The Washington DC Crime Trap
8.19.08
Donald Trump’s invasion of Washington DC is based entirely on uranium-enriched lies. His “weapons of mass destruction” are “violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people.” And while George W. Bush and Dick Cheney laundered their lies through Colin Powell, Trump has no need for respectable surrogates.
Jeanine Pirro, who’s somehow the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, told Fox News she’s “tired of hearing that crime is down.” Colin Powell at least brought props when selling the WMD scam. (Watch below.)
I’ve always enjoyed DC — the food, the culture, the architecture. My first trip was in 1991, when George H.W. Bush was still president, and it was the first time I saw homeless people in such large numbers.
Washington DC is a predominately Black city, a popular destination for Black southerners escaping racial oppression under Jim Crow. It was majority Black from the 1950s until 2011, when its population dipped below 50 percent. Federally-appointed commissioners and members of Congress had run the District’s local laws and budgets until Congress passed and President Richard Nixon signed the DC Home Rule Act in 1973, which allows DC residents to elect the mayor, Council members, and Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners who actually run the District’s day-the-day affairs. (The Roe v. Wade ruling was also in 1973 — people can mistakenly assume certain rights have always existed.)
The DC Home Rule Act was considered a compromise. Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd from West Virginia had once opposed DC home rule but told the Post in 1971 that home rule would prevent Congress from being “the whipping boy” for DC’s many issues. Rep. Thomas Abernathy from Mississippi was fed up with managing DC. He told the Post he was “sick and tired of people saying Congress won’t give us this and Congress won’t give us that.” It was common to hear politicians from both parties talk about the nation’s capital like it was a colonized territory. With DC Home Rule, the “buck would stop” with the officials DC residents willingly elected, although they would still lack true representation in the House and Senate.
The Washington Post said in 1998 that “to understand the District of Columbia, one must understand Marion Barry.” Once described as DC’s “mayor for life,” Barry served from 1979 to 1991. In 1990, he was arrested in a sting operation for crack cocaine use and possession. He was sentenced to six months in federal prison because our criminal justice system takes recreational drug use more seriously than attempted coups. After his release, Barry staged a political comeback under the slogan “He May Not Be Perfect, But He’s Perfect for DC.” In 1994, Barry won another term as mayor, or as Chris Rock would famously observe, he “smoked crack and got his job back.”
The crack epidemic devastated Washington DC, which was dubbed the “murder capital of the U.S.” The city struggled with crime for decades, particularly in Black neighborhoods that were (and are) disproportionately victimized. According to a December 2023 study from the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform:
“The victims and suspects of homicides and nonfatal shootings in the District of Columbia are primarily male, Black, and between the ages of 18–34. Within the period of this study, nearly 91% of victims and suspects in homicides and 88% of victims and suspects in nonfatal shootings were male. About 95% of victims and suspects in homicides and 94% of victims and suspects in nonfatal shootings were Black, despite Black residents comprising only 46% of the overall population in the District.”
This is the insidious result of concentrated poverty in many Black neighborhoods after decades of redlining and “urban renewal” projects. Republican don’t have any real solutions for crime, but that doesn’t mean it’s wise for Democrats to dismiss crime.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he “feels perfectly safe” walking around DC. Hillary Clinton posted on social media, “On one hand, Republican officials call themselves ‘warfighters.’ On the other, they become whiny crybabies at the thought of setting foot in DC streets and New York City subways that literal schoolchildren navigate every day without incident.”
It’s not entirely without incident: A group of students attacked three juveniles on a Metro platform last November. This was in a neighborhood Schumer and Clinton have likely never visited.
The Post published a map of 2024 homicides in January, and it’s clear who is the most at risk. Meanwhile, the predominately white, upper-middle-class neighborhoods have homicide rates more in line with Scandinavia.
This is why a lot of liberals posting photos of their neighborhoods and scoffing at crime rates can feel out of touch and disconnected from a reality they make a point to avoid. They are willingly stumbling into the crime trap that Republicans have set. When you actually talk to residents in high-crime neighborhoods, they consistently state that they want more proactive policing to reduce crime that doesn’t treat law-abiding people like inmates in an open-air prison. Unfortunately, liberals can go in the opposite extreme. If you ignore that a problem exists, people will assume that only Republicans are interested in solving it.
Columnist Rotimi Adeoye, who’s Black, posted on social media, “I got mugged in DC years ago as an intern and I think DC has the same crime and public safety issues most big cities face, I think the response here should be ‘parading around national guardsmen in Georgetown isn’t addressing the root causes of crime’ not ‘there’s zero crime.’”
Of course, Washington DC also boasts a thriving Black middle class. It is a city where you can go to a Starbucks or an upscale restaurant and see mostly Black people. That is a vastly different experience from a seemingly diverse city like New York, where even well-meaning white liberals are conditioned to view “non-white” as inherently unsafe. Republicans realize this and are pushing liberals into a position where their own hypocrisies are easily exposed.
One thing remains true: Trump isn’t interested in improving material conditions for DC residents, regardless of their background. He wants to subdue people who have repeatedly rejected him. That’s why he targets cities with a significant minority population but not the ones in “red” states. He considers Memphis, Little Rock, Birmingham, and Cleveland “under control.”
I’d think about Washington DC today even if it wasn’t currently under Confederate occupation. My wife and I got engaged 17 years ago in DC. We lived in New York at the time, but I had her ring shipped to a friend so I could avoid New York City sales tax. I didn’t come up with the idea on my own. It’s apparently what jewelers in New York will recommend. It’s like a service they provide.
So, we took the Acela down to DC and made a trip out of it. When we returned to New York, we were French words. This is the DC I remember and cherish. It’s a DC that still exists, despite the MAGA propaganda. People only claim an American city is a “war zone” when they want to justify waging war against that city and its people.