D.C. Homicides Had Been Falling Since 2002
By Allison Klein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 19, 2007
The number of killings in the District this year already has reached the homicide count for all of last year, reversing a trend in which deadly violence had steadily declined over the past four years.
With six weeks left on the 2007 calendar, the District has recorded 169 homicides. When the city tallied that number last year, it was the lowest homicide total in 21 years.
The rash of killings across the city presents a stark challenge to D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier, in office since late last year. Lanier's predecessor, Charles H. Ramsey, spent millions of dollars in overtime to get more police on the streets several times when homicides spiked.
The most recent killing was discovered late Saturday when police responded to reports of shots being fired and found Timothy Spicer, 25, in a parking lot outside the Anacostia Metro station, police said. He had been carjacked and shot multiple times, police said.
Spicer was the second person fatally shot in the city over the weekend. The body of Raymond Carpenter, 28, was found in the 3100 block of Buena Vista Terrace SE Saturday morning.
"We're in the middle of a crime crisis," said D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), who has been outspoken about a surge of violence in his ward.
Lanier said she's studying the homicide spike in hopes of determining its cause. Killings steadily grew through the year, and the pace picked up in recent months.
"There's a whole lot of things that play into it," Lanier said.
Among her theories: Neighborhood gangs are having more violent flare-ups, and criminals are using assault rifles and other guns with more firepower.
In other areas of the Washington region, the picture is mixed. As of last week, homicides were down in Montgomery County, with 13 so far this year, compared with 20 all of last year. In Prince George's County, they are up, with 123 to date, compared with 113 at the same time last year.
In Virginia, there were 10 killings in Fairfax County, three fewer than this time last year. Prince William County has eight, compared with 13 at this time last year.
Across the country, the picture also varies. Homicides in the first six months of 2007 were down in some cities, including Los Angeles, New York, Houston and Minneapolis. But they rose in others, among them Baltimore and Oakland, Calif.
In response to the District's crime, Lanier has beefed up street patrols and put more officers on foot. She has also focused more attention on neighborhoods that have had persistent violence -- including Columbia Heights and lower Georgia Avenue in Northwest Washington and the Knox Hill area and the neighborhood around Suitland Parkway and Southern Avenue in Southeast.
When Lanier took office at the end of last year, she decided to abandon the "crime emergencies" that Ramsey used to try to cut crime during violent surges, including last summer. The emergencies allowed Ramsey to shift officers' schedules and mandate that they work last-minute overtime. But they were costly. The price tag for summer 2006, for example, was $14 million.
Instead, Lanier has had four "All Hands on Deck" initiatives, in which most available officers work during a predetermined two- or three-day span. The first one cost $1.2 million. For the remaining three, she rearranged officers' schedules so it wouldn't cost extra money.
The level of homicides is far from the bloodshed of the late 1980s and early 1990s, during the crack cocaine epidemic. In 1991, the city had 489 killings. If the current pace continues, the city will be closer to the number of homicides it had in 2004 and 2005: slightly less than 200.
More than half of this year's killings -- 94 -- happened east of the Anacostia River.
The death toll is increasing in pockets, most significantly in the 7th Police District -- the southernmost section of the city east of the Anacostia River, where there have been 57 killings this year, an increase of about 41 percent from this time last year.
"That's not inconsistent with what we've seen historically," Lanier said. "It's very sporadic; there's spikes and valleys."
Assistant Police Chief Winston Robinson, who oversees criminal investigations, pointed to more guns, drug battles and clashing neighborhood youths as causes for the increase.
"A lot of it is neighborhood crews. They go back and forth with each other," Robinson said. "There's turf issues, arguments over girls, arguments over something that may have happened that nobody can remember."
Thirty-eight homicides this year are blamed on arguments.
The next largest category of killings was robbery, which accounted for 22 slayings this year.
In recent months, two restaurant workers were robbed and shot as they delivered food in Southeast. On Nov. 11, Hong Zhi Wang, 29, was killed as he brought food to a home in the 1300 block of Barnaby Terrace. Ling Mao, 36, was found fatally shot Sept. 1 at Savannah Street and Ridgecrest Court.
About 61 percent of the cases have resulted in an arrest this year.
The majority of the slayings -- 130 -- were carried out with firearms. Twenty-one were committed with knives.
Among the victims were 13 juveniles.
Ramsey, who was named commissioner of the Philadelphia police department last week, said homicides are a "complicated problem." He said he monitored them every day in a crime briefing, which helped him understand what was happening. Homicides declined in seven of the nine years he was chief.
"There's no one right way to do this stuff. It boils down to results," Ramsey said. "It's not the kind of problem where you can come up with one key solution."
He said the department has to be nimble. He cited an example from last year, when fights during street gambling led to four homicides.
"I told the officers, 'You see guys shooting dice in the alley, don't think you're too busy to go over there,' " Ramsey said. "You have to have an understanding of what's driving the arguing."
Staff writers Candace Rondeaux, Katie Shaver and Tom Jackman contributed to this report.
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