D.C. leaders attending a crime summit know that the prevalence of illegal guns contributes to criminal activities in the District.
Last year, officers pulled more than 3,200 ghost guns — firearms without serial numbers — off the streets.
In admitting he was initially hesitant to give a normally private crime briefing to the public, outgoing D.C. police Chief Robert Contee noted that officers have pulled nearly 1,000 illegal firearms off the streets so far this year. Many of them are ghost guns, which are constructed from kits that make the firearms untraceable.
“The number of Glocks we’ve recovered nearly doubled from 66 in 2021 to last year, 127 Glocks, which makes semiautomatic firearms fully automatic,” Contee said.
He called Cmdr. Ramey Kyle to the stage to brief the mayor and leaders about a domestic violence call on May 1, when responding officers discovered a ghost gun never recovered before in the city.
“The violent crime impact team executed a search warrant in the 3300 block of Sixth Street Southeast,” Kyle said. “Once inside, our investigators, they located a 9-mm SIG Sauer handgun, it was housed inside of a rifle conversion kit. That kit allows a pistol to be fired as if it was a shoulder-fired rifle. We also located a large drum magazine. Chief, this is the first one I’ve seen that’s recovered in the city.” Kyle oversees the D.C. police Violent Crimes Suppression Division.
Officers arrested Travis Wicks, 47, who could face federal charges. Wicks was recently released after serving a 16-year sentence for manslaughter. He’s charged with felon in possession of a firearm.
Robberies in the city are also on the rise in the Fifth District, and Comdr. Sylvan Altieri briefed city leaders on a cluster trend they’re seeing around the Home Depot in Northeast, targeting day laborers.
“What’s happening is a lot of these folks that are here, if they’re undocumented, they operate under the false assumption they can’t open bank accounts,” Altieri said. “A lot of times they deal in cash, and other times, they have a lot of cash on them. Several years ago, people who are robbing people figured this out. And they’re sort of targeting folks like that.”
D.C. police are working with larger construction companies to pass the word down to their employees and also approaching day laborers to warn them to carry less cash, and inform them they can open bank accounts.
“Either way, it’s traumatic … we don’t want the robbery to happen … we don’t want somebody’s livelihood being taken because of this,” Altieri said.
The crime summit took place at D.C.’s Department of Emergency Operations all day on Wednesday.
