The District of Columbia’s attorney general Karl Racine and the council member representing Ward 8, Trayon White, teamed up recently to talk about fighting violence in the ward.
On July 19, Racine and White convened a town hall, “Violence Prevention and Interruption” at THE ARC in Southeast to talk to Ward 8 residents on the best ways to address public safety.
Karl Racine is the attorney general of the District of Columbia is assembling a plan to further reduce crime in the city. (Courtesy photo)
“We have some issues in our community,” White said to the crowd of 250. “Bad things happen when good people do nothing.”
The panelists for the event included Kevin Donahue, deputy mayor for Public Safety and Justice; Andrae Brown, a violence interruption expert; Patrol Chief Robert Countee of the D.C. Police Department and Ivan Cloyd, an anti-violence activist in the District.
Racine said he convened the meeting because he felt that violence was too prevalent in people’s lives.
“Recently, a grandmother in Ward 8 told one of my staffers ‘I care for my 8-year-old grandson, and every time he hears gunshots outside our apartment he screams, ‘Grandma, hit the ground,” the attorney general said. “This story is heartbreaking and, sadly, not unique.”
The latest police department statistics available for the Seventh Police District, which covers the overwhelmingly majority of Ward 8, show that there has been a 31 percent reduction in violent crime that is categorized as robbery, assaults, sexual assaults and homicides. Police statistics also show that there has been a 47 percent reduction in robberies specifically, a major offense that takes place in Ward 8.
However, statistics reveal that there has been an 18 percent increase in property crimes. Nevertheless, Countee was upbeat about crime trends.
“Crime is at an all-time 10-year low and it is headed in the right direction,” he said.
Donahue said that a change in mindset has taken place among the District’s public safety sector, citing the passage of the NEAR (Neighborhood Engagement Achieves Results) Act of 2015 that was authored by D.C. Council member Kenyan McDuffie (D-Ward 5). The act focuses on a non-traditional mode of fighting crime.
“The NEAR Act tries to solve violence with a public health approach,” Donahue said, noting that many criminals have mental and, in some cases, physical ailments that contribute to their lawlessness. He said that the Act has enabled the administration of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) to look at creative ways to engage offenders and victims.
“We are working on ways where there will be social workers at emergency rooms to counsel patients if they are there as a result of a criminal act and a legal advocate at the hospital to advise people, whether they are criminals or victims, of their rights,” Donahue said.
The general consensus among the panelists is that the community must play a more active role in fighting crime.
Brown has done anti-violence work in Los Angeles and notes America’s second largest city has made significant headway in reducing crime.
“The Los Angeles government had a full comprehensive strategy where all agencies of the government worked to reduce gang violence,” Brown said. “There was an effort to get more members of the community engaged in the work of the police. In addition, we worked to get the police to change the way it sees the community.”
Countee agreed with White that anti-violence non-profits should get more city and private sector funds and he supported a contention of Brown’s.
“People should call-in to the police when there is trouble,” he said.
Cloyd said many young people want to do the right thing but face so many problems that they can’t deal with.
“When I was young man in the early 1990s, I became disaffected with education,” he said.
“For example, if you don’t have the reading skills that are required of your grade level you become frustrated and decide to tune out school. If you don’t have reading skills, you can’t reason and you become educationally disengaged.”
Racine said he has a plan to confront violence that consists of identifying people who are at high risk of getting involved in violence and connect them with services that can help; mediate disputes and prevention retaliation; and help change norms around violence and organize community responses when violence does occur.
However, the event lacked the woman’s perspective, according to Barbara Morgan, a former president of the D.C. Federation of Civic Associations, who questioned why there were no female panelists.
“It was very informative,” Morgan told the AFRO. “I asked about the females because there are a lot of issues that females have to deal with. It takes two to be a part of the solution.”