newsham have both discussed a citywide crackdown on illegal firearms, but Newsham admits that current penalties for offenders are not an effective deterrent.
“The consequences of illegal firearm possession in our city is not changing the behavior. We’re arresting sometimes the same folks over and over again for carrying illegal firearms in the city,” Newsham said Monday.
D.C. police recovered 2,191 firearms in 2017 and are on track to outpace that this year, Newsham said. Despite that increase, the homicide rate continues to climb.
A rash of violence in recent days saw one person killed Friday, two on Saturday, three additional deaths on Sunday, and four overnight on Monday.
This story was originally published on WAMU.
