This month, the D.C. Council passed and Mayor Muriel E. Bowser signed the Secure D.C. Omnibus Amendment Act, a public safety law that includes tougher penalties for a range of crimes, along with other reforms. The new law, along with declining numbers in the new year, has created some optimism that the tide is turning since crime spiked in 2023. If so, how can the city build on that momentum? Post columnists and others suggest next steps. What would make D.C. feel safe to you? Submit your response here.

I developed a new hobby over the past year: following D.C. crime on X. But unlike a typical true-crime aficionado, I didn’t settle upon this pastime to imbue my previously boring days with vicarious excitement. I chose it because the “excitement” — scare quotes very much intended here — is all too close to home. In the past 18 months, there have been three mass shootings within a block of my house.

Something needs to change, for the victims and for the city. Actually, probably many things should change. But at the moment, the most important one is getting more cops on the street. Whatever root causes also need to be addressed, they cannot be resolved while our streets remain war zones.

Police presence deters people from committing crimes. It also affords more time to investigate the crimes that happen. The more cases the Metropolitan Police Department closes, the more criminals will be afraid of getting caught — and the more afraid they are of getting caught, the less likely they are to commit crimes. This doesn’t just protect victims; it also protects the people we deter from entering a brutal, and often short, life of crime.

Since fiscal 2017, the number of sworn officers in the MPD has declined by 12 percent, from 3,821 to 3,337, while homicides have more than doubled. During that same period, according to the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, the inflation-adjusted police operating budget has fallen from $619 million to $531 million.

It seems unlikely that these are coincidences. When you cut spending and put fewer officers on the street, you end up with more crime. And unfortunately, that’s what we did as a pandemic-induced crime wave swept the country.

When crime is high, you get more crime, both because victims of violence often become its perpetrators and because high crime rates overwhelm police, making it less likely that any individual crime will be solved. We urgently need to put that evil genie back in the bottle before it wreaks further havoc.

We must flood the street with police, even if that means paying our officers more to overcome the nationwide police staffing shortage. We must prosecute the criminals we catch. Crime should be so low that no one bothers following crime stories when they could be watching TikTok videos — or better yet, enjoying their neighborhood by walking along its clean, safe streets.

Megan McArdle is a columnist for Post Opinions.

How about a crazy little concept called democracy? If D.C. residents could elect their own local prosecutor — a privilege enjoyed by citizens of every U.S. state — our criminal legal system would reflect the values and priorities of the community. People have more respect for law and policies that they participate in making.

The city needs a district attorney.

Right now, the president has more control over D.C. law enforcement than the 700,000 other people who live here combined, because he appoints the U.S. attorney, who is responsible for prosecuting all serious crime committed by adults. The Orwellian-titled “Home Rule Act” blocks the D.C. Council from passing any law regarding the duties or powers of the U.S. attorney.

Local prosecutors are the most powerful actors in the U.S. legal system. They have virtually unlimited discretion to bring cases — or not. When I served as a special assistant U.S. attorney in the ’90s prosecuting street crimes in D.C., no judge could have reversed a decision I made to decline a case, even if the suspect was obviously guilty. If I had enough evidence to charge a defendant with assault with a deadly weapon, a felony that carries a steep sentence, but decided instead to charge a low-level misdemeanor, no judge could order me to throw the book at the defendant. The only person I answered to was my boss, the U.S. attorney.

An elected district attorney would be accountable in a way that even the most well-meaning federal prosecutor can never be. After an increase from 2023, the U.S. attorney’s day-of-arrest charging rate is now a little over 50 percent. Is that what D.C. residents want? If not, in any other jurisdiction, they could vote the head prosecutor out of office. Here, all they can do is complain to the White House. Lots of luck with that.

Since 2014, D.C. residents have been able to vote for a local attorney general, who prosecutes crimes committed by children and some minor adult offenses. The two men to hold that job so far have been part of the “progressive prosecutor” movement, which promotes evidence-based strategies to reduce both crime and incarceration.

If citizens could elect a district attorney in the same vein, we might get results like Manhattan has, where progressive prosecutor Alvin Bragg won office in 2021. In his first year, Bragg focused on gun violence — bringing charges in 95 percent of those cases. He also emphasized alternatives to incarceration, providing defendants with mental health services, job training, housing assistance and drug treatment. The result? During Bragg’s tenure, most major crimes have decreased, including homicide, shootings, rape, robbery and burglary.

