To Fight Crime, More Police, More Opportunity

The District government is taking an all-hands-on-deck approach to address the increase in crime we are seeing across the city.

I speak frequently with Police Chief Cathy Lanier. The Council’s Judiciary Committee is planning a public safety roundtable as soon as the next Council session starts in two weeks. Mayor Muriel Bowser released several policy proposals to address the increase in crime we have seen this year.

The first pillar of her plan is to increase the number of police officers in D.C. and to improve pay and benefits to retain more experienced officers. I’ve been calling for additional resources for our police force for many years, and I appreciate that the mayor recognizes this as part of the solution.
Her proposal also increases resources to “give law enforcement more tools to protect our citizens.” This includes incentives for businesses and property owners to install security cameras. Additionally, the plan would increase the rewards for citizens sharing information about illegal guns and crimes, helping police work with communities to keep us safe and catch criminals.

Her proposal also focuses on supporting communities by providing social services and investment to help neighborhoods affected by violent crime.

The city has been successful at providing wrap-around social, employment and health services to individuals and families who were identified as being particularly high-risk. The plan she released last week will expand those wrap-around services and provide grants to community groups that work to strengthen communities.

The other area we must continue to focus on is job creation and economic growth across our city. We’ve heard all too often in the past months from some of those who have committed crimes, as well as many young people in our city, that what they want are jobs and opportunities.

We’ve been successful at significantly reducing crime in Ward 2 over the past two decades because we’ve replaced vacant buildings with grocery stores and blight with active retail and commercial activity. Those stores and businesses have created jobs and training opportunities for people in the District.

I’ve continued to advocate for making it easier for small and local businesses to get started in the District by lowering taxes and simplifying regulation. I was successful in lowering the business franchise tax and keeping our sales tax at the same rate in this last budget cycle. Those actions will mean that businesses will choose the District over Virginia or Maryland to locate, and business will have more money to pay employees.
Now we have a chance to bring a large develop project to the St. Elizabeth’s site in Ward 8. I’ve been working for months to get the Wizards to build a practice facility in the District (rather than alternate plans to build one in Maryland). A facility like this in Ward 8 could become a center of community activity, from youth basketball camps to concerts to Washington Mystics games. It would bring some of the community investment and activity to Ward 8 that the Verizon Center brought to Penn Quarter.

Our first priority is to make sure our neighborhoods are safe, that we have appropriate police and community resources to be vigilant against crime, and to get illegal guns and criminals off our streets. But we have to continue to work to build our communities up and create every opportunity possible for people to succeed and prosper.