Harry Jaffe: To keep city streets safe, make them unsafe for thugs

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Is it safe to go out at night in the once peaceful streets of Northwest Washington?

First, David Rosenbaum gets clubbed in January with an iron pipe while walking his dog in Cleveland Park and dies from head injuries. Sunday night thugs attacked Alan Senitt, a 27-year-old Brit walking his date home in Georgetown, slitting his throat and leaving him to die in a pool of blood.

I know that stretch of Q Street a few blocks east of Wisconsin Avenue. I’ve been to Herb Miller’s house, where Senitt and his friend were heading when they were attacked. Every pol in town has been to a fundraiser at Miller’s manse. My daughter baby-sits for a family around the corner. I never worried about her comings and goings — until now.

Check out murder stats in D.C. the last few years, and you’ll see zeros in the Second Police District, which covers most of Ward 3. Halfway through 2006 we have had two. That may seem paltry compared to 92 homicides across the city, but a 200-percent increase is fearsome.

The short answer to the question of whether it’s safe to go out at night is yes. But the streets — from D.C. and Bethesda to Alexandria and Fairfax — are becoming less safe by the week for two reasons: There are more thugs on the loose, and there are fewer cops focused on fighting “super predators,” the term retired D.C. police Lt. Lowell Duckett uses for the murderers who killed Alan Senitt.

“The largest number of arrests in D.C. and around the country were made from 1990 to 1995, during the crack epidemic,” says Duckett, who studied Superior Court dockets. “Now, 10 years later, the vast majority of this inmate population is eligible for parole.”

And back out on the street, often with less rehabilitation in prison, thanks to budget cuts.

“They haven’t been socialized, they don’t have proper education, they have no spiritual development. All they know is violent crime.”

“Add it all up,” he says, “and you get those that are going to commit violent street crimes, against, for lack of a better term, little lambs. A predator goes where he can feed.”

Duckett is a D.C. native who put in 28 years on the MPD. He retired nine years ago, went to school to get graduate degrees in criminology and sociology and an executive management certification from the FBI Academy.

His prescription: “A balanced, aggressive approach.”

Allow me to translate: In the years before Duckett turned in his badge, he waged a guerrilla war against the gang bangers and thugs of D.C. His Delta Unit was a squad of plainclothes cops who infiltrated violent crews and took them down before they could strike – against African-Americans in Anacostia or Caucasians in Cleveland Park.

Says Duckett: “We worked on the prevention and intervention side, too.”

But muscle made the difference. Where the Delta Squad roamed, violent crime wilted.

Bring back the Delta Unit. Then Washingtonians will feel more safe.

Harry Jaffe has been covering the Washington area since 1985. E-mail him at hjaffe@washingtonian.com.

Advertisement