In the early morning of Dec. 30, 2023, 18-year-old D.C. resident Dekhota Evans was fatally shot in an alley on the 500 block of Florida Avenue NW. Evans’ murder was the District’s final homicide of 2023, marking the end to the deadliest year in D.C. in more than two decades.
D.C. ended the year as an outlier on violent crime among major U.S. cities. The 274 people killed last year was the most since 1997. Violent crime overall increased by nearly 40 percent, and carjackings skyrocketed.
More than 85 percent of homicides in 2023 were instances of gun violence, whereas firearms accounted for only about 75 percent of homicides in 2002.
So far in 2024, the D.C. Council and Mayor Muriel Bowser’s primary legislative response has been an omnibus bill known as Secure DC. The legislation, shepherded by Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto, was welcome news to those who have demanded action from public officials and harsher penalties for perpetrators of crime; critics charge that it contributes more to the punishment of people who commit crimes than actually preventing them from happening in the first place.
In addition to increasing penalties for some firearm-related offenses, Secure DC also allows judges to more easily keep adults and some kids accused of violent crimes in custody before trial, as well as giving MPD officers the ability to designate and enforce “drug-free zones.”
But crime numbers this year have been trending downward in several major categories, even before Secure DC went into effect, and there is strong evidence to suggest that action from MPD and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C., which prosecutes most felony crimes, has a larger impact on crime than legislation.
Still, several other bills aimed at addressing various factors that are known to contribute to crime are waiting for hearings.
Council Chair Phil Mendelson is pushing legislation, introduced late last year, known as the Evidence-Based Gun Violence Reduction and Prevention Act of 2023. The bill takes inspiration from a 2022 report released by the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, that presented a strategic plan to reduce the rapidly growing threat of gun violence based on an analysis of programs enacted in similar cities to combat the same issue.
A prominent measure in the legislation allows MPD to hire and train civilian investigators for crimes that typically do not involve interaction with a suspect. These investigators will not carry firearms, nor will they have arrest powers.
“The evidence is that there are other jurisdictions that have civilianized in this way and have been successful,” Mendelson tells City Paper, citing cities such as Phoenix and Baltimore.
Mendelson’s bill would also authorize Bowser to refurbish or change the management of “criminally blighted” properties that can serve as hotbeds for criminal activity. In his introduction accompanying the bill, Mendelson cites multiple studies demonstrating that remediation helps reduce violence in areas surrounding formerly blighted buildings in Philadelphia and other urban areas. According to the D.C. Department of Buildings, there are currently 338 vacant blighted lots in the District, with the highest concentrations in wards 5 and 7.
The bill also lays the groundwork for more government assistance to group violence intervention in the District. GVI was first introduced in Boston as part of the city’s Operation Ceasefire program during the 1990s, which contributed to a decline in youth homicides of 63 percent in about five years.
Data compiled by the D.C. Policy Center suggests that, while crime among residents under the age of 18 has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, youth arrests have been steadily increasing since 2021.
To address this, Mendelson’s bill would require the mayor to authorize funds from the District’s Medicaid plan to provide community violence prevention services and supplement the work that other organizations are already doing.
The bill does not specify what these services will entail, but Mendelson says he is looking to help fund the efforts of groups such as the Far Southeast Family Strengthening Collaborative, a resource center operating in Ward 8 providing violence intervention programs to residents, as well as helping those in need find housing or elderly care.
Nearby Baltimore saw a 33 percent drop in annual homicides last year, ending 2023 with its lowest total in nearly a decade. Mayor Brandon Scott suggests that this was in no small part thanks to the city’s Group Violence Reduction Strategy, a program piloted in January 2022.
Baltimore’s GVRS operates on the same principle of focused deterrence as Boston’s Operation Ceasefire, according to the program’s deputy director Terrence Nash.
Service providers in the GVRS program reach out to members of communities that are most affected by violence and assist them in securing “everything from relocation to education, job training, job placement, helping with driver’s license, and Social Security,” Nash says.
“By focusing on those who are driving the majority of violence in our city and getting them to step away from the life either through intensive case management and wraparound supports or enforcement, GVRS has had a clear impact as part of our broader, comprehensive public safety strategy,” Scott’s office says via email.
Bowser’s administration has attempted a similar approach: identifying people most at risk of coming into contact with gun violence, as perpetrators or victims, and providing them special access to city services. The initiative, known as “People of Promise,” targets people between the ages of 15 and 64, most of whom are between 18 and 35. It has received mixed reviews from those involved, and the Washington Post reported in 2022 about how the program was slow to get off the ground. Several individuals identified as targets of the program had died or were incarcerated.
Mendelson expects Pinto, who chairs the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, will hold a hearing on his bill later this year.
