From the "Bad Idea" File

It seems that residents of Hill East* are tired of the crime emanating from the housing project situated in their midst. I’ve lived across the street from Potomac Gardens, the project in question, for almost three years now, and I can assure you that it’s more than reasonable to believe just about anything you hear about the thugs who populate it. I myself have had a run-in with the neighborhood youfs (it’s a funny story, I’ll tell it sometime), and concur with the frustrated that the level of crime and the mindset coming from PG’s inhabitants is totally unacceptable.

So a HillEaster suggested that the hardworking residents long-terrorized by the car-stealing stickup artists should, um, march on the project. In his words:

why not march through Potomac Gardens to protest and call attention to at least the following: the consistently awful management of PG and places like it in the city; the inherent unfairness of the disproportionate number of calls for police and ambluance [sic] service to — or as a result of — residents residing, on the dole, at PG; the childish absurdity and paucity of the “no-snitch” code embraced and perpetuated by PG residents; the ineffectual lip-service paid to those of us who fund, through our taxes, places throughout the city like PG, but who are constantly victimized by its residents and particularly by the children of its lease-holders … we’re just all sick of the crap we have been force-fed by our civic leaders, PC pundits, and apologists alike, that living in an economically, racially, and demographically diverse urban environment entails accepting that we should expect to be assaulted, stolen from, and abused by those among us who are deemed “less fortunate?”

Now I, for one, sympathize with his complaints. Other than the staggeringly high percentage of out-of-wedlock births within inner-city communities, the “stop-snitching” movement is the single most destructive element of the urban mindset. And the drain on city resources is undeniable; hardly a day goes by when I don’t see either an ambulance or a cop car, sirens ablaze, parked outside the iron gates surrounding Potomac Gardens.

But is this guy insane? You’re going to gather up 40 or 50 yuppies who just moved into the newly-built 300k condos dotting the landscape and march on the projects? Let me explain to you exactly how that will play out:

1. Protesters gather, march on PG
2. Police presence is light to non-existent
3. A crowd of residents from the project come outside to see what the commotion is about
4. Having nothing better to do, a (probably intoxicated) young man starts mouthing off, mocking/threatening the marchers. His friends join in.
5. Somebody in the protest “disrespects” this pillar of the Potomac Gardens community.
6. A punch is thrown; while trying to separate the assailants from the assaulted the fight spreads to everyone gathered.
7. If there are any police there, they get drawn into it, start busting heads, and the crowd turns on the police.
8. And, ladies and gentlemen, we have ourselves a good old fashioned race riot!

Perhaps I’m being an alarmist. But I don’t see this ending well, even if it doesn’t end in a riot.

Now, what would I suggest be done? Flood the area with police. I have to admit to being relatively pleased with the level of police activity in the area now; I see cop cars cruising the neighborhood on a regular basis. But get them out of the cars and walking the neighborhood on foot. And step up patrols at night.

Secondly, the city needs to work on a very basic problem: lighting. The stretch of road between 9th or 10th and the Potomac Ave Metro on Pennsylvania is, at best, mediocre, and on side streets it is downright awful. Simply lighting the area up would do much to deter crime, I think.

And finally, start punishing kids (and the crimes are committed mostly by teenagers/young adults) bound and determined to break the law. Any repeat offenders need to go to lockup. I’m sympathetic with the idea that gladiator-factories like the DC prison system do little to rehabilitate prisoners, instead turning them into lifelong clients of the prison-industrial complex. But by the time kids are mugging multiple passersby or stealing cars every weekend, what are the odds they’re going to turn into a decent member of society anyway? I’d say “not good.”

We could also work on changing our own acceptance of victimhood. One of the recurrent themes, both on the listserv and in the DCist post, is that as citizens of an urban environment we need to accept a certain level of crime in our day to day life. It always blows my mind that someone could be so obtuse as to say that. We do NOT have to accept a certain level of crime. And, with enough resources and a shift in the urban mindset, we can eliminate it.

*For the uninitiated, “Hill East” is the easternmost portion of the Capitol Hill neighborhood; in the post I linked to, DCist labels it as east of 11th to RFK. That’ll work, though I always thought that 14th St. SE was the Eastern boundary of Capitol Hill.