WASHINGTON — Warmer weather brings the nation’s capital the promises of cherry blossoms, longer days and rising crime.
“It’s clear right in here,” says Derek Davis, pointing to the park that parallels Livingston Road in Southeast Washington. “Then during the summer, it starts to get hot, crowded and stuff starts happening.”
In the warm weather months, D.C. police beef up patrols in high crime areas in a bid to control not just violent crime, but also robberies that plague the city.
Davis, whose family has operated a barber shop on Livingston Road for 48 years, is all too familiar with the crime and violence that rattle his community.
“They have found guns down here … they found several guns. We got guns and drugs being sold. My concern is that somebody’s kid, somebody’s family member might get caught up in gunfire,” Davis says.
Davis joined about a dozen of his neighbors and several D.C. police officers Tuesday night in a walk down Livingston Road in a show of community support against crime.
“There was a shooting this afternoon, right up on 6th Street … there are too many guns … I heard the gunshots and there were multiple gunshots and I’m in the privacy of my home and I can hear them,” says Corlis Green, 62.
The city’s homicide rate jumped last year by more than 50 percent above the rate the previous year. There was also an increase in robberies in neighborhoods south and east of the U.S. Capitol, which prompted D.C. police to add extra patrols.
“I’d like to say that we’re going to have a summer where we have less crime, but I know in order for that to happen there’s going to have to be preventive measures. There’s got to be aggressive community efforts both by MPD and by residents … to see that we’re addressing mental health issues, substance abuse issues, employment issues,” says Ward 8 D.C. Councilmember LaRuby May, who joined her constituents strolling the neighborhood on one of the first warm evenings of the year.
