Heather Curtis
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON — (WMAL) D.C. residents are turning to Mayor Muriel Bowser and Police Chief Cathy Lanier for answers and solutions as the murder rate in the city continues its upward climb. At least 11 people were shot over the Labor Day weekend in the District, and the year’s death toll has risen to 109 – already higher than for all of 2014.
The latest violence comes more than a week after the debut of Bowser’s plan to stem the violence. She presented her plan to chants of “black lives matter” from a contentious crowd of Ward 8 residents at a press conference at the former Malcolm X Elementary School in Anacostia last month.
The plan includes increasing police presence in areas that are seeing more crime, including Ward 8 where the murder rate is up 95 percent compared to this time last year.
“By using overtime, we have 182 more officers on the streets in the city’s most vulnerable areas,” Bowser told a crowd of residents and reporters.
The plan also includes: giving business owners and residents incentives to install security cameras; prioritizing the processing of evidence in murder cases at the Department of Forensic Sciences; allowing police to do random searches of the homes of violent criminals who are on parole or probation; and improving community-police relations.
The part of the plan that angered the crowd the most was increasing the number of police officers in crime-ridden neighborhoods.
“Police ain’t took care of the problem yet, so how can more police take care of the problem?” said Ward 8 resident John Parry. He added the plan isn’t any different than others used by former mayors to combat crime.
Lanier said people would welcome an appropriate police presence, which is what she intended to provide.
D.C. political analyst and Washingtonian Editor at Large Harry Jaffe told WMAL News that Bowser is doing the right thing by being engaged and addressing the problem.
“The Black Lives Matter group are not necessarily her basic constituents. If you look into that group, you have to ask yourself, ‘How many of you live here? How many of you vote here,’” Jaffe said, adding that , in his opinion, resistance from the Black Lives Matter group won’t affect Bowser politically.
Washington City Paper Loose Lips Columnist Will Sommer said the long-term impact the murder spike will have on Bowser’s political ambitions will depend on how long it continues. He agrees with Jaffe that Bowser has done a good job dealing with the crisis so far.
Copyright 2015 by WMAL.com. All Rights Reserved. (PHOTO: Heather Curtis/WMAL)
