A massive surge in homicides and youth crime in Washington D.C. has sent city leaders scrambling for solutions and law enforcement officials pointing the finger at anti-police sentiment in communities across the nation's capital.
The Washington, D.C. homicide toll recently exceeded 200 before October for the first time in a quarter-century, angering local leaders and creating anxiety for residents.
"District government needs to get together with not only the police department, but activists in the community, the media, the churches, the schools and talk loud and often about intolerance for violent crime, and then they need to make good on that talk," National Police Association Spokesperson and retired Sgt. Betsy Brantner Smith told Fox News Digital.
The violence in 2023 has impacted nearly every community but has had a particularly devastating impact on D.C. youth. Homicides aside, more than 50 children and teens have been shot and survived this year. Teens are also among those pulling the trigger.
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In 2022, 97 juveniles were arrested for first-time violent crimes. Ninety juveniles were shot. In July 2023, a Lyft driver was shot dead in Northeast D.C. Video footage shows four teens running from the scene, likely aged between 14 and 17.
In early April, three teenage girls and a 17-year-old boy were connected to 13 robberies at gunpoint that occurred over the course of five days. Three weeks later, two teenage boys were accused of stealing from more than ten people in the span of five hours.
Smith said that the violence is likely a result of a nationwide trend of enacting laws and policies that do not hold young people accountable for violent crime. She also suggested that society has increasingly shown a tendency to devalue human life.
"Young people don't value their own lives. They don't value the lives of others. They don't value others' property. And we have spent three years kind of encouraging this atmosphere of it's all about me and my feelings," Smith said.
The surge in youth crime eventually led the city to enforce a juvenile curfew pilot program on September 1, the same day a judge denied bond for a 16-year-old girl accused of fatally stabbing another teen in Washington, D.C., during what authorities deemed a dispute over a McDonald's Sweet N Sour sauce packet.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced that the juvenile pilot program would target seven focus areas selected by the Metropolitan Police Department that cover neighborhoods "that have experienced a substantial increase in the number of young people involved in criminal conduct such as robberies or carjackings."
The curfew prohibits minors under 17 from being in any public place or on the premises of any establishment Sunday through Thursday from 11:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 12:01 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.
D.C. has also taken several steps to impose harsher penalties on criminal behavior. In March, Congress stepped in for the first time in nearly three decades to overturn a D.C. criminal code that aimed to reduce penalties for theft crimes, such as carjackings and burglaries. The city council then passed an emergency public safety bill in July, which increased penalties for certain offenses, including firing guns in public, in response to the violence. The bill also attempted to aid judges in keeping violent crime suspects in custody while they await trial.
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Despite these changes, Smith said the normalization of anti-police rhetoric and a lack of follow-through on punishment for criminals has led to the city's current predicament.
"Washington, D.C. already has some of the strictest gun laws in the country. But for the last three years, you have seen the vilification and the demonization of their police department. You have seen officers leaving, retiring, and you've seen a difficulty in recruiting new people to come to the job," she said.
In the wake of the "defund the police" movement, the city's police force has seen a massive drop in active officers. Data from the city shows that the department has around 3,328 officers, the smallest force in 50 years.
Smith said law enforcement has tried many things to deal with the loss of officers and distrust in the community, including special police officers designated to impoverished neighborhoods and more directed patrols. Still, many deaths in the city remain unsolved. Earlier this month, police announced they had only closed 44% of homicide cases, the lowest rate in at least 16 years.
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According to Smith, most homicides are solved through good old-fashioned police work and relying on getting community members to cooperate and act as witnesses. But, when people are told to hate the police, that cooperation ceases to exist.
Furthermore, funds have been stripped from the department. Bowser, who initially redirected city funds in the wake of George Floyd's murder, has recently called for more police officers. However, she has received pushback from some members of her council.
This lack of resources, Smith said, has led the city's police department to take police officers out of specialty positions and put them on the street to answer calls and reach out to the community. This decision has reduced detectives, meaning fewer resources to investigate and close out homicide cases.
"For three years, we have been telling the public and when I say we, I'm talking about some of the media, I'm talking about activists, I am talking about political leadership in Washington, D.C., telling the residents that the police are bad, the police are racist, the police are this, the police are that," Smith said. "So, you know what happens? Those officers get tired of hearing that, and they either leave the profession altogether, they retire when they can, or they go somewhere else that is going to appreciate what they do."
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Amid the loss of officers, federal prosecutors in the nation's capital declined to prosecute 67% of people arrested last fiscal year in cases that typically would have been tried in the D.C. Superior Court, the Washington Post reported in March. That number has nearly doubled since 2015, but new data is anticipated as fiscal year 2023 approaches.
Smith noted that while many people in D.C. are upstanding citizens attempting to live peacefully, a small subset of criminals is engaged in repeated crimes because they do not fear punishment under the legal system.
"The Constitution of the United States says we all get to pursue life, liberty and happiness. And how do we do that? It's basically an agreement between all of us in the United States that I don't steal your stuff. You don't steal my stuff. You don't attack me. I don't attack you," she said. "We all get to live our lives until you violate the laws of this land, and then you are to be punished. We have taken punishment out of the equation, especially when it comes to young people. And so, they commit these crimes knowing that there are going to be little or no consequences."
When asked for comment on D.C. crime, The Metropolitan Police Department referred Fox News Digital to recent testimony from Acting Chief Pamela Smith during her confirmation hearing.
During her testimony before the D.C. Council’s Judiciary and Public Safety Committee in late September, Pamela Smith said the community has expressed their most pressing concern is the increase in robberies and carjackings as well as shootings and homicides.
She noted that in 2023, almost two-thirds of all arrests for carjackings have been youth under 18 years of age. Three-quarters of the carjackings have been are committed while armed with a gun, increasing the risk to the community substantially.
"While the overwhelming majority of youth in the District have no involvement with crime, when some children as young as 12 are engaging in carjackings and other dangerous crimes, victimizing individuals and communities while increasing their own risks for later criminal involvement or victimization, it is clear that the current strategies are not an effective deterrent," she said.
She added that while it may be "necessary" to charge juveniles involved in armed robberies as adults, her preference is to work with youth to deter at-risk behavior.
Mayor Bowser's office did not return Fox News Digital's request for comment.
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Fox News’ Danielle Wallace and Megan Myers contributed to this report.