In a 2002 referendum, 82 percent of D.C. voters supported establishing a locally elected district attorney. D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) has introduced legislation to grant citizens this right, but Congress has failed to approve it.

D.C.’s semi-colonial status is an insult to democratic principles of self-government. Ignoring the people’s will with regard to crime and punishment — and vesting that power in members of Congress and presidents more interested in scoring political points than enhancing public safety — makes the District a more dangerous place to live and work.

Paul Butler is a contributing columnist for Post Opinions.

Sir Robert Peel, founder of the London Metropolitan Police, once said, “The police are the public, and the public are the police.” A critical piece to reducing the cycle of violence in the city is for citizens to do their duty and speak up when they see a crime. Not just report it anonymously but be a witness.

The city, residents and businesses cannot rely solely on the police to respond and investigate crimes.

As a police officer in D.C. for more than 26 years, I often encountered the “I don’t want to get involved” reaction. I had complainants not show up for court, or drop away if they got their stolen item returned before the case was resolved, or simply decline to identify a suspect, despite their clear recognition as the suspect was presented after being stopped near the scene of the crime.

Without the consent of the people and their active help in combating crime, the police cannot do the job. It is a cooperative compact. If witnesses to crimes simply shake their head and walk away, then crimes go unsolved.

Fear is understandable, but succumbing to it leads only to greater unsafety. The fearful citizenry must become engaged and stand up against crime. Share with the police what you know and what you see. If no one takes the risk to testify, if no one stands up to identify the perpetrators, then the system fails — and the cycle worsens.

Officers risk their lives making arrests and recovering weapons. They are ready to do their part, despite all the negative public perception of them. But the public cannot remain on the sidelines, demanding change without being a brave and active part of it.

Nick Breul is a retired D.C. police lieutenant and president of the Washington Metropolitan Police Memorial and Museum.

If we are serious about providing more effective community safety, avoiding needless police violence and freeing up police to do the work we need them to do, we need to create a broader set of public safety responders. That means embracing what’s known as alternative first response.

These programs, often referred to as AFR, seek to dispatch non-police responders to calls whenever sending police would be a mismatch. We know intuitively this idea makes sense: When someone having a heart attack calls 911, we send paramedics, not police. AFR isn’t a panacea — it’s an alternative to a police response, not to affordable housing or a real mental health care system. But a system that doesn’t expect law enforcement to respond effectively to every imaginable problem makes everyone safer.

That’s why AFR programs are growing quickly around the country. For nearly four years, Denver’s STAR program has been sending mental health clinicians and paramedics to engage individuals experiencing behavioral health crises. The Albuquerque Community Safety program is similar but also engages with people who are homeless. Many AFR programs focus on youths in crisis. The Mediation Response Unit in Dayton, Ohio, includes trained responders certified in crisis response, de-escalation and conflict resolution. They respond to calls ranging from barking dogs to roommate disputes, kids being unruly and noise complaints — a set of calls police certainly don’t want to respond to and risk escalating when they do.

There’s a caveat, though: To fulfill its potential, AFR has to be properly resourced. AFR groups report that demand for their services outpaces available resources. This underscores the biggest challenge: For this evidence-informed approach to fulfill its transformative potential — or even survive — we need to start thinking of it as an essential part of our public safety response.

This need is true nowhere more than in D.C. It has taken years of foot-dragging (and lawsuits) for the District to even start a relatively narrow mental health crisis response program, and D.C.’s domestic violence liaison program has never been sufficiently resourced. City leaders need to shift their focus away from recycled policies driven more by fear than evidence, and toward solutions — including AFR — that provide true public safety.

Christy E. Lopez is a contributing columnist for Post Opinions.

To help Washington return to pre-pandemic levels of crime, we should try returning the cityscape to pre-pandemic levels of activity. Back to the office five days a week, everybody, and give DoorDash and Grubhub a rest.

It’s an increasingly hazy memory, but life here was different five years ago. By day, downtown streets and sidewalks buzzed with activity — commuters, pedestrians, panhandlers, food trucks. By night, lines of hopeful foodies stretched out the doors of trendy no-reservations restaurants. Pretty much whenever you went outside, you saw people.

Now, not so much. The coronavirus pandemic sent us all home, and we learned how to do our jobs in sweatpants and to take our lunch breaks at the kitchen table courtesy of delivery apps. The busy streets became, and remain, less busy. And according to a school of thought in criminology known as routine activity theory, emptier streets and sidewalks can lead to more crime.

