The District’s summer crime wave has been reversed, thanks to early curfews and officers working six-day weeks, D.C. Police Chief Charles Ramsey said Wednesday.
“I attribute it to the hard-working men and women in the police force, and that’s the God’s honest truth,” Ramsey said. “They’ve been sucking it up this summer.”
Violent crime, robberies and homicides have gone down since Ramsey declared a crime emergency on July 11 after the city saw 13 homicides in 11 days and an alarming spike in juvenile crime. The D.C. Council agreed to spend $8 million to cover the cost of police overtime, move the juvenile curfew to 10 p.m. and install video cameras to high-crime neighborhoods.
Homicides for 2006 so far are down 11 percent from this point last year, which saw the fewest murders in the city since 1969. The number of homicides during the crime emergency has decreased 35 percent over the same time last year.
For the year, violent crime is up 6 percent and robberies are up 4 percent, but since the crime emergency and during the traditionally high-crime months, violent crime has gone down 11 percent and robberies down 18 percent.
Police say they made almost four times as many arrests for curfew violations during the crime emergency period as they made in the same time span last year. They’ve also recovered almost 23 percent more guns than they did during the same span in 2005.
Ramsey said the department has nearly exhausted the $8 million the city council approved for crime emergency overtime that allowed the chief to put between 200 and 600 more police on the streets at a given night. Ramsey said he’ll reduce the amount of extra work for his police officers, who will alternate six-day work weeks until October when the new fiscal year starts.
Mayor Anthony Williams moved the curfew for children under 17 from midnight to 10 p.m. and extended the curfew until the endof September.
