In D.C., What an 'Operation' Won't Fix

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan: There they go again. High-profile violent crime is on the rise in the District. In response, the police have stepped into action with new initiatives that carry clever names but will do little to address the causes of crime ["D.C. Police to Check Drivers in Violence-Plagued Trinidad," front page, June 5]. D.C. police are pursuing the "Safe Homes Initiative," in which they ask parents to let them search teenagers' rooms for guns, and "Neighborhood Safety Zones," in which police barricade a neighborhood and control movement in and out.

I have had the honor of working on anti-poverty, civil rights and criminal justice issues in the District since the early 1980s. When economic and displacement pressures intensify on poor communities, there is an increase in violent crime, and the police announce the latest law enforcement campaign, usually following some national fad. Those who have lived in the District long enough remember "Operation Clean Sweep," "Operation Caribbean Cruise," "Weed and Seed" and many others.

These initiatives do little to stop violent crime. Violence abates when the underlying social conditions change: The economy improves, housing patterns stabilize or the drug market changes. Mostly, the result is that too many young people end up in jail for too long, further exacerbating the poverty of their families and communities.

The violent crime we are seeing now is the direct and predictable byproduct of a decade of displacement of low-income families to make way for luxury housing. It is the result of a failure of public policy and neglect of social conditions, not inadequate law enforcement. Public safety requires the District to invest in reducing and ultimately ending poverty. Only that will have a meaningful and lasting effect.

I applaud the mayor for making schools a high priority. This is key to changing the economic life of individuals and families. But schools alone will not do it. The District must create opportunities for young people to earn a meaningful income from work, create and preserve low-income housing in economically integrated neighborhoods, and address the crisis in nutrition that leaves so many District children hungry.

District officials are all too willing to favor large public works projects as economic development. The big-box stores in Columbia Heights, Verizon Center, the convention centers and U Street's development all transformed neighborhoods. But that transformation was achieved not by lifting families out of poverty but by moving poor families out.

Communities living in poverty are hardest hit by violent crime and have the greatest stake in any strategy that will bring it to an end. As the District contemplates spending hundreds of million dollars on a second stadium on the Anacostia waterfront, the basic social conditions in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty remain unaddressed. Ending poverty is a long, unglamorous struggle. But any politician who can achieve it will leave a legacy far more grand than the edifice of a recreation venue.

-- Jonathan M. Smith

Washington

The writer is executive director of the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia.