Crime in Washington, D.C.

Crime in Washington, D.C., peaked in the early 1990s, when it was known as the murder capital of the United States. Crime rates have since declined substantially as gentrification has spread across many parts of the city.

Historic trends
According to F.B.I. statistics, in 2006 the rate of violent crime in Washington, D.C. was 1445.84 crimes per 100,000 population. Among the cities reporting with 100,000 or more population, Washington ranked number 18 in its rate of violent crime. The top seventeen were Flint, St. Louis, Detroit, Memphis, Orlando, Oakland, Miami Gardens, Little Rock, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Cleveland, Nashville, Miami, St. Petersburg, Stockton, and Springfield.

At the peak of the violent crime wave in the early 1990s, Washington, D.C., was known as the murder capital of the United States. Homicides peaked in 1991 at 482. As the population of the city was just over 600,000 at that time, this meant that the District's homicide rate was 81 per 100,000 inhabitants. Despite the high rate of violent crime, violence was not evenly distributed across the city, but rather was concentrated in specific neighborhoods&mdash;Columbia Heights, Adams Morgan, Georgia Ave/Howard University, Logan Circle, Shaw, Le Droit Park, the East End of Downtown (Chinatown), Trinidad, Langston Lane, Florida Ave NE, Montana, and some of the neighborhoods located east of the Anacostia River. In 2006, Washington's per capita murder rate was reduced by 4.4 murders per 100,000 then being 29.1 per 100,000, the lowest rates since 1985.

Gentrification
Since 1993, crime rates in Washington dropped consistently for over ten years. Along with this trend, gentrification has occurred in many neighborhoods across the District, including Adams Morgan, Logan Circle, Columbia Heights, and the East End of Downtown (Chinatown) and is trending eastward. In the past ten years, the number of homicides has been halved—from 399 in 1994 to 169 in 2006. It is believed by many that the gentrification of these neighborhoods was spurred in part by the extension of Metrorail's Green Line to the Shaw, U Street, Columbia Heights, and Petworth neighborhoods during the late 1990s. The revitalization efforts began first in the Adams Morgan and Logan Circle areas and more recently in Columbia Heights.

In 2005, gentrification began to reach Shaw, Columbia Heights, Le Droit Park, Petworth, Bloomingdale, Eckington, and Trinidad. The transformation of the East End of Downtown/Chinatown into clean, safe areas was aided by the construction of the MCI Center, now Verizon Center, which opened in 1997, and the new Washington Convention Center that opened in 2004 at Mount Vernon Square. As a result, hundreds of brand-new condominiums and apartments were constructed, and many new upscale restaurants, bars, shops, theaters, museums, galleries, and other attractions opened. Prior to around 2000, this was an area of local small businesses, both upscale (including Woodward and Lothrop) and downscale (like the original Sunny's Surplus). Local business in the neighborhood has been replaced by national chain retailers. As a result of gentrification, as well as broader economic forces, home and condo values in Washington, D.C., have skyrocketed. The same is true in nearby Baltimore.

Defying this gentrification, the Sursum Corda public housing project, located along North Capitol Street between K and M Streets and bordering the Downtown/Chinatown and Le Droit Park neighborhoods, has remained a magnet for drug dealers and crime. However, the D.C. government has begun to tackle this hotspot. The city plans to demolish the public housing and replace it with mixed-income housing. Helping to spur development in this area north of Union Station is the New York Avenue metrorail station that opened in November 2004 and related economic development.

Tourist areas
Most of the major tourist sections of the city, including the area around the National Mall, downtown, Chinatown, 7th Street/Penn Quarter, the National Zoo, Georgetown, and Dupont Circle, remain relatively safe parts of town. However, there are still many attractions in the north-central and eastern halves of the city, such as the historic Eastern Market (the largest continually operated public market in the city), the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Brookland, Union Station, and the  National Arboretum on New York Avenue, Frederick Douglass house and museum and the Big Chair, both in Anacostia. There are many historic residential neighborhoods throughout the city.

Gang violence
Latino gang violence has plagued the Columbia Heights and Shaw neighborhoods over the years, with much of the violence carried over from rivalries in Los Angeles that developed during the 1980s and are now being battled in other parts of the country. In 2003, MPD launched a gang-intervention project in those neighborhoods. No Latino gang-related homicides have occurred in Washington, D.C., from September 2003 through at least October 2006.

Robbery
On average, there are 11 robberies]] each day across the District of Columbia, with a sharp increase on Friday and Saturday nights, with up to five an hour. Neighborhoods that are hot spots]] for robbery include Columbia Heights, Adams Morgan, Mount Pleasant, Dupont Circle, Logan Circle, and Georgetown.

