Stunning strategy change; DC cops arrest criminals (Updated)
The Washington Post announced today that over this last weekend, DC Metro police changed their tactics and began arresting criminals;
The District’s stepped-up campaign to fight crime brought 492 arrests in its first two days, including 51 for felonies, a 70 percent increase over the previous weekend that has left city leaders hopeful about the new strategy.
[…]
Chief Cathy L. Lanier announced last week that all of the force’s 3,300 sworn officers would work longer hours this weekend to give the summer crime-fighting program a jump-start. The plan, which cost $1.3 million in overtime pay, was intended to help prevent an increase in homicides, robberies, car thefts and gang activity that typically comes in the summer.
It’s not all good news, though. They aren’t changing their strategy so much that they’ll stop relying on useless surveillance cameras;
Police are also expanding their network of neighborhood surveillance cameras, adding five last week and 24 by the end of June, for a total of 72 across the city.
Surveillance cameras haven’t done a thing except push criminals into areas that aren’t surveilled – or into Prince Georges County, Maryland.
Cops got so excited that they could actually investigate crimes and catch criminals, they started running into each other;
 A police chase after a murder suspect ended in a violent crash Sunday. Two DC Police cruisers slammed into each, other injuring the officers inside, all while horrified residents looked on at the intersection of 13th and K Streets in southeast.
And of course the City Council is on board…well…sort of;
“I’m assuming all are valid arrests,” said D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), chairman of the Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary. “Some neighborhoods are enormously frustrated with ongoing criminal activity. If police are cracking down, I’m sure residents are pleased to be feeling a bit safer.”
Council member Kwame R. Brown (D-At Large) agreed that the more aggressive tactics could be a good start to tamping down crime. “If these arrests are warranted, I’m happy it happened and they’re getting people off the streets,” he said.
But councilmember Brown had a proviso;
“The questions become, ‘How do you take those arrests and deal with them on the front end and back end?’ ” Brown said. “People arrested — fine. But at the same time, we need to focus why they are out there getting arrested in the first place.”
Um, probably because they’re criminals, Council Member. I know you see it as an opening for convincing the already over-taxed, working residents of DC that you need to increase their taxes so you can “solve” poverty in the District, or you can blame over-crowded classrooms or some other equally vacuous platitude about how tax money can prevent crime. The Council and Mayor’s office have consistently prevented police from doing their jobs, and call for half-measures that mask their incompetence and disregard for the safety of law-abiding citizens.
Like those idiot “Police Emergencies” that old Ramsey called last year that were nothing more than police doing their jobs for a few weeks and getting overtime pay for doing it. I’m pretty sure that I wasn’t the only one who could see through that ploy.
There’s no revenue in catching criminals. They’d rather have cops writing tickets and putting boots on car wheels. That brings in cash. They think government is their own little business which doesn’t have it’s excesses and abuses regulated. The City Council is just too secure in their jobs – they know the voters will vote them back into office not because of what they’ve done, but because of what they are. Voters don’t hold the City Council responsible for their incompetence, because City Council blames everything on Congress and the President – and because the citizens are willfully blind and ignorant, they throw their votes away on lazy and incompetent government.
As soon as arrests become politically unpopular, the City Council will jump back off board, I’m sure. 500 arrests means 1 in 1000 residents of DC were arrested this weekend (if they were indeed all DC residents). I expect to see angry parents and spouses on TV soon complaining that their criminal relatives were framed by over-zealous cops and the cops will go back to solving crimes at the drive-through window of the Popeye’s chicken joints.
Not related to the sweep, but a trial that begins tomorrow for – guess who;
DC Council member Marion Barry is expected to be in court Tuesday to face several traffic charges stemming from traffic stops that occurred last year in the District.
In September, Barry was stopped by Secret Service officers near the White House after he allegedly ran a red light. Police also said he smelled of alcohol.
Barry was charged with driving under the influence after refusing to take a urine test. A breath test came in below the legal limit.
In December, Barry was stopped by US Park Police in Southeast for driving too slowly. He was charged with misuse of temporary tags and operating an unregistered vehicle.
Barry insists the charges are unfounded.
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See, there’s the damn problem. This criminal is a council member, too. He’s delinquent on his taxes for seven years (and the federal prosecutors can’t force him to pay, because the judge won’t force him) and he’s a menace to society and the entire city.
And do you know how hard it was to find links to these stories about Barry? I guess the local media is burying the criminal behavior of it’s most [in]famous resident.
I don’t want anyone to get me wrong. I don’t blame the DC Metro Police for their inability to stop criminals and arrest criminals and jail criminals. I completely blame the local government. I know and I’ve met great dedicated cops on the Metro DC police force (there are some useless turds, too – they know who they are) – but the politicians won’t let them do their jobs the way they should because the criminals run the media like sock puppets and the media run the politicians like sock puppets. So, politicians; guess who’s hand is really up your…um…sock.
UPDATE: The Washington Times reports this morning that;
The Metropolitan Police Department made more than 650 arrests last weekend as part of a kickoff to the District’s summer anti-crime initiative, Chief Cathy L. Lanier said yesterday.
    “I think overall we hit our goal of what the initiative was,” Chief Lanier said during a press conference announcing the arrest totals. Now, we “take those examples and then determine how we turn that around, listen to what people have said to us.”
    The 650 arrests were made from 6 a.m. Friday to 6 a.m. Sunday. That was more than twice the average number made during the previous five weekends, police said, and the arrests also resulted in a drop of about 10 percent in serious crime compared with the previous weekends.
    The adult arrests included 109 on narcotics charges, 11 for aggravated assaults, 14 for unauthorized use of a vehicle, nine on robbery charges and four from three homicide cases.
    Police also arrested 33 juveniles on charges ranging from weapons offenses to narcotics.
I wonder where the Post got it’s numbers; 24% more arrests from the Times is pretty significant. Now the Post is conceding the 650 number;
D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said yesterday that crime across the District dipped 10 percent last weekend as a result of her “all hands on deck” initiative, in which 3,300 members of the force worked a pair of overtime shifts.
I guess they rushed yesterday’s story to print. But the fact remains that if DC deployed it’s police force more effectively, they could fight crime better. Giuliani put cops on beats pounding the pavement and it worked fine then.
