District community leaders urged their neighbors Wednesday to take a more aggressive stance on crime, arguing that the Metropolitan Police Department can’t go it alone.
Members of Red and Orange hat patrols and neighborhood watch groups, the volunteers who keep close tabs on their communities, gather intelligence on drug dealers and testify in court, said police need residents’ assistance as they battle entrenched neighborhood criminals and transient, out-of-neighborhood thugs.
“This war on drugs and crime is not going to be solved by legislating it away,” said Leroy Thorpe, co-founder of Citizens Organized Patrol Efforts, a Shaw-based volunteer crime-fighting effort. “It’s not going to be solved by putting more officers on the streets. This is a total community-police-government partnership.”
Police Chief Charles Ramsey declared a crime emergency July 11 in response to a beginning-of-summer spike in homicides and an sharp increase in violent robberies citywide. Last week, the D.C. Council adopted Mayor Anthony Williams’ crime-fighting legislative package, including neighborhood surveillance cameras, an earlier youth curfew and more money for officer overtime.
Williams used his weekly press briefing Wednesday to lobby for more community support. He urged citywide participation in the upcoming National Night Out.
“They help each other stay alert to potentially dangerous situations and they communicate with one another and with police if something out of the ordinary is going on in the community,” Williams said of the gathered neighborhood leaders.
In addition to overtime funding, the mayor’s emergency legislation incorporated dollars for youth work, recreation and development programs and gang intervention.