Notable incidents

 * January 11, 1992—Tom Barnes, a congressional aide for Alabama Senator Richard Shelby was shot in the head by a teenager, Edward Evans Jr., who lived down the street from Barnes in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Barnes died four days later and was killed nine months after LaShawn Evans had been murdered. Despite overwhelming evidence against Edward Evans Jr., his trial ended in a hung jury with one juror refusing to convict him. This case led Shelby to propose a referendum to reinstate capital punishment in Washington, D.C.
 * November 22, 1994—Bennie Lee Lawson Jr. walked into the Metropolitan Police Department headquarters, where he shot and killed two FBI agents and a police sergeant with a Cobray M-11 9-millimeter semi-automatic pistol before turning the gun on himself.
 * January 5, 2006—New York Times reporter David Rosenbaum was assaulted during a robbery in his Northwest Washington neighborhood by Michael Hamlin and his cousin Percey Jordan; he died two days later from his injuries
 * July 9, 2006—Alan Senitt, a 27-year-old aide to former Virginia governor Mark Warner, was murdered around 2:15 am in Georgetown while escorting a female friend home from a movie.
 * June 2 2007- At 10:20 pm, 13-year-old Terry Cutchings is shot and killed by local gang violence between two local rival gangs. The arrested suspect is 17 years old and it was a stray bullet that struck the victim.
 * August 23, 2007—Tayon Glover, the 29-year-old brother of "Big G" Anwan Glover of HBO hit series The Wire, was killed around 10:00 pm on the 1400 block of Girard Street, NW, days after trying to negotiate a truce between two local gangs 1400 Girard known as G-Rod and 17th and Euclid St known as 1-7.  1400 Girard is a known Hotspot to the DC Police force and the hottest block in the city averaging two homicides a summer.

Gun-restriction laws
Washington, D.C., has enacted a number of strict [gun-restriction laws. The Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975 prohibited residents from owning handguns, excluding handguns registered prior to February 5, 1977. Other local laws prohibit carrying guns (concealed or not), and all guns and ammunition must be registered.

Critics, citing numerous statistics, have questioned the efficiency of these restrictions. The combination in Washington of strict gun-restriction laws and high levels of gun violence is sometimes used to criticize gun-restriction laws in general as ineffective. However, a significant portion of firearms used in crime are either obtained on the second-hand market or in neighboring states. Results from the ATF's Youth Crime Gun Interdiction Initiative indicate that the percentage of imported guns involved in crimes is tied to the stringency of local firearm laws. Nonetheless, Washington D.C.'s strict gun restriction laws and its reputation as the former murder capital of the U.S., has caused it to be frequently cited in debates over gun control. On March 9, 2007, the debate was made moot, at least temporarily, as the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the District's gun laws as violating the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution|2nd Amendment in Parker v. District of Columbia. The appeal for the full court to rehear en banc the case was denied. The District appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the court agreed to hear the case. Oral argument was heard on March 18, 2008, and a decision is expected by the end of June 2008.

Washington, D.C., has tried a number other strategies to deal with gun violence. In 1995, the Metropolitan Police Department conducted Operation Ceasefire, a gun-violence crackdown initiative involving intense gun law enforcement, in conjunction with the United States Attorney's Office. This initiative resulted in seizure of 282 firearms in its first four months, mainly 9mm, 380ACP, and .25ACP pistols, and .38 caliber revolvers, most of which were purchased in Maryland and Virginia. Critics of gun control legislation have made the point that although guns may be more easily obtained from the neighboring states of Virginia and Maryland, the fact that these states (despite the relative ease of obtaining a firearm) do not suffer from the same level of crime as the District of Columbia, leads to the conclusion that the mere availability of guns does not necessarily incite violent crime. Fairfax County, VA, which neighbors the District on the western shores of the Potomac, has nearly twice the population of the District but has nearly 1/20th the number of murders per capita (for 2005, Fairfax County had 20 murders out of a population of 1,041,200, versus 195 murders out of a population of 550,521 in the District). However, Fairfax County--which has the highest median household income in the United States has significantly different demographics from the District of Columbia.

A more relevant comparison might be between Washington and its closest neighboring large metropolitan cities: Baltimore, Maryland and Richmond, Virginia. Each city is within one hour's driving distance from Washington. According to F.B.I. crime statistics for 2006, during that year Washington experienced 169 homicides, and had a population of 581,530 people; the murder rate in Washington was then 29.06 murders per 100,000 population. Richmond experienced 76 homicides, and had a population of 195,708; the murder rate in Richmond was 38.8 homicides per 100,000 population. Baltimore experienced 276 homicides, and had a population of 637,556; the murder rate in Baltimore was 43.3 murders per 100,000 population.

Crime Emergency declaration
On July 11,2006, Metropolitan Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey declared a crime emergency in the city in response to a rising homicide rate (the city had logged 13 murders since July 1, most notably the killing of a prominent British political activist in Georgetown). The declaration, which allows for more flexible and increased policing in high-crime neighborhoods, has been extended indefinitely beyond its original 30-day period. The 90-day emergency bill expired in October, with the youth curfew reverting to 11 p.m. On October 18, 2006, the D.C. Council passed a revised crime bill that provided funds for police overtime and to implement a youth development strategy.

Other initiatives
Other initiatives and tools used by MPD include:
 * ShotSpotter—implemented with support from the Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI, ShotSpotter can detect location of gunshots.
 * Surveillance cameras—48 cameras installed in 2006.