Watch Where You Walk, Mr. Obama

A word to the incoming president: In the nation's capital today, even police officers aren't safe.

The same NBC4 story reported that last week a uniformed police officer approached a group of teenagers standing outside a drugstore near the Waterside Mall in the middle of the day and asked why they weren't in school. Police said the teens jumped the officer, stole his police radio and tried to steal his gun. Yesterday, Police Chief Cathy Lanier wrote in an e-mail to me: "The officer was off duty on his way home in his take-home, marked cruiser. He sees a group of kids fighting, he stops to break up the fight and is assaulted by two of the juveniles, who were arrested and charged with assaulting a police officer. The officer's radio was not stolen. The officer did state that during the struggle he felt that one of the juveniles was reaching for his service weapon."

Welcome to our world, Mr. President-elect: a city of national monuments, great museums and breathtaking vistas and home to PCP, crack and guns; a city where the center of federal authority shares the stage with nightly anarchy, babies having babies, and absentee fathers.

Welcome to a city highly selective in its racial consciousness: an African American majority swollen with pride at the coming of the nation's first black president -- yet unwilling to face up to, let alone do something about, the uncomfortable fact that most of the hurting and killing is caused by people who look like us.

While in Washington, here's hoping the new president and first lady visit our public schools so they can see what the first daughters are missing -- and drop by our courts to witness a generation of D.C. youths being recycled through the criminal justice system.

They are getting arrested at a mad clip: more than 3,122 this year, up 8 percent over 2007.

Lanier told me in a phone interview this week that the number of youth arrests is even higher if cases in which youths are charged as adults are included. And, she added, juvenile arrest figures don't include youths who commit minor offenses and are diverted to a special program that keeps them out of the juvenile justice system. Thus far in 2008, more than 800 have entered the diversion program, Lanier said.

That is if they aren't getting killed: a 15-year-old Thursday night; a 15-year-old last week.

President-elect Obama should also make it a point to observe District leaders go through the motions of seeming to care about the turmoil in our city's underbelly.

They don't care, of course. Otherwise, how do you explain leadership that:

· Considers it taboo to hold parents accountable for their children's misbehavior.