25 Jan 2010

Carjacking Fear Heightened as Arrests Made, Police Presence Up

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An evening carjacking Friday, Jan. 15th, at 12th and D Streets NE that had neighbors talking, combined with accounts of  other recent successful and attempted carjackings, as well as armed robberies and surprise assaults, has prompted some into taking action, even as statistics show violent crime may be down overall.

For starters, there’s an open letter to the Mayor’s office shared online, a petition circulating calling for more action and funding and demands for more visible and undercover police presence.

Reports are bouncing like pinballs from listserv to listserv and in conversations all over the Hill. One woman with a longtime Hill business told me she has clients that are thinking of leaving the Hill because of the online reports of spikes in crime. After all, we are reading the raw account of how someone’s husband was carjacked by a “teenager with an Uzi gun,” and “a little gang of carjackers that has waged war on the women of Capitol Hill,” as one person described it in an email. The police chief herself has acknowledged  on the radio that women with children have often been targets.

I hear of it in emails, street conversation, and from relatives who don’t even live here:  A relative, over  from Northern Virginia  even mentioned a mid-morning November carjacking attempt account here, on 14th and Massachusetts Ave., NE, by a Facebook friend. “I have heard that there are carjackings, people mugged on the street, and also break-ins.  I’ve been concerned about all three of these crimes that have been happening on Capitol Hill.  The problem, like I said before, is that these criminals have nothing to lose  and are enjoying terrorizing our neighborhood.  Police have said that some of these carjackings are joyrides, so essentially, these are thrill crimes which people should be even more alarmed at,” said Elizabeth Eurgubian to other parents online (Eurgubian offered to share her thoughts here as well).

Most of the carjackings have occurred between 11 am and 7 pm on weekends, but the January 15th incident was the first one that occurred on a Friday. Some are worried about their property values declining because of the target-rich area they feel they now inhabit. As was noted in a previous THIH article,  armed carjackings are up throughout the city, with 24 incidents occurring in November alone.

There have been two carjackings in MPD-1D in January, according to Kamperin. There was one incident where mace was used to subdue a young woman, on Jan. 17, and her car was stolen after her keys were taken, but this is not classified as a carjacking as the car was not in the woman’s immediate control. “I am sure, though, that had these suspects gotten to the victim quicker, this would have been a carjacking,” Kamperin said in an email to THIH.

Jessica Chertow, who was a victim of an attempted purse snatching/carjacking at the Sunoco gas station on 13th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, SE, is starting a petition to ask Mayor Fenty for more funding and aid to make her neighborhood a safer place. Police have increased their presence and many residents are reporting parked cop cars on corners in NE.  I, too, have seen them on both sides of Lincoln Park. Multiple carjacking arrests have been made on several occasions.  For example, another Friday night carjacking, this one outside the MPD-1 area and technically outside the Hill, on 18th and Benning Road SE, led to a pursuit and arrest of three individuals, according to Police Chief Cathy Lanier.  Lanier noted she was in the area when the call went out, and reported that officers from  the MPD’s first, fifth and sixth districts coordinated the successful response with SOD (Special Operations Division).

Indeed, Lanier is now very active on the MPD-1 listserv, discussing carjackings and public outreach by officers, which has included door-to-door visits and community meetings in the NE pocket where carjackings first flowered.  Sgt. James Somers of MPD’s Car Jacking Task Force  is scheduled to make a presentation at the next MPD-1 Citizen’s Advisory Council meeting on February 2.  In addition, Chief Lanier is expected to provide an update on the success of the force’s carjacking reduction strategy on Thursday, Feb 4, at 6:30PM at Options Charter School, 1375 E St., NE.  Representatives of the Mayor’s office will also be present as well as Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells.

