Crime and Public Safety July 11, 2018

On July 2, Capt. Ashley Rosenthal of the Metropolitan Police Department’s Second District, Sector 3, briefed Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2E on crime trends in the Georgetown area. “Our crime stats look pretty good,” Rosenthal said. Property crime remains the area’s main issue, with a total of 88 property crimes, including shoplifting, reported for the period from June 2 to July 2, down from 92 incidents the previous month.

Rosenthal said that auto theft and theft of property from within vehicles was of particular concern. “It is a crime of opportunity,” she noted, urging residents to protect themselves by locking and removing keys from their cars, also making sure that valuables, especially electronics, were not left inside. Rosenthal said she was surprised at the number of “key cases” — thefts of vehicles when the keys had been left behind — in the sector.

Though property crimes decreased from last month, auto theft and theft from vehicles during the period from Jan. 1 to July 2 have increased from the comparable period last year; the number of stolen cars doubled from 12 in the first six months of 2017 to 24 this year.

There were no reported sexual assaults in the neighborhood this month, according to Rosenthal. She noted that the department had “people of interest” regarding a series of misdemeanor sexual abuse offenses perpetrated on the streets of the Second District this spring. One of those persons of interest “has not been back in the area since” the assaults in Georgetown took place, but similar cases have occurred in Virginia.

In response to a commissioner’s query regarding tents set up on Georgetown sidewalks, Rosenthal said that there is a police task force working with the Department of Behavioral Health to clean up parts of the neighborhood frequented by the homeless. She pointed out that “homelessness itself is not a crime,” and that the goal of the Metropolitan Police Department is to provide assistance to the homeless.