The Trump administration is confronting another major problem, so naturally, Democrats and the media are busy at work claiming the problem doesn’t actually exist or otherwise can’t be solved by any obvious solution. This time, it’s crime and disorder in Washington, D.C., something anyone who has lived there for 24 hours is appalled by.
I lived there for 14 years. The decay and lawlessness are a primary reason I left.
It was never worse during my time in the city than the past five years, and it never fully recovered by my departure in September 2024. The “Black Lives Matter” movement inspired D.C.’s elected Democrats to essentially legalize all sorts of theft and reduce the penalties on other crimes like carjacking and armed robbery.
After all that time spent in D.C., living in a grand total of six different neighborhoods, it’s a miracle I was never the victim of any crime other than someone attempting to break into my home while I was out of town once. (I won’t count that my car was stolen from a Metro parking lot because that was technically in Suitland, Maryland, minutes outside the city.) But I witnessed and heard from friends and colleagues of their own assaults, robberies, and general signs of danger.
The office for one of my previous journalism jobs is located downtown, three blocks north of the White House. One afternoon, a colleague left to head home when it was still bright out, only to return minutes later because a homeless man had reached up her skirt from behind just as she had made it to the sidewalk.
Another colleague’s car was broken into, and his suits were stolen. That same guy’s wife started her car to get it warmed up one winter day, and when she went back inside to grab their two young children, someone jumped in the driver’s seat and sped away. (Imagine if the children had been in the car and she had needed to run back inside for a moment.)
Out one Friday night with a group of friends, we found ourselves on the usually busy 14th Street in Northwest. In an instant, the friend directly to my right doubled back, and before I could even turn around, I heard him say, “I’m calling the police.” He had been punched in the face by a random person I hadn’t even noticed on the sidewalk. When the group of us advanced on the attacker, he fled.
I called the police one night about a couple, a man and a woman, screaming at each other in the middle of the street, outside my apartment building, in the early hours of the morning. Unfortunately, D.C.’s officials designed the city so that even what might be nice residential high-rises are ensconced by Section 8 developments (i.e. crime).
A seafood restaurant I liked and had been to a couple of times grew increasingly dangerous to patronize. In one of my final years living in D.C., I went with a boyfriend, and when the check came, there was a “security fee” listed as an item on the receipt with a $1 charge. I asked the server what it was. “It’s for the security we now hire to be here in the evenings.”
A very needed Wal-Mart had opened near one of my neighborhoods. Every basic needs product inside — toiletries, cleaning agents, socks, underwear — was locked behind windows. It closed down in 2023, with a spokeswoman reportedly citing underperformance and noting that such closures involve “several factors.” Visit the Reddit thread specifically about the closure, and people commenting know theft was part of the problem.
The Safeway grocery store I lived across from for a time was always an adventure to visit. On more than one occasion, I watched a security guard chase down shoplifters. I moved out of that place before my final year living in the D.C. area but ended up stopping in that same Safeway at one point and saw they had installed gates requiring that customers scan their receipts in order to exit. Everyone hates having to trifle with that kind of obstacle, as if an elderly grandmother is just as suspect as a teen out on the streets at 10 a.m. on a Wednesday.
Navy Yard is where the Nationals baseball stadium sits, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that on a weekly basis, locals are chatting about some recent shooting there.
Just a few blocks from the Supreme Court and the Capitol are homeless encampment popups with tents that reek of urine.
D.C. is a major city with more than half a million people. It’s well more than that when accounting for the hundreds of thousands more who come in daily from the suburbs. Nobody reasonably expects it to have no crime whatsoever, but headlines like this one in the New York Times — “Trump Takes Control of D.C. Police, Citing ‘Bloodthirsty Criminals.’ But Crime Is Down.” — are nothing but more attempts by Democrats and their media supporters to ruin this country for everyone but themselves. Half of the party has the money to live removed from the problems they create. The other half is the problem they create. The rest of us are left trying to cope with both.
Crime might be “down” but it’s the same way they said inflation is “down.” Less bad than it could be doesn’t mean not bad at all or even bearable. And when your daily life in a city is marked by a series of fearsome conversations, signs of squalor, and dangerous encounters, no rational person can call it safe.
That’s our country’s capital, the place where foreign dignitaries come to meet our leaders? What an embarrassment. The president is trying to fix it. Democrats trying to stop him are, as always, playing with other people’s lives.