Commander Kamperin responded to one of Eurgubian’s emails by noting that police, too, are frustrated, and acknowledged that some of  the crime is brazen.  “The last two incidents occurred when officers were within a block,” he wrote. Kamperin added, “in addition to the presence you have seen recently we have increased plain clothes operations within the area, have the Carjacking Task Force dedicated to this problem and have coordinated efforts with our Intelligence and other investigative units. We have also expanded coverage time ….  we also have support from our [SOD] and have moved resources from some of the other PSAs to augment uniform presence.”

Yet recounting the crimes could be breeding fear of a more dangerous environment than truly exists, in an online and over-the-fence version of George Gerbner’s Mean World Syndrome for the Facebook age.  Kamperin told me confrontational crime is down overall here, and a quick look at DC’s MPD-1 crime map shows assaults with a gun and many other violent crimes, plus all categories of property crimes, down year over year , with “robbery with gun,” and “sex abuse” violent crimes rising in the six violent crime categories. A carjacking is usually classified as a “robbery with gun.”

There have been 200 robberies with a gun in the past 12 months in MPD-1, compared with 184 in the previous year’s span. The time period analyzed was Jan. 21, 2009 to Jan. 21, 2010, compared with the previous year’s  time period.

In PSA 103, encoompassing much of the Northeast Capitol Hill neighborhood, robberies with guns are up 13% to 44 from 39 incidents in the same time frame, according to the PSA 103 crimemap. Sex abuse is up 50% (8 incidents to 12), and, among property crime, only theft from auto is up, increasing 12%, from 213 to 239 incidents reported. In PSA 106, which encompasses Eastern Market and stretches in a band from Lincoln Park across to the Anacostia in the SE quadrant, total incidents are far fewer. However robbery with gun is up one incident, to 12 reported cases, assault with dangerous weapon excluding gun are up to 24 incidents from 18, although violent crime is down from the previous year. Theft from auto increased in PSA 106 by about the same degree as in Lincoln Park–by 13%, to 228 incidents from 201.

In PSA 107, violent crime is up. It has increased by 4 incidents to 122, but it is this PSA that does not show a decline–robberies with and without guns , as well as sex abuse incidents all rose in the past year over the previous year. Robberies with guns increased to 21 incidents from 19. Thefts from autos are down in PSA 107, although stolen auto cases are up by 3 to 83.

How do you feel about police response and how has the news of carjacking and related crimes affected you?

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23 responses to “Carjacking Fear Heightened as Arrests Made, Police Presence Up”

  1. Hill Rat says:

    How do you feel about police response and how has the news of carjacking and related crimes affected you?

    I think the police response has been about all we could ask for. Since these carjackings started there has been a noticeable uptick in police presence on the North side of the Hill. There were four police cars on my block yesterday.

    Without exception, the officers in our area have been professional, courteous, and informative about the situation. I saw a cop talking to three teenagers the other day, not making an arrest or hassling them, but having a conversation with them and getting to know residents of the neighborhood. You know, doing police work.

  2. ASW says:

    Good article! How do we sign the petition mentioned in the second paragraph?

  3. Anonymous says:

    I completely disagree with Hill Rat.

    Take a look at the Frozen Tropics blog this morning. There were 3-4 separate muggings on H St. last night alone that happened within blocks of one another. One of them was an armed robbery. Amazingly, two incidents happened within 45 minutes and 5 blocks of one another. Another mugging involved 3-4 black males between the ages of 13-18 yrs. old.

    Sound familiar? All of the carjackings so far have involved roving bands of black teenagers who jump pregnant mothers for their cars. Now they are adding muggings to their repertoire.

    How is it that MPD can’t spot these roving bands of thugs a mile away and breaking them up? Maybe if they actually tried foot patrols as opposed to leaving empty cars on the corner we may have better results. Seriously, this has gotten ridiculous.

  4. cvd says:

    I can’t imagine why people would be worked up about being carjacked, robbed at gunpoint, and assaulted by surprise when “statistics show violent crime may be down overall.”

    Anonymous is correct – this shouldn’t be so hard to stop.

