Crime Measures Derided as Too Little, Too Late

Race, Class Tensions Simmer as D.C. Residents Question Timing of Crackdown, Effectiveness of Tactics

Deputy Mayor Brenda Donald Walker said the District spends $2.2 billion annually on children's welfare and needs to do more. (Photos By James M. Thresher -- The Washington Post)

The teenagers, both shot several times, had been dumped on Suitland Parkway in Southeast Washington for all to see.

They were the city's 11th and 12th young homicide victims in 13 days -- alarming statistics that one grass-roots group said amounted to a crime emergency. Few took notice.

This was in October. Nine months later, after 14 killings in two weeks, including the deaths of a fledgling candidate for mayor near downtown and a British activist in Georgetown, D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey declared a highly publicized crime emergency.

"Nobody was listening to us back then, and we saw what was happening," said Tyrone C. Parker, executive director of the Alliance of Concerned Men, a nonprofit group that counsels ex-offenders and troubled youths and that issued last fall's urgent call for help.

Public perception, it seems, has caught up with Parker and others who work with young people at detention centers and curfew halls and on the streets. As part of the announced emergency, $8 million has been set aside for police overtime. Surveillance cameras will soon be installed in neighborhoods, and teenagers 16 and younger will have less time to hang out at night because of a 10 p.m. curfew, which begins tonight.

Instead of galvanizing residents, however, the measures have exacerbated race and class rifts. Youth advocates argue that juvenile responsibility for crime has been exaggerated because adults account for 82 percent of violent crime and more than 90 percent of arrests. Many dismiss the emergency efforts as bluster that will have little impact.

"We've sort of scared people to death, and we're not able to make effective policy," said Jason Ziedenberg, executive director of the Justice Policy Institute, which works on issues of crime and alternatives to incarceration.

Washington, like many jurisdictions, has long turned to curfews, community policing and additional officers to counter crime spikes. Ramsey acknowledges that policing alone is not enough.

"I don't think it's an either-or proposition," he said. "There's a front-end issue to help kids succeed, like health care, child care, literacy, recreation. . . . As police, we're sort of the last thing there when all these other measures have failed."

The percentage of juveniles arrested this year is not dramatically higher than last year. In 2005, 6 percent of those arrested were juveniles. This year, it is 8 percent. Ramsey doesn't hesitate to shine a bright light on the change of two percentage points.

"Any increase in juvenile crime, I think it is something you have to take a serious look at," he said. "You don't want 15- and 16-year-olds to get a criminal start in life. When more kids are getting arrested, it's a societal problem."

Community groups maintain that the best deterrent is keeping children busy, working or at school, and mentoring them to suppress the pull of the streets. When the current crisis was declared, those groups were quick to point to ideas that have been waiting months or even years for someone to take notice.