D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser joined District Police Chief Pamela Smith and Deputy Mayor for Public Security and Justice Lindsey Appiah in crediting a collection of stepped-up crime combating and crime discount packages put in place over the previous yr with bringing a couple of 35 p.c discount in violent crime within the metropolis over the previous yr.
Bowser, Smith, and Appiah highlighted what they known as a big drop in general crime within the nation’s capital at a Dec. 9 information convention held on the D.C. Metropolitan Police Division headquarters’ Joint Operations Command Heart.
Amongst different issues, town officers introduced slides on a big video display displaying that along with the 35 p.c drop in general violent crime through the previous yr, the variety of carjackings dropped by 48 p.c, homicides declined by 29 p.c, robberies declined by 39 p.c, and assaults with a harmful weapon additionally dropped by 29 p.c.
“I wish to begin by thanking MPD and I wish to thank all of our public security groups, native and federal, and the companies that assist their work,” Bowser mentioned in noting that the improved crime knowledge this yr was on account of a mixed effort in adopting a number of new packages to combat crime.
Bowser additionally thanked D.C. Council member Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) who launched laws backed by the mayor and authorised by the Council in March of this yr known as the Safe D.C. invoice, which incorporates a variety of latest crime combating and crime prevention initiatives.
In response to a query from the Washington Blade, Chief Smith mentioned she believes the stepped-up crime combating efforts performed some position in D.C. police making arrests in two latest circumstances involving D.C. homosexual males who had been victims of a criminal offense of violence.
In one of many circumstances, 22-year-old Sebastian Thomas Robles Lascarro, a homosexual man, was attacked and crushed on Oct. 27 of this yr by as many as 15 women and men on the D.C. McDonald’s restaurant at 14th and U Avenue, N.W., with a few of them shouting anti-gay slurs. D.C. police, who listed the incident as a suspected hate crime, arrested a 16-year-old male in reference to the case on a cost of Assault with Important Bodily Damage.
The opposite case concerned a theft and assault that very same day of homosexual DJ and hairstylist Bryan Smith, 41, who died 11 days in a while Nov. 7 from head accidents that police have but to hyperlink to the theft. Police have since arrested two teenage boys, ages 14 and 16, who’ve been charged with theft.
Smith mentioned the police division’s Particular Liaison Department, which incorporates the LGBT Liaison Unit, will proceed to analyze hate crimes focusing on the LGBTQ group.
“And so, I believe that what we’ll do is what we have now been doing, which is admittedly ensuring that the experiences are coming in or the incident experiences are coming in and we’re making certain that the Particular Liaison Department is getting out to the communities to make sure that these varieties of hate crimes usually are not rising throughout our metropolis,” she mentioned.
Smith added, “We are going to proceed to work with the group, work with our members, our LGBTQ, our different teams and organizations to make sure that we’re getting the fitting info out and ensuring that individuals, after they see one thing, they are saying one thing to share that info with us.”
Knowledge posted on the D.C. police web site present from Jan. 1-Oct. 31, 2024, a complete of 132 hate crimes had been reported within the District. Amongst these, 22 had been based mostly on the sufferer’s sexual orientation, and 18 had been based mostly on the sufferer’s gender id or expression.
Throughout that very same interval, 47 hate crimes based mostly on the sufferer’s ethnicity or nationwide origin had been reported, 33 had been reported based mostly on the sufferer’s race, and 6 had been based mostly on the sufferer’s faith.
The information present that for a similar interval in 2023, 36 sexual orientation associated hate crimes had been reported, and 13 gender id or expression circumstances had been reported.
