WASHINGTON – D.C. police have announced a slew of arrests in connection with burglaries, robberies and assaults around the city in recent weeks.
D.C.’s interim Police Chief Peter Newsham says the focus in 2017 is on reducing gun crimes.
Overall violent crime in the District went down in 2016, compared with an especially violent year before.
“We think we have turned the tide,” Newsham told WTOP.
Newsham said he believes the trend will continue and attributed the 17 percent drop in homicides and 6 percent reduction in assaults with deadly weapons to officers’ efforts to get illegal firearms off the streets.
“What we are going to continue to focus on is reducing violent crime and gun crime in particular. We’ll focus on getting illegal firearms off the streets of the District of Columbia and we’ll be focusing on the robberies,” Newsham said.
However, the department’s 2016 statistics show no reduction in sex abuse cases in the District with 346 in both 2015 and 2016.
