When Cathy Lanier replaced Charles Ramsey as the District’s police chief in January 2006, people were being mugged on the National Mall and gunned down in the streets, making Washington feel more like a Wild West town than the capital of the United States. Ramsey was fired after a surge in violence on his watch left 14 people dead in 13 days. Last weekend, four people were killed in just five hours.
Despite Lanier’s widely publicized crime-fighting initiatives, including her “All Hands On Deck” strategy, crime in D.C. actually increased 4 percent last year, with a 1 percent uptick in violent crime — the kind that terrorizes and traumatizes victims, their families and entire communities. This was after police officers were forced to work six-day weeks, logging more than a quarter of a million hours of overtime.
Councilman Harry Thomas Jr. wants a crime emergency declared in Ward 5 because of 10 homicides there since the beginning of the year. Although Lanier has not gone that far, she recently tripled the number of officers on duty in an effort to reassure the public that the latest crime spike is not being ignored.
Such choreographed shows of force may be good PR, but how much more can Lanier get out of officers who’ve just worked 13 days in a row?
Not to mention the fact that exhausted people tend to make more mistakes.
Instead of trying to placate the public with temporary measures that will quietly be discarded until the next crime wave, the chief should focus her attention on changing policies that undermine efforts to reduce crime.
For example, veteran cops say it takes years to build the kind of intelligence-gathering capability and community trust needed to really make a dent in criminal activity in drug- and gang-infested areas.
But officers seldom stay in one neighborhood long enough to develop such expertise. A better incentive system would encourage and reward front line crime fighters for staying on the same beat year after year.
Other police departments have had great success in identifying violent offenders and closely monitoring them as soon as they get out of prison.
Tracking known felons requires a high level of diligence and follow-through and is frankly a lot harder to pull off than merely ordering every warm body into a patrol car for the weekend. But it’s also much more likely to reduce long-term crime rates.
