Prompted by 13 homicides in 11 days, including the brutal throat-slashing of a London man in Georgetown and the shooting of a community activist in Mount Vernon, D.C. Police Chief Charles Ramsey declared a crime emergency on Tuesday, allowing him to put more police on the street.
Ramsey said there has been no pattern to the sudden increase of homicides and robberies across the city, but he wants to stop it before the heat of the summer arrives. Since July 1, there have been 13, possibly 14 homicides, including two or three in 12 hours Tuesday, police said.
Early Sunday morning, British activist Alan Senitt, 27, was killed in a robbery outside a Georgetown mansion. A day earlier, political activist Chris Crowder, 44, was found dead with multiple gunshot wounds to the body lying next to the wheelchair he had used since 1990, when a bullet left him paralyzed from the waist down.
Ramsey said the emergency declaration was not in response to the killing in affluent Georgetown, but to the homicides citywide.
In the last 30 days, the district has seen an 18 percent increase in robberies, a 14 percent jump in assaults with a deadly weapon and an 81 percent increase in juvenile robberies. Crime in the middle of town, in the first and third districts, and the homicides in Anacostia, the sixth and seventh districts, have driven up the crime statistics, Ramsey said.
By calling a crime emergency — the fourth time he’s declared one in eight years — Ramsey says he can adjust most of the department’s 3,800 officers’ schedules and assign them to high-crime areas during peak times for crime. Ramsey will re-evaluate the declaration after 30 days.
For the year, even with the spike, homicides are up by one or two over last year.
Commander reassigned after racist comments
D.C. Police Chief Charles Ramsey reassigned a top commander Tuesday to investigate comments the longtime officer made at a meeting with Georgetown residents about neighborhood crime and the brutal slaying of a 27-year-old British activist.
Cmdr. Andrew Solberg told residents to be aware of their surroundings and used the three suspects in the case as an example.
“They were black. This is not a racial thing. Blacks are unusual in Georgetown. This is a fact of life,” according to a transcript of the meeting provided by WJLA.
Solberg went on to say: “If somebody is walking along in Georgetown or any other part of this community and sees a man hiding in the bushes or sees three guys one of whom is a 15-year-old kid at 2 o’clock in the morning standing out on the corner. Folks, you gotta call 911 on that, you gotta say, ‘Hey, look, something ain’t right with this picture.’ ”
Ramsey said he was disappointed by the statements that had been described to him. Solberg was reassigned to security services.
“He’s a good man,” Ramsey said. “He’s not a racist or anything like that.” – Scott McCabe and Megan Snider
