By Colbert I. King
Saturday, August 5, 2006
The District's leaders tell us we are now in the midst of a crime emergency. Pray tell, when in the past 20 years -- well, 17 to be exact -- have we been without one?
Let's repair to the archives:
"Partly in response to the record pace of homicides, the police department has just declared a crime emergency, permitting it to reassign about 400 officers, many from administrative positions, to street patrol one day a week." [The Post, March 9, 1989]
"[D.C. Mayor Marion] Barry has established a government task force to counter the city's image as the nation's drug and crime capital. . . . Barry said in his memo . . . that he has relied on advice from a private group of 'close personal friends and confidants' but that . . . 'in view of the drug and crime crisis confronting this community' he would consult them more often. . . . The mayor named as a member Mary Treadwell, his former wife who served 18 months in prison for defrauding the government and low-income tenants. She is now employed by the D.C. Parole Board." [The Post, April 8, 1989]
City Hall had a sense of humor back then.
Congress also recognized our emergency in the '80s.
"The House, in its first major response to the District's drug and homicide crisis, voted yesterday to authorize spending $127.3 million over the next five years to add 700 officers to the D.C. police department." [The Post, June 14, 1989]
The D.C. Council did, too.
"In its zeal to crack down on violence, the D.C. Council has spent the last few months introducing one tough new criminal-penalty bill after another. . . . Trying to find legislative ways to address the city's crime crisis is not a new exercise for the council." [The Post, Jan. 14, 1992]
And the emergency beat went on.
"[D.C. Police Chief Fred Thomas] declared a 'crime emergency,' a tactic that allows him to assign officers wherever needed without giving them the 28-day notice usually required by the union contract. Despite these and other measures, the city's homicide rate surpassed last year's. The chief also is grappling with a surge in gang-type violence." [The Post, Dec. 30, 1993]
Nor was Barry the only mayor to sound the alarm.
Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly "wanted the National Guard to do duty on District streets. . . . Kelly said she wanted them to set up roadblocks to help stem the flow of illegal guns. . . . the mayor's spokesman said the Guard would ride along with the police. . . . [President] Clinton said the Constitution would have to be changed to give Kelly authority over the Guard." [The Post, in a year-end review of local news, Dec. 30, 1993]
"Mayor Anthony A. Williams pledged yesterday to reduce youth-on-youth homicide throughout the District by December, and he set a goal of lowering . . . violent crimes among young people in Southeast Washington by 10 percent within a year. . . . 'We can't have this many kids dying without calling into question what I'm doing,' he said." [The Post, June 23, 2000]
"Beginning today, another police redeployment begins in the District after a wave of violence that left 12 people dead in late July and early August." [The Post, Aug. 22, 2000]
No chief has gone to the mattresses as often as Ramsey.
"The D.C. police department is in the third month of an emergency anti-crime program. In late August, Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said the city was approaching a 'crisis' of crime and suspended a set of rules governing his officers' days off." [The Post, Nov. 3, 2003]
"D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey today will announce a crime-emergency plan that commanders said will give them more resources to target juvenile auto theft, a problem that has resulted in three fatal wrecks in recent weeks." [The Post, July 19, 2004]
"Four people were killed in the District late Thursday and early yesterday, prompting top police officials to invoke crime-emergency powers that allow them to more quickly change officers' schedules and restrict days off." [The Post, Dec. 3, 2005]
"D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey reacted yesterday to a recent surge in homicides by declaring a 'crime emergency,' a move that gives him the freedom to quickly adjust officers' schedules and restrict their days off." [The Post, July 12, 2006]
And so it goes. With each emergency, more arrests, more guns recovered, more young men hauled into court and jailed, which usually lowers the communal blood pressure until, of course, the next crime wave.
Sooner or later, however, the incarcerated are returned to the District's streets, unrehabilitated and untrained. Meanwhile, preteen, out-of-control youngsters grow into out-of-control teenagers with guns and attitudes.
Ergo , another flare-up in violence, or a sensational crime that grabs national attention, followed by an emergency proclamation that produces yet one more version of the same short-term response.
This emergency response, along with the others, will all too soon be forgotten, because it's not designed to have a real and lasting impact on crime, a point Chief Ramsey acknowledged in a Close to Home column in The Post ["Why I Declared a Crime Emergency" July 16].
This is maddening. The tough issues that produce these outbreaks of violence aren't mysteries. What's missing is the will to tackle them.
Back in 1995 U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton was a D.C. Superior Court judge who handled juvenile cases. He pointed to the demographics of crime and said: "When you couple that with bad parenting, bad neighborhoods and the easy accessibility of guns, all of that fuels the problems that we see coming." Walton said that in many cases fathers have disappeared, leaving children to be raised by young mothers who themselves are struggling with mental or emotional problems, limited education, poverty and addiction. That was 11 years ago.
Fast forward to two weeks ago, when Eric H. Holder Jr., who has served as deputy U.S. attorney general, D.C. Superior Court judge and U.S. attorney for the District, commented on the new crime task force to tackle the current emergency: "It's not a coincidence that you see the largest amount of violent crime where you see the greatest amount of social dysfunction. Those problems tend to breed crime."
That, of course, is what Ramsey and anyone who works with the problem will tell you: The tough issues at hand are in those areas where deficiencies are the greatest: education, families, poverty, substance abuse.
And yet we heavy up police action while tolerating dilapidated schools, high dropout rates and bad teaching. We know from D.C. Action for Children that about 80 percent of all reported child neglect and abuse cases involve parental substance abuse, yet we shortchange the child welfare agency and substance-abuse treatment programs that are supposed to help troubled families and caregivers.
Putting the emotional and physical well-being of troubled children, youth and struggling families ahead of downtown interests is a good way for the city to begin taking a bite out of crime. But that calls for a mayor and city council with the right priorities instead of an eye for the cameras.
See you at the polls.
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