  5. pmt says:

    Thanks for keeping track of this, Liz. The carjackings remain a concern, but it’s not just carjackings — the robberies are happening as often or more often as noted by 11:35 anon above. MPD website says robbery-guns are upare 24% in PSA102 over the past year even before the three from this weekend. It’s crazy how much nicer NE Capitol Hill has gotten, but yet we don’t have a better grasp on these crimes on these parts of it of late. We’ve got the best neighborhood in DC with the most committed and community-oriented residents, but somehow our law enforcement system isn’t keeping up here.

  6. Tim Krepp says:

    Anonymous and cvd,

    What more would you like to see? You mentioned foot patrols. What else?

    Not being snarky, I’d really like to know what else folks would like the police to do.

  7. Anonymous says:

    For starters, how about a curfew for teenagers? That seems to me to be a logical idea since a substantial portion of the recent crime is being perpetrated by teenagers.

    Anon. 11:35

  8. Dook says:

    Holy hyperbole Batman!

    Curfews? What is this LA, 1992?

  9. sre says:

    It’s just really crazy how a good amount of these crimes are being committed by teenagers. I was standing on Mass avenue across from Union Station one night waiting for the bus and had a gun pulled on me. It was by a little kid around 13 years old who was walking past in a large group of other teens. I told him that i was just waiting for the bus and he replied that he’d be through with me before the bus came. I was lucky that the incident ended well. He just put his gun back in his jacked and walked away.

    A couple of weeks ago a MPD bike patrol officer stopped me on my way into 7/11 at 8th & Maryland to ask if i’d take a survey. For his last question he asked what could be improved on. I told him that law enforcement could only do so much and the majority of the work had to be done by parents to improve the family life of these kids. Something is broken.

  10. Elizabeth Festa says:

    re: Petition. Jessica provides her email jtonry@rocketmail.com if interested. She will be taking it to the Feb. 4th meeting, referenced above. re: Curfews -even if that were a practice, as Kamperin has noted, most of the CJ crimes happen during the daytime. And arrests are being made–I think the DC CJ task force has a high arrest record nationally, as Kate noted in an earlier posting.

  11. Phil says:

    re: DC juvenile curfew laws:

    DC has a juvenile curfew law: kids under 17 aren’t allowed out after midnight, or 11 pm on school nights. http://mpdc.dc.gov/mpdc/cwp/view,a,1237,Q,547375,mpdcNav_GID,1549,mpdcNav,%7C,.asp

    Tommy Wells, to his credit, tried to improve on it by having it start earlier during the summer last year. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Wells-proposes-emergency-summer-curfew-for-DC-teens-46584377.html

    Almost all of the rest of Council, to their discredit (I’m espcially looking at CM Mendelson here), didn’t support that effort or the other good ideas the Mayor put forward to address Crime at the time. http://www.tommywells.org/content/view/698/30/

    Liz, while the carjackings are mostly during the day, the robberies have been mostly at night and many of them have been late at night. I, for one, hope Tommy will push this again and hope other members of the Council will get on board. At large members who don’t support action to address the juvenile crime problems we are facing wont be getting my support going ahead.

  12. Anon. 11:35 says:

    “re: Curfews -even if that were a practice, as Kamperin has noted, most of the CJ crimes happen during the daytime”

    Most is not all. Putting aside the fact that we just had at least one mugging by teenagers after dark, if even a few carjackings or muggings occurred after 6:00 p.m., and a curfew could’ve stopped it from occurring, I would think the curfew would still be worthwhile.

    Think about it — how would you like it if you were mugged or carjacked at night and a curfew could have stopped it — but Kamperin nixed the curfew idea b/c not enough carjackings/ muggings were happening after 6 p.m. ?

    I also tend to think that curfews have the effect of letting potential perpetrators know that the community is on alert and will not tolerate their crap. In that sense, I think it might have a deterring effect on these kids thinking they can just roam at will sticking people up in the neighborhood.

