Crime kills cities. Crime also kills the soul of cities.
When people face danger each time they go outside, they going outside for more than the minimum. They sometimes engage in the mind-destroying habits of denial and delusion about their situation. That is what kills cities.
Cities are more than just raw population statistics. They also encompass the daily rituals of binding from common participation. When people pay the mass transit fare, they buy into the maintenance of the system they use. When they go out to eat, the experience of spending time with friends binds people together.
Constant fear and danger erode that. When enforcement of laws is uneven, resentment festers. When enforcement of laws is unpredictable, people retreat from public life. This is why the attempt in recent years to gut the police force is so terribly destructive.
I saw this in D.C. during the 1990s. Although children in my neighborhood had physical access to all the great possibilities of the museums, the libraries, and more, they didn’t take advantage of them. They were more focused on surviving. Or it may have been partially an effect of the way stress chemicals damage children’s brains.
Growing up in Romania, I watched the tyranny of communism destroy opportunities for the future. The tyranny of crime in D.C. does the same thing. People who live here know this. Crime is the reason most people move out of D.C. It is also why property values (and hence property tax revenues) are down since 2021.
Crime killed Detroit. New York City was dying before Rudy Giuliani rescued the city, leading to a boom. Congress cannot both allow high crime in D.C., and allow the D.C. government to fail to protect their residents.
Don’t believe the denials. Crime in D.C. has long been out of control.
Official numbers might claim crime is or already was already down, but the key question is, “Compared to what?” Down slightly from a deeply unacceptable state of chaos is not a good answer.
Our city’s annual murder tally tripled between 2012 and 2023. In 2024, it pulled back to merely twice what it had been in the early 2010s — so that’s a decline. But by many cities’ standards, D.C. was still far too violent in 2012. And in recent years, carjackings have become commonplace. That’s not an improvement.
Within recent memory, a girl was shot in the head when a drive by shooting happened outside her school.
A kid was shot in a Metro station.
Eleven people were shot within 12 hours.
A man shot someone at a gender reveal party for a baby.
Mobs of youths caused chaos in the Navy Yard neighborhood, with only 23 arrests on July 4th.
A former member of the board for the D.C. Board of Elections was murdered during a carjacking.
Violence receives the most notice, but in other respects, crime causes a set of more or less routine inconveniences. Stores now lock up the detergent. Some neighborhoods struggle to get or keep grocery stores, since shoplifting is so routine.
We must do better.
We are a federal district. This is why Congress was able to step in during the 1990s. The Home Rule Act allowed President Trump to declare the current state of emergency and surge law enforcement and the national guard. For all the self-congratulatory show of resistance toward the police and guardsmen, they are following civilian law. Having seen the aftermath of Communism, I cannot help but be disgusted at the theatrics.
But how should the District respond?
The Federal intervention might save the city. But the deep distrust between half the country means that however well-meaning it is, it will be clumsy and more theatrical than is useful.
Ultimately, D.C. failed to hold up its end of the Home Rule Act. Section 401 was supposed to maintain minority party representation in two seats on the City Council, but that has been ineffective since losers in the Democratic Primaries just label themselves “Independent” and thus take those seats. A provision meant to preserve debate in the council and to provide smoother relations with half the country was sabotaged.
One-party rule has destroyed countries, and it can also destroy cities.
Crime in D.C. was the result of many, many bad decisions that people acted on. People often hope eliminating the opposition will make their wishes get carried out but the effect is to eliminate the debate that prevents bad ideas and which gathers information. All groups have ideas and values, but a lack of debate is fatal, many new ideas are foolish and it is the debate process that reveals flaws and alternatives. D.C. could prevent another series of catastrophic failures in judgement by enforcing the rules for minority-party seats already in the Home Rule Act.
D.C. Democrats tried to grab it all, but they drove the city into the ground. They may lose even Home Rule. They violated the protections in the act and may lose the powers they got under the act.
As biting as the hypocrisy is, sorrow does not make the future better without action.
Ciprian Ivanof is the Republican reform candidate for D.C. shadow representative.