The theory holds that a crime takes place when three factors coincide: the presence of a motivated offender; the presence of an available target; and the absence of a “capable guardian” to serve as a deterrent. That guardian could be a police officer, of course — and a city the size of Washington does need more of them than we currently have. But the guardian’s role is more often played by … just people. They don’t have to be self-appointed heroes; they simply have to be potential witnesses who make would-be criminals less likely to think they’ll get away with breaking the law.

A luxury store that might look like a tempting target for a smash-and-grab robbery is less inviting if the sidewalks outside are full. A neighborhood barber shop is less vulnerable to a stickup if there are people constantly going in and out of the restaurant that’s next door.

Conversely, if crime is allowed to tick up in a given area, people who once frequented the neighborhood’s stores, restaurants and bars have reason to stay away, making it less likely there will be foot traffic at any given time — which, according to the theory, is an invitation for even more crime. The H Street corridor in Northeast, in particular, appears in danger of falling into this cycle.

If routine activity theory is right, we can have an impact on crime by going to the offices, going to the store, going out to lunch, going out to eat and drink and listen to music. If only we can remember how.

Eugene Robinson is a columnist for Post Opinions.

If we want to improve safety in D.C., we need to guarantee that all city youths have what they need to thrive. The are no shortcuts, but we know what to do.

Juvenile crime is driven by a cycle of trauma. Trauma harms the developing brain and body. It affects learning, memory, impulse control and executive functioning, and it increases the likelihood of poorer performance in school, absenteeism and behavioral issues. Youths involved in D.C.’s delinquency system experience higher levels of trauma (in homelessness, abuse and neglect, for example) and the manifestations of trauma (such as repeating a grade, chronic absenteeism and diagnosed behavioral health disorders) than their peers.

Healthy childhood development begins with a strong foundation at home. Unfortunately, many D.C. parents are parenting through their own trauma. Left unaddressed, trauma can be passed down to their children.

By supporting parents, we can break these cycles.

We know that increasing parent incomes can positively affect infant brain development, reduce child abuse and neglect, and cut down on serious delinquency. So increasing direct financial assistance to families in poverty — by making the temporary boost in SNAP benefits permanent, passing the pending legislation on a child tax credit and expanding direct cash assistance to new mothers — should be a top priority for D.C.

We know that effective parenting programs can promote healthy development. So let’s expand access to programs such as home visiting, while increasing the types of parenting programs available.

But it cannot be up to parents alone to build healthy, resilient children. We all have a role to play in helping our youths bounce forward from childhood adversity.

Only two-thirds of D.C. schools have behavioral health clinicians, and youths often wait months for services. We have to urgently transform our public behavioral health system, including improving screening and developing a robust continuum of services. We also must wrap our kids with love and the opportunities to realize their dreams. Passing the Safer Today, Safer Tomorrow bills pending before the D.C. Council would be a great start. But ultimately, we need to listen to youths when they tell us what they need to succeed.

Bottom line: If we want to be safe, we must invest directly in our youths and their parents — not scapegoat, stigmatize or further traumatize them.

Eduardo R. Ferrer is a visiting professor at the Georgetown Law Juvenile Justice Clinic and policy director for the Georgetown Juvenile Justice Initiative.

I recently stumbled across two men brazenly breaking into a plumbing truck on a Capitol Hill street in the middle of the day. When they noticed me, one started walking my way, menacingly demanding to know whether I understood this was none of my business. Heart pounding, I walked away and called the police once the men had pulled away. The dispatcher seemed uninterested; this likely was not her most pressing call of the day or even half-hour.

I’m not fainthearted; I’ve prosecuted violent crime in this city and was once held up at knifepoint in my home. I got a dog and stayed. But at no time in my 30 years in D.C. have I felt as anxious about crime as I do now. Lawlessness is pervasive: Stop signs are optional, fare-jumping de rigueur, shoplifting ubiquitous, and robberies, motor vehicle theft and carjacking rates skyrocketing. Yes, we need more police officers, but that’s not enough.

What’s missing is accountability. Lawbreakers know they can act with impunity, rarely facing consequences.

There is no number of unpaid traffic citations that will result in the loss of a license. The extra security guards at Metro stations don’t blink when well-dressed young men jump the turnstiles. Why should they? Fare evasion was decriminalized. Officers see the same people stealing merchandise from stores repeatedly, but there’s little they can do. Thieves know the score: The U.S. attorney’s office won’t prosecute most shoplifters. While Secure D.C. reduced the threshold for felony shoplifting to $500, the stronger choice would be to allow a felony charge for 10 items with an aggregate value of $250, given the increase in thefts of household goods, such as Tide.

