Reminder: Dupont Public Safety Meeting/PSA 306 is Tuesday April 16th at 7pm at the 3rd District Metropolitan Police Dept Headquarters at 1620 V Street. (Held on the 3rd Tuesdays for Dupont and Kalorama-Sheridan issues.) Our community depends on good communications to and from our police. This is a roundtable meeting where we problem-solve. Bring an issue – no matter how minor. Or email me or our lieutenants to submit items for discussion.
Think about bringing an at-risk kid who might benefit from positive communications with police.
Complacency Warning: Try putting your various addresses (work, school, the bar you may wander out of late at night) into this crime mapping tool and compare incident totals: http://crimemap.dc.gov/presentation/query.asp. Someone moving from Foggy Bottom to Dupont searched at 1500 feet for last 60 days for both addresses. The Dupont house showed 68 crimes with 10 being violent and the Foggy Bottom 27 with 0 being violent. Who’d have thought there would be such a major difference? That made me think that we get used to the crime we have around here.
Improving our crime problem starts by getting aware, asking questions as to why we have so much, and coming up with solutions for reducing it. If we had more people involved, we could better advocate for more resources. (Although PSA 306 seems to have better staff now than in recent memory.) If Dupont had someone who advocated like Jim Graham does for Adams Morgan, we’d have more police presence. (Of course, police presence is only part of the equation.) Get to know your neighborhood, neighbors, police, prosecutors, judges, business owners, school teachers, and politicians. As Thomas Jefferson said, "Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
Rob Halligan
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