    I think outright dismissing the idea of curfew b/c it doesn’t cover ALL the criminal activity is indicative of laziness on the part of MPD to use every tool at their disposal.

  13. Nina @ Heatherington says:

    Yikes this is scary. My friend was carjacked about a year ago and this makes me a bit worried.

  14. Rick says:

    I’m not the biggest fan of DC’s cops in their cruisers, but I increasingly think the bigger problem is in the courts.

    If even half of this Washingtonian article is true, it seems there are some relatively straightforward legal changes that would make us safer — http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/people/8002.html

    I find it appalling, for example, that getting caught with a gun is not treated as a really big deal by our courts. (How many people know that? I bet most people assume it’s a likely jail sentence.) We should use political pressure on Tommy Wells and others to fix that.

    (And if someone believes this article to be inaccurate, please chime in. I’d love to find out DC is not really this stupid; but I think it probably is.)

    There are also far too many stories of people being arrested for carjacking and then being let back on the street while awaiting trial.

    I’m not a lock-em-all-up type guy by any means. Rather, I think these kids are much smarter than we give them credit for, with a pretty sophisticated understanding of what they can get away with. Right now, they know they can probably get away with almost anything, except maybe murder.

    Changing the risk/reward calculus for them = safety for everyone else.

  15. HillGirl says:

    This isn’t exactly rocket science. You target the people likely to commit crime, and then punish harshly.

    Last I read, all of the carjackings were committed by groups of young black men. Police see a group of young black men hanging around? Stop them, question them, let them know they’re being watched.

    Is that profiling? You bet. But since these criminals seem quite skilled at profiling their victims, turnabout seems like fair play. Intentionally targeting the individuals that civilized societies typically deem most worthy of protection and special care–women, pregnant or with children–is nothing short of barbaric.

    If the police actually manage to catch someone, throw the book at the thugs. Longest sentences available under DC or federal law. Let them know the DC government actually intends to maintain law and order.

  16. Elizabeth Eurgubian says:

    I agree with Hill Girl. Targeting pregnant women and women with small children is sick, and shows these criminals are barbaric.

    Sitting back and saying “there’s nothing we can do about it,” is an easy way out. When it comes to the safety of our kids and our community, there is always something we can do. And, there’s always more that the police can do – whether it’s investing more in undercover cops, setting up check points, trying different strategies, etc.

    Fact is, if a bunch of kids are able to out-smart the entire DC police force, then we have even greater problems to worry about.

  17. Anonymous says:

    Also agree with HillGirl. How can so many of these incidents occur within a block or two of where police were allegedly located?

    Tim asked, what else can the police do, and I think that is a very fair question because it’s unrealistic of us to expect the police to wave a wand and make it stop.

    I understand that the idea will make some people squeamish, but think about if it was your spouse or child who was assaulted. Based on the reports, 98% of these crimes are being committed by roving bands of young black teenagers. If the police see people fitting that description, especially if they are wandering about in the afternoon when you would otherwise expect them to be occupied with school, stop them, ask for their names, and ask where they are going. Getting truthful answers is not important.

    And is that fair? No, it’s not. But often citizens are called on to sacrifice personally for the greater good. Rather than be upset at the police, they should be upset with the individuals who have forced the police to take such action.

    If the individuals stopped have nothing to worry about, then they shouldn’t mind a 3-4 minute interruption of their day.

  18. sebastian says:

    The current visibility in the neighborhood is good. I think that PSA 103 has had very passive leadership in the past decade, and it will take some time for word to get around to the criminal element that the police are around and they are serious about making arrests. Lt. Caldwell was extremely nice, but very passive. Hopefully the new Lt. Saunders will more closely supervise and deploy police officers for continued police visibility. No doubt the knuckleheads think that in a few weeks, the police will disappear as usual.
    I am hope that just maybe this time, that next month, we will at least a few police patroling the streets with the visibility that I see on Barracks Row and Eastern market.