***
While homicide victims in 2023 spanned all age groups, the largest portion of victims and suspects in D.C. were between the ages of 30 and 39. More than 20 percent of all homicide victims last year were in this age group, even though those people account for about 11 percent of the District’s total population, according to the most recent U.S. Census data.
Two infant deaths during the early months of the year marked the youngest homicide victims in D.C. In February, 5-month-old Kenneth Geo Walton was found unresponsive with blunt force trauma, and 7-month-old King Phelps was found in a similar state several weeks later. Both cases remain unresolved.
Eight juveniles were charged in homicide cases last year, according to data from MPD. The youngest defendant was only 13. Prosecutors charged three of those eight kids as adults. Homicide accounted for nearly all teenage fatalities in D.C. last year, when 106 kids were shot, 16 fatally.
With this in mind, At-Large Councilmember Robert White announced a package of bills in February aimed at preventing youth violence by building up a youth mentorship program, expanding vocational training programs throughout D.C., and requiring more frequent reporting on truancy.
Bowser and Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen also introduced their own pieces of legislation aimed at addressing truancy. In 2023, 60 percent of D.C. high schoolers were chronically absent from school.
Bowser’s bill, the Utilizing Partnerships, Local Interventions for Truancy and Safety (UPLIFT) Amendment Act, takes an aggressive approach that starts with referring truant students to the Department of Human Services, then to the Child and Family Services Agency, and finally to Office of the Attorney General in the most extreme cases. The AG’s Office has generally preferred not to use prosecution in truancy cases, and evidence shows that such action would harm, rather than help, kids by pushing them further into the criminal justice system. Bowser’s bill would also require more action from the AG, including potential prosecution of a child’s parent or guardian.
The bill also takes a hard line against kids accused of crime. It would bar prosecutors from engaging in plea agreements with juveniles accused of violent crimes and ban diversion programs for kids accused of gun violations.
Allen’s bill takes a different approach. It designates schools with a student absentee rate of 20 percent or higher as priority zones for the Safe Passages, Safe Blocks program, designed to create a safe passageway for students to get to and from school. Other provisions in the bill provide funding for schools in the District to better track truancy and reach students with attendance issues.
White also introduced legislation that would require health care professionals in the District to learn more about gun violence prevention in order to have more effective conversations with at-risk patients about best practices and where they can access preventative resources.
***
Of all the District’s homicides in 2023, 21 were instances of domestic violence, according to data provided by MPD, up from 14 in 2022. Domestic violence homicides increased from eight in 2018 to 20 in 2021, according to the Domestic Violence Fatality Review Board’s most recent report.
Most perpetrators of these domestic homicides in 2023 were men, eight of whose victims were women. There were no domestic cases in which a woman was suspected of murdering a man.
MPD data suggests that nearly 90 percent of homicide defendants were men, while only about 10 percent were women. The gender divide in homicide victims is nearly identical. Of the cases in which a suspect was identified, nearly three-fourths included both male victims and perpetrators.
In line with national trends, a large percentage of homicides in the District remain unsolved. MPD’s data suggests that the department only closed a little more than half of the homicide cases it investigated in 2023—even fewer when taking only firearm-related homicides into account.
The brunt of D.C.’s homicides hit the Black community, especially residents living in wards 7 and 8, the hardest. Ward 7 accounted for 20 percent of the District’s total homicides, while Ward 8 accounted for 36 percent. The two areas east of the Anacostia River make up roughly only a quarter of D.C.’s total population.
Overall, more than 90 percent of homicide victims in D.C. last year were Black—accounting for 251 deaths. Roughly the same percentage of defendants in homicide cases were Black, while Black residents make up only a little over 40 percent of the District’s population.
An analysis by the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform reported similar figures for fatal shootings from 2019 to 2020 and nonfatal shootings in 2020, which found that Black people were disproportionately affected by gun violence in D.C.
As various bills seeking to address crime and violence in D.C. are pending, homicides and overall violent crime are dropping this year. Homicides have decreased by 28 percent compared with this time last year, and violent crime is down 21 percent, according to data from MPD. Although Mendelson says Pinto has committed to holding a hearing on his bill, the fate of the others (from Allen, White, and Bowser) are uncertain. The two-year Council period expires at the end of 2024, after which all pending legislation will effectively die and must be reintroduced in the new period. Complicating the timelines further is this year’s delayed budget process, which will suck up just about all of local lawmakers’ time until mid-June, when they expect to give the spending plan final approval.
And while some politicos suggest this reversal in crime numbers is the result of recently passed legislation, namely Secure DC, others have noted that the decline can be more credibly attributed to the upswing in violent crime arrests by MPD paired with the higher rate of prosecution by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C.