Reply to Crime was DOWN everywhere in DC in 2022… except Ward 3 where it increased

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[quote=Anonymous]I think one issue is that people are finding out about the violent crimes in their neighborhood now, when before they didn't pay attention and often didn't know. I say this as a Ward 6 resident. Here are examples of what I'm talking about:

Seven or eight years ago, I was getting my hair cut in Eastern Market and learned from my hairdresser that there had been a string of sexual assaults in the neighborhood at night and it was really stressful for everyone who worked there. It only came up because I had noticed that she used to do evening appointments and I hadn't seen them on the website, and she said that she and the other stylists were avoiding them if they could because they didn't feel safe leaving the salon and walking to their cars after dark. Apparently it had been going on for months and the police had no leads. But I had no idea -- I read the Post regularly, including the local section, I talk to my neighbors, I frequent EM a lot. And after this conversation, I mentioned it to numerous neighbors and no one had heard anything about it. Since it was mostly impacting workers in and around EM, not residents, and I guess those groups don't chat with each other enough, a lot of people were totally unaware of this serious crime spree occurring in the neighborhood.

Now, there are several crime reporting accounts on Twitter that track 911 calls and post about them constantly. I hear about every mugging, every car jacking, I'd definitely hear about a string of sexual assaults. I actually unfollowed these accounts over the summer because they are very aggressive in how they report (ALL CAPS, they post frequent follow ups, often they use very dire language about the crimes) and it was having a serious impact on my mental health. But I still see these posts a lot because they get retweeted and replied to by politicians and reports who I also follow. There is this heightened sense on Twitter that the neighborhood is going to pot, and I see it reflected in the comments on DCUM as well. Also the website Nextdoor, which I don't use much but am on, is very active on crime issues and if you read comments on there, it makes you feel like crime is content and worsening daily.

But as my DH likes to remind me, when we first moved here, there was regular drug traffic on the street outside our house, there were shooting within a few blocks of our home every few months. We'd hear about bodies being found in cars or homes in the surrounding neighborhood, and "foul play suspected". There was a lot of gang activity. I did not walk home alone at night and we initially had zero plans to stay here once we had kids because of the crime. But over the 8 years we lived her pre-kids, things change a lot for the better. The drug dealers disappeared, the shootings got less and less. In place of the crime a lot of great businesses and community popped up. Other people around us were having kids here, we decided to give it a try. It's actually gone really well, and despite the continued crime, I still feel a million times safer than I did when I moved here, and I don't worry about my kids either. There are certain precautions we take, but the benefits far outweigh the costs.

It's easy to lose perspective when you are being inundated with notifications about every crime. This is a city, of course there is crime. But the idea that the crime in this neighborhood is worse than 5 years ago doesn't hold up, and the idea that it's worse than 10 or 20 years ago? Laughable. This neighborhood has come a very long way.[/quote]

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