  19. Hoodlums says:

    The fact I can not walk from my house to my car without my mace in HAND is pretty awful. My girlfriend was MUGGED a few months back right outside of my house-makes me want to sit out front and pull a Clint Eastwood-Gran Torino style. Another friend’s purse was stolen while sitting in the park during the day. My car TIRES were stolen (no I do not have rims or anything fancy) BUT I did find my car on cinder blocks and about a year ago my car was broken into. I’ve called the police multiple times-one attempted to come at me while going to my car around 10pm however I ran back to my house only to later see him out of my window breaking into a car. I am a woman who does not feel safe even with police around- I live right by Lincoln park (12th SE) with police around 24/7. The thieves steal VIN numbers off cars and manuals and they take air conditioning units off houses to break in!! Every time our neighborhood crime reports come out it’s astonishing. I have no real answers except something has to change-more patrols, undercover cops, etc. I’ve been told if the robbers are caught they are only held for a few weeks-streets might be quiet but crime starts back up again and crime always changes. I realize the Capitol Hill area has gotten better from previous years but it’s still not good enough. Crime has been happening midday, Sunday’s etc with this said I doubt a curfew would do much. We even had a neighbor patrol different hours of the night because crime got so bad on our street. More lights on the streets, patrols-what are the answers….a better economy??

  20. Marie says:

    As a Capitol Hill NE resident who lives close to the location of several of the carjackings and who walks around the neighborhood a lot, I am also concerned with the recent spate in muggings and carjackings that seem to have targeted women.

    HOWEVER, no amount of muggings or thefts in the area, even if I’m the victim of one of them, will make it right in my mind to condone racial profiling. We have to be able to do better than that people!

    I’ve loved living in Capitol Hill this last year but what is more likely to cause me to move away is not any uptick in crime but a desire to get away from neighbors that would prefer to see all young black men in the area stopped and questioned by police regardless of their actions.

    I don’t want to live in a police state. I choose to not live in fear and to walk the streets day or night with my head up, eyes ahead, making eye contact and smiling at those I pass along the way.

  21. jdsdc says:

    How do you feel about police response and how has the news of carjacking and related crimes affected you?

    I’m one carjacking away from moving to the suburbs. I’ve been on the Hill since 1998, and I have never been as afraid of walking to/from my house from/to my parked car as I have in recent weeks. I fit the profile of the commonly carjacked — distracted mother rounding up children in/out of the car during the middle of the day. I live a few blocks south of H where all of these CJs seem to be happening, and while I see the police on the corner and am grateful for their presence, oddly enough, I don’t feel safer. Probably b/c the CJs keep on happening. The kids doing the CJing clearly are not afraid of getting arrested — I think it was reported here that Chief Lanier said all who have been arrested in these cases have been arrested before — many times in some cases. That’s the problem. It seems like nothing short of murder keeps someone in jail. I wish Councilmember Wells would get tough on crime – and if he doesn’t, I hope he’s challenged in his next primary by someone who will be tough on crime. That person will have my vote … if I’m not in the suburbs by that point.

  22. Anne says:

    I completely agree with Marie; even if I were robbed at gunpoint, I think it’s a step backwards to start questioning every group of black teens in the area just because they fit a profile. When did it become illegal to be black? There are a lot of unsolved crimes in my neighborhood, who’s to say the people who committed those weren’t white? Race is an identification factor for these specific individuals, not an indicator of a proclivity toward a life of crime.

    As for the curfew, and how I’d feel if I were carjacked and it could have been “prevented” by a curfew– a ridiculous notion in and of itself– I’d be grateful to still live in enough of an open society that I could knock on the next door I came to and expect them to help me, not slam the door in my face or report me for violating my bedtime.

  23. Jessica Chertow says:

    PLEASE SIGN THE CAPITOL HILL PETITION

    Go to:
    http://www.petitiononline.com/jhc71473/petition.html

    Thank you for your support!!!

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