D.C.’s homicides outpace nearby cities

The District’s 2008 homicide total is on pace to equal last year’s while other jurisdictions are experiencing fewer slayings, suggesting that city leaders are struggling to maintain significant declines in the homicide rate in recent years.

“It’s perplexing why the number of homicides is not going down in the District when it is going down elsewhere,” said D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson, at-large Democrat and chairman of the Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary. “When we talk about homicides, we’re talking about the most serious of all violent crime.”

Metropolitan Police Department statistics show that 175 homicides were reported in the District as of Tuesday morning, equal to the number on the same date last year. This is the second year of police Chief Cathy L. Lanier’s tenure, and the number is approaching last year’s total of 181 homicides during all of 2007.

By comparison, police officials said, Baltimore’s homicide rate has dropped from 270 last year to 221 to date, and Richmond’s homicides stood at 33 compared with 50 in 2007.

In Philadelphia - where former D.C. police Chief Charles H. Ramsey took the helm of the police department in January - homicides have dropped from 375 to 313 throughTuesday morning. In Prince George’s County, 125 homicides have been reported to date compared with 133 at the same time last year.

“These are jurisdictions right next door to us and all of them consistently have dropped homicides over the last year,” said Officer Kristopher Baumann, who heads the Fraternal Order of Police’s labor committee, which represents police officers. “Something’s wrong.”

In 2006 - the last year of Chief Ramsey’s tenure - the District reported 169 homicides for its lowest total in at least 20 years.

Chief Lanier, who was hand-picked by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty to replace Chief Ramsey, has spurned her predecessor’s strategy of calling a crime emergency to combat spikes in violence.

She instead has opted to implement notable initiatives such as All Hands on Deck - which puts all available sworn personnel in the department on patrol - and the controversial checkpoints program in Trinidad, which aimed to stem a tide of shootings in the Northeast neighborhood.

During an online chat with The Washington Times on Tuesday, Chief Lanier noted that the District is on track for a homicide rate below 200 for the fifth straight year and that last year’s rate was the second-lowest in more than 20 years.

She said violent crime in the city is down 5 percent, assaults with guns are down 14 percent and robberies with guns are down 12 percent.

The chief also said the District’s homicide closure rate this year is on course to be well above the national average.

Metropolitan Police Department spokeswoman Traci Hughes said the closure rate is 69 percent this year. By comparison, the average homicide and non-negligible manslaughter clearance rate for similar-sized cities last year was 54.6 percent.

“I think our strategies are strong and we will continue to do everything we can to drive our numbers lower,” Chief Lanier said.

But council member Mary Cheh, Ward 3 Democrat and a critic of the Trinidad checkpoints, likened some of the department’s policing strategies to “publicity stunts” that are “not really effective in cutting down the rate.”

Story Continues →