D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Contee III stood behind crime-scene tape draped throughout 4 lanes of Georgia Avenue, the night rush hour dropped at an abrupt halt by a hail of gunfire that killed one man and injured three others, together with an 8-year-old youngster.
Washington, D.C
After violence, D.C. officials demand ‘accountability.’ Defining it is harder.
At each taking pictures scenes, Contee mentioned he hoped the neighborhood calls for “accountability” for these concerned — turning to a phrase he and different metropolis leaders have used steadily as gunfire has generated headlines and claimed youngsters’s lives.
The phrase has change into a type of rallying cry for metropolis officers struggling to know and confront what drives crime. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) used it in her inaugural handle. Town’s new deputy mayor for public security mentioned it in her first interview with a reporter after being tapped for the brand new job. It’s an everyday a part of Contee’s crime scene lexicon.
However the accountability they confer with is commonly imprecise — that means various things to completely different folks, or meant to indicate another person, or another establishment, must do extra.
Judges too lenient. Police too robust. Not robust sufficient. Too many cops. Too few. Regulation enforcement not trusted. Defund the police. Fractured houses. Lack of metropolis assets. Substandard colleges. Nothing for youths to do. Catch and launch. Substandard arrests. Prosecutors drop instances. Judges set criminals free. Various justice. Restorative justice. No justice. No accountability.
Violent crime within the District dropped 7 % final yr in contrast with 2021, with reductions in shootings and homicides. However carjackings, gunfire heard in neighborhoods and violence impacting younger folks continues to be a problem. The brand new yr has introduced little reduction: six killings within the first week of 2023 alone.
On Saturday, police say, a person fatally shot a 13-year-old, Karon Blake, who he claimed to have seen breaking into automobiles in Northeast Washington. The taking pictures has fueled calls to carry the shooter to account, placing police and prosecutors on the defensive.
Residents, together with activists and Blake’s household, packed a neighborhood assembly Tuesday night to angrily demand police rapidly arrest the shooter. Simply earlier than the assembly, Contee had held a information convention concerning the incident, once more utilizing the phrase “accountability” and calling on residents to exhibit “the identical ardour when we have now different homicides that occur in our metropolis.”
D.C. officers insist they aren’t shifting blame by demanding accountability, however as an alternative stating that police are however one half of a bigger ecosystem that features a dozen or extra legal justice entities that every one deserve scrutiny.
Bowser, caught between a reformist Council looking for options to policing and residents wanting harsh penalties for offenders, has mentioned she is pursuing a multifaceted method. She helps resolving underlying points resembling poverty and dependancy, and has put cash into various justice applications resembling violence interrupters to mediate conflicts. However she can also be below strain to cease shootings which are taking place now, and has pushed for a bigger police power and more durable penalties for offenders.
Final week, Bowser vetoed laws revising the District’s legal code, saying it undermines public security by decreasing most sentences for some severe crimes. Council members vowed to override her veto, saying the revisions stiffen penalties for repeat violent offenders and produce sentences extra consistent with what judges are literally doling out.
The union representing D.C. law enforcement officials says lawmakers shirked accountability by enacting legal guidelines limiting police ways and shrinking the dimensions of the power, and are complicit in “a tragic lack of life and a horrific improve within the variety of victims experiencing violent crime.”
D.C. Council Member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who beforehand chaired the police oversight committee and have become a major goal of the police labor group, mentioned accountability for crime can solely be achieved when “there’s a truthful and trusted” judicial system.
With out it, the lawmaker mentioned in an interview, it “undermines every thing.”
To activists, metropolis officers’ use of the phrase “accountability” is code for mass incarceration, paying homage to the old-style, robust policing they’re making an attempt to alter.
Authorities “can’t police your manner out of crime. You possibly can’t cage your manner out of crime. And so if that’s what they really feel … accountability is, D.C.’s in hassle,” mentioned Nee Nee Taylor, co-conductor for Harriet’s Wildest Desires, a Black-led mutual support and neighborhood protection group.
Bowser and others in her administration dispute that. In her inaugural handle earlier this month, Bowser outlined the time period by saying, “We all know, particularly for our younger folks, that typically accountability shouldn’t be punishment, it’s a lifeline” to make sure folks on the margins “get assist and that they perceive the implications of their actions.”
In an interview, Contee additionally denied accountability means locking folks up. He mentioned he makes use of the time period in its broadest sense — holding the legal justice system, together with judges, prosecutors and people supervising offenders, to account. He additionally contains colleges, social applications and another entity that impacts or influences life selections.
“The police get held accountable for any and every thing,” Contee mentioned. “The place else does that occur?” He added, although, that he contains his personal division in demanding accountability.
“All I’m saying is that it’s all of us,” he mentioned.
Contee mentioned he doesn’t consider residents are glad with the outcomes of legal instances, and that it’s as much as the neighborhood to determine what is appropriate. He questioned whether or not suspected offenders, significantly juveniles, are adequately supervised and given the assistance they want. Ought to an arrested youth, he requested, be launched “again right into a household the place there’s no construction, the place a few of the issues that exist in that surroundings maybe contributed to this child being on the street robbing folks?”
At a neighborhood stroll on Thursday with Bowser and different officers in Southeast Washington’s Anacostia neighborhood, following a deadly taking pictures outdoors a restaurant, contributors supplied their very own opinions on what accountability means:
Council member Trayon White Sr. (D) of Ward 8, the place gun violence is prevalent, mentioned, “Accountability is a common precept. Everybody. Grandma. Auntie. Nephew. Instructor. Principal. Upkeep man. Put up workplace employee. Bus driver. Council member. Mayor. All of us need to be accountable. We’ve to pay attention and do every thing in our energy to deal with the wants regardless of the political variations.”
D.C. Director of Gun Violence Prevention Linda Harllee Harper mentioned, “I believe it’s to verify we’re all being good stewards of public values. … I believe folks really feel just like the pendulum has swung too far-off from accountability.”
Ron Moten, Peaceoholics founder and activist, mentioned, “Lots of people in our neighborhood had been outraged by mass incarceration … however we weren’t preventing for folks murdering folks in our neighborhood to be let again out the day after they commit the crime and not using a technique.”
Makhia McCollough, an 18-year-old who lives in Ward 8 and is enrolled in a mentorship program, mentioned, “Accountability means to me when it’s good to take cost of your neighborhood and never simply to your self.”
The District’s newly elected legal professional common, Brian Schwalb, whose workplace prosecutes juvenile offenders, mentioned “actual accountability leads to folks on the finish of the day altering their conduct. Accountability for younger folks is oftentimes an appreciation they’ve performed one thing they shouldn’t have performed, and a dedication to not doing it once more.”
On the taking pictures scene on Georgia Avenue on Jan. 3, Contee famous the incident occurred not solely throughout rush hour, however close to a police station. Police haven’t made an arrest.
“We do not know why somebody would do such a reckless act at 6 p.m. on Georgia Avenue,” Contee mentioned. “However we goal to search out out and maintain these people accountable.”