The “broken windows” theory — that disorder and incivility result in increased crime — has been criticized for being racially discriminatory and neglecting underlying social and economic factors. But evidence suggests vigorous enforcement of laws against minor crimes can have a measurable impact.

U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves and D.C. Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb, whose office chiefly handles juvenile crime, owe District residents better explanations for low prosecution rates. Graves has boasted about prosecutions of violent crime, but his office’s day-of-arrest charging rate for fiscal 2023 was 44 percent, far lower than that of most other cities. And, given that our juvenile arrest rate is nearly double the national average, with even young teens repeatedly committing violent crime, Schwalb, too, should take a tougher tack.

Criminal justice reform can’t be at the expense of community safety. Law-abiding D.C. residents have the right to walk the streets with the same confidence lawbreakers do now.

Melanie Sloan is a former assistant U.S. attorney for the District.

Ward 6 parent Allison McGill volunteers at Capitol Hill’s Tyler Elementary School to help families navigate the crosswalks there. It’s hazardous work, considering that motorists jam 11th Street SE past the school en route to Interstate 695. With the urging of D.C. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), the D.C. police department has occasionally stationed officers in the midst of the mayhem — to the delight of McGill.

About half the time, however, the designated officer watches the world pass by, she says. “Well, you’re getting paid to be there,” she says lightheartedly. "Why are you sitting in the car?”

Watching cops watch egregious traffic violations — and then do nothing about them — is a foundational District experience. A vocal D.C. constituency wants to see traffic scofflaws pay the price for their speeding, illegal U-turns, red-light running and on and on.

Pull these people over.

In 2015, Mayor Bowser kicked off the District’s “Vision Zero” initiative, an expression of extravagant behavioral optimism. “We are taking our first step towards realizing a ‘Vision Zero’ where no lives are lost on our streets or at our intersections,” said Bowser. But D.C. streets — and certain motorists — have little respect for bureaucratic visions. Last year, the city recorded 52 traffic fatalities, the highest since 2007.

Keith Anderson, D.C.’s deputy mayor for operations and infrastructure, told me that the solution doesn’t lie exclusively in enforcement, pointing to a “multifaceted strategy” involving a “host of interventions.” Examples include reducing the number of lanes, lowering speed limits, extending curbs and giving pedestrians a head start with crossing signals, a change that’s in force at 80 percent of D.C. intersections. All welcome and critical developments.

On the enforcement front, the District is a camera city. Its Automated Traffic Enforcement (ATE) system relies on just over 400 cameras, placing D.C. among the most aggressive users of the technology in the country, according to city officials. The payoff, they say, is worth the investment: In the months after the installation of a camera, Anderson said in D.C. Council testimony, “drivers slow down, and injury crashes drop by 30%.”

But cameras fail to catch the full range of bad behavior by drivers. And they merely assess fines to the vehicle’s registered owner, as opposed to the far more consequential sanction of attaching points to a driver’s record. What’s more, neighboring jurisdictions don’t have enforcement reciprocity agreements with D.C. for automated tickets, meaning residents of Maryland and Virginia can essentially ignore them. Legislation introduced by Allen addresses some of the system’s problems and is poised to take effect soon.

There’s a lot of room, accordingly, for what the transportation wonks call “in-person” enforcement — the old-fashioned mode of a cop flagging down a motorist. In a hearing on traffic safety, Allen noted that ATE issues 99 percent of certain speeding tickets, while officers issue the remaining 1 percent. And as reported by D.C. Crime Facts, adult arrests for traffic violations enforced by D.C. police sit 73 percent below pre-pandemic numbers.

The data contextualizes the vibes. Mike Velasquez, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in Ward 6, said at an October council hearing: “Bad actors are operating on the streets of D.C. with impunity. Not only are they brandishing guns, they are brandishing another dangerous weapon — a car driven by someone who does not care.”

As one Bowser administration official puts it, police traffic stops are “fraught” with potential for discrimination, the improper use of force and other ugly outcomes. A dearth of them is fraught as well, as D.C. officials are hopefully realizing.

Erik Wemple is a columnist for Post Opinions.

What would make D.C. feel safe to you? Submit your response here.