Snug like bugs in a rug
So, we have something of a problem in the District of Columbia — a crime wave has gripped the city, a state of emergency has been declared, and it seems like every weekend someone is killed just a few blocks from my apartment. This in a neighborhood where $600,000 couldn’t buy you an efficiency condo, and an average 1-bedroom apartment costs upwards of $2,000 a month.
It’s hard to understand what’s happening. You have neighborhoods that are now primarily upper middle class (or maybe simply upper class), yet they’re currently under siege from criminals driving in from other neighborhoods, which is extremely unusual for D.C. Of course, I’ve always expected crime, but the really weird thing is that tourists on the mall have been hit — that’s completely unheard of.
The police allegedly are stepping up their efforts, but the police culture in D.C. is to drive around in their cruisers and play janitor — safe inside their cars, they intervene after the fact, to put up crime scene tape and take witness reports. What they need to do, however, is get out of their damn cars and start walking the local beat. This is how cops work all over the world and it works. I remember being in London in 2004, and seeing submachine gun toting policeman patrolling the Thames after someone was murdered near the London Eye. That’s how they need to do things in D.C.
But I guess that’s a little scary. That would mean interacting with real people and not just looking on impassively from behind the wheel of a Ford Crown Victoria. I’m not sure the police in D.C are capable of that.
