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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?
