THURSDAY, AUGUST 14, 2025
...in Washington, D.C. persist: How bad is crime in Washington, D.C.?
Such questions aren't always easy to answer. Beyond that, it can be easy to get caught up in the promulgation of partisan storylines regarding such significant questions.
That's especially true on a gruesome shoutfest show like CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip, which airs each night at 10.
The show seems to have been designed as a version of the old Crossfire on steroids. Partisan guests interrupt and overtalk each other all through the hour, with Phillip regrettably cast in the role of the long-suffering but overwhelmed host.
Phillip is much too smart, and much too sane, to be wasted in this way. We'll guess that CNN hoped a shoutfest program of this type might help boost its sagging ratings.
At any rate, there they were on NewsNight last evening, pretending to discuss the topic of violent crime in D.C. With that, we offer a trigger alert:
What follows will involve Republican strategist Scott Jennings, who has turned himself into an insufferable figure, apparently in service to CNN's search for conflict, or perhaps in service to his reported desire to run for the Senate in Kentucky.
Whichever! As described in this report at Mediaite, Jennings had just finished insulting Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky as they pretended to discuss the important topic. Fighting back against the sneers of Jennings, and herself a partisan, Roginsky was soon saying this:
ROGINSKY (8/13/25) : ...Because somebody named Big Balls got beat up, allegedly, [President Trump] wants to deploy the National Guard to a place that has had a 30-year low in violence. And we all know that he’s doing this because it’s a power grab.
He could have done this when this District was actually in danger on January 6th. But he didn’t. And I think that’s what’s so offensive. He talks about backing the blue. He talks about law enforcement. He didn’t give a damn, Scott. And you agreed, back on January 6. He didn’t give a damn about those police officers and about the safety of people in Washington, D.C.
Today, because he wants a power grab, he’s doing this despite the fact that every statistic shows that Washington, D. C. has not been safer in the last 30 years.
Rebounding from Jennings' snark, Roginsky stated the company line. That said, is it true? Does every statistic show that Washington is safer today than it's ever been in the last 30 years?
We'd have to say that the answer seems to be no. These are official homicide numbers from the D.C. police:
20-Year Homicide Trend
2011: 108
2012: 88
2013: 104
2014: 105
[...]
2021: 226
2022: 203
2023: 274
2024: 187
Those numbers may seem hard to square with Roginsky's sweeping assertion.
A person could claim that we're still in the backwash from the Covid years. Also, last year's 187 homicides is, in fact, a long way down from the previous year's 274.
That said, that earlier period looks like a dream compared to the number from last year. Of course, if you use a different data set to journey back into the crime-ridden 1990s, last year's number starts looking a whole lot better.
Roginsky may have overstated a bit in search of a partisan win. That awful show on CNN is designed to produce such conflict.
Meanwhile, do we know that overall "violent crime" in D.C. is really at a thirty-year low, as the data seem to indicate? On Tuesday, Mediaite's Isaac Schorr quoted the chairman of the D.C. police union saying this:
...Police Union Alleges ‘Preposterous’ Crime Stats Are Being Cooked
[...]
As it turns out, there’s a good reason for the apparent discrepancy between the experience of almost everyone who’s spent any time in D.C. over the last half-decade and the ["safest in thirty years"] data being cited by Trump’s critics...According to [a local NBC News] affiliate, union officials allege that “there is a larger trend of manipulating crime statistics.”
“When our members respond to the scene of a felony offense where there is a victim reporting that a felony occurred, inevitably there will be a lieutenant or a captain that will show up on that scene and direct those members to take a report for a lesser offense,” explained Gregg Pemberton, the local Fraternal Order of Police chairman. “So, instead of taking a report for a shooting or a stabbing or a carjacking, they will order that officer to take a report for a theft or an injured person to the hospital or a felony assault, which is not the same type of classification.”
Is Pemberton describing a real situation—a real situation which takes place on a widespread basis? We don't have any way of knowing, but such manipulations do occur out there in the real world.
(Final line from the feature film Witness: "You be careful out there among them English, John Book.")
It's hard to turn a homicide into a lesser offense. It's also assumed that almost every homicide gets reported to the police.
For those reasons, homicide statistics are often regarded as the most reliable indicators of violent crime trends within a jurisdiction. With respect to the number of homicides in D.C., there seems to have been a brighter day roughly one decade ago.
Question! Are we here to win partisan fights on cable shoutfests? Or are we here to look for ways to understand and improve the world?
(Children die in D.C. shootings. Do those children deserve our respect?)
On "cable news," the answer is often depressingly clear. CNN should pull the plug on its horrible show. The channel could thereby free the talented Phillip while showing Jennings the door.
A final point:
Regarding the brawls that CNN generates on NewsNight, we think of Professor Brabender's great and justly famous description of human affairs:
Where I come from, we only talk so long. After that, we start to hit