Soaring crime in the nation’s capital is leaving residents rattled, with locals driving small distances to avoid walking and others now too fearful to step outside even during the day.
Homicides and robberies are up 29 and 67 per cent from the same time period last year, with murders approaching levels not seen in two decades – while other big cities such as New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Baltimore are seeing declines.
Neighboring Baltimore could end the year with under 300 killings for the first time since the riots over Freddie Gray’s death in police custody in 2015.
Yet in Washington DC, one 58-year-old lobbyist told The Washington Post that he stopped walking in his neighborhood after he and his husband were attacked near Dupont Circle, and then had a bottle thrown at them outside Whole Foods. He and his husband left the city last month after 30 years, relocating to Maryland.
‘I’ve always thought I could outrun any criminal in the past,’ he said. ‘I can’t anymore. I’m a sitting duck.’
A body is covered with a tarp following a shooting in Washington DC in April. Murders are on track to reach levels not seen in 20 years
Nora Fanfalone, 28, avoids using the main entrance to her apartment building after several unpleasant and threatening encounters
Nora Fanfalone, 28, a management consultant, said she now uses the service entrance to her downtown apartment building to avoid being shoved by an aggressive man again, or witnessing a gunfight on her doorstep, as happened recently.
‘I’m like, ‘How did I get this wrong? I live across from the Smithsonian and there’s an Hermès store two blocks away,’ she told the paper.
‘It’s very surprising that public safety is an issue in a neighborhood with such high traffic and major attractions.’
Ronald Moten, 53, who lives in Ward 7’s Hillcrest neighborhood, said he now avoids going to the gas station at night for fear of being robbed.
He was arrested in the 1990s for selling crack, but now works with young people to keep them off the streets.
He told the paper that then the crime was targeted and localized, but now the violence was city-wide.
‘You used to not have to worry about crime unless you were associated with the streets, with drug dealing. Now you could just be going down the street, going to the car and you can be killed,’ he said.
Moten said that this summer he arrived at a nightclub on Connecticut Avenue – one of the diagonal avenues radiating from the White House – just as three men in hoodies were trying to rob someone.
‘A gun went off, and I had to dive to the ground,’ he said.
‘People don’t care. They rob them in Georgetown and Connecticut Avenue. They’re going to the Wharf. Now, it could be anywhere.’
Ronald Moten, 53, said violence in DC in the 1990s was localized: now it is citywide
Stephanie Heishman, 44, said she felt ‘ridiculous’ driving five blocks after her usual Sunday night dinner at a friend’s house, but did not want to get caught up in the violence in her Adams Morgan neighborhood
Stephanie Heishman, 44, a Northwest Washington event planner, said she now drives the minute five blocks distance for her usual Sunday evening dinner with a friend, after a gunfight outside her Adams Morgan apartment last year, and the murder of three men on her block last month.
‘It’s so ridiculous,’ she said of the driving. ‘On the other hand, I don’t want to randomly get shot.’
The causes of DC’s crime wave are complex to pinpoint.
Some point out that, while DC runs its own police department, federal authorities are in charge of the rest of the criminal justice system, including prosecutors, courts, prisons and offender supervision.
The mayor of Washington DC, Muriel Bowser, has resisted calls to defund the police, and is aiming to increase the size of the force from 3,580 at present to 4,000.
Her 2024 budget, approved in May by the DC Council, includes $5.4 million in bonuses for new hires.
Her 2023 budget earmarked $1.7 billion of the $19.5 billion for public safety and justice – an increase from $1.5 billion the previous year.
‘We must throw every resource at reducing crime,’ she wrote.
Muriel Bowser, mayor of DC, has resisted calls to defund the police and is seeking to increase the size of the force to 4,000, up from its current 3,580
Bowser has been criticized by some for spending $4.8 million on BLM Plaza
In the aftermath of the George Floyd murder, while some cities caved in to calls to defund the police, Bowser moved the opposite way, and opted to increase dollars for police in her fiscal year 2021 budget – which took effect October 2020.
The DC Council, however, revised the mayor’s proposal by cutting the Metropolitan Police Department budget by $32 million (or 5.4 percent) and redirecting $9.6 million dollars from police to violence interruption.
Bowser was criticized by some, however, for spending $4.8 million on creating BLM Plaza in the heart of downtown DC which saw the slogan painted on the road a stones-throw from the White House, then occupied by Donald Trump.
Homicides have risen for four of the last five years: the 2021 murder count of 227 was the highest since 2003, although that dipped to 203 last year.
So far this year there have been 190 murders, putting DC on track to overtake 2021 as the bloodiest year in two decades.
The most recent victim was 17-year-old Antonio Cunningham, who was shot and killed on Monday on his way to his part-time job at a sandwich shop in Northeast Washington.
Antonio Cunningham, 17, was murdered on Monday as he went to work in a sandwich shop in Northeast DC
DC police said Cunningham was accosted by three masked assailants, and Cunningham’s family said they robbed him.
Kenya Darby, 33, who is engaged to Cunningham’s father and lives with the family, said Cunningham was a doting older brother to five younger siblings, and was dedicated to school work and his local boxing gym.
She said he talked about owning his own business, and was hardworking and driven.
Darby said she and her fiancé were strict about his whereabouts, warning him to be careful and keep his head down.
‘We’re always trying to make sure he is doing the right thing, making sure he was where he was supposed to be,’ she told The Washington Post.
Some teenagers were staying at home, through their own or their parents’ fear of violence, said Derek Floyd, who coaches youngsters at the Barry Farm Recreation Center in Ward 8.
He told the paper he cannot find 14-year-olds to play fall football this year.
‘It makes it more dangerous,’ Floyd said. ‘Unfortunately this is our reality.’
