Why Do Some Lives Matter Less in D.C.?

Xiomara Lopez, left, is comforted by Wendy Nogales in April as Lopez reads a poem about Edwin Ventura, an 18-year-old Bell Multicultural High School slain this year in Columbia Heights. (By Lois Raimondo -- The Washington Post)

When does the loss of one life matter more than the loss of 168? Apparently, when the "one life" is at the center of a lawsuit.

This frustrating reality hit home for me on Nov. 27 as I attended the funeral of Timothy Spicer -- a father and a fun-loving, artistic employee at Ben's Chili Bowl. Tim was the 169th person killed in Washington this year. One hundred sixty-nine was the total number of people murdered in the District in 2006. For the first time in four years, the city will end the year with an increase in murders.

The good news is that in December 2006, the D.C. Council passed a law creating a Comprehensive Homicide Elimination Strategy Task Force, with members to be named by the mayor. The task force was to have one year to meet and make recommendations for a comprehensive plan to end murder in Washington. The bad news is that the task force did not even meet for the first time until Oct. 30 this year, as the city approached a homicide count of 169.

In contrast, by September, another task force -- which had been quickly established in response to a threatened $20 million lawsuit by the family of slain New York Times reporter David Rosenbaum -- had wrapped up six months of meetings and issued recommendations that the mayor and fire chief are already implementing. The Rosenbaum family pressed the city to examine the Fire and Emergency Medical Services response systems and look for ways to prevent more tragedies. I commend the Rosenbaum family for insisting on reform and the city for moving with a sense of expediency to address the issues.

But what of the Comprehensive Homicide Elimination Strategy Task Force? Sitting in the first meeting in October, I noticed that the group did not even have all of the appropriate members, as called for in last year's legislation. So nearly 11 months after council action, there have been two task forces formed, both designed to respond to tragedies.

Why have these groups not been embraced equally? In September I asked Mayor Adrian M. Fenty that question. I asked about the discrepancy in the approaches taken to the two task forces. I was told that it was wrong to compare the two task forces; it was "apples and oranges" because the Fire-EMS task force was "in response to a lawsuit."

But I would argue that the city needs a plan to end murder that includes input from those not usually included in the conversation, including mental health professionals, victims' survivors, youth, ex-offenders, and representatives of business, organized labor, the arts and education. While law enforcement and the work of activist and service groups are key components, they are only part of the solution. Some like to point out that the number of murders is down from the high marks of the late 1980s and early '90s. That's good news -- but try using that to console Tim Spicer's family or the families of the 175 other people killed this year in the city as I write this.

As I attended Tim's funeral and heard people talking of the tragic death that day of the Washington Redskins' Sean Taylor in Florida, I wondered: Does it take a lawsuit to get an urgent, sustained response to the leading cause of death for black males between ages 15 and 34? Does the weekly loss of far too many young, talented black men merit any less response than our response to a single tragedy exacerbated by a breakdown in the Fire-EMS systems?

It is unfortunate that the Comprehensive Homicide Elimination Strategy Task Force was not deemed as critical a priority as a task force that carried the weight of a lawsuit behind it. But what message does that send to our community? I hope that as the Comprehensive Homicide Elimination Strategy Task Force does its work, it will receive at least the same amount of support and attention from the mayor and other city officials as the Fire-EMS task force did. A fitting tribute to those who have been slain, beyond words, is to ensure we do all we can to get the best thinking on what would be the best plan to end murder in our city.

-- The Rev. David Bowers

Washington

The writer is founder of NO MURDERS DC and a member of the Comprehensive Homicide Elimination Strategy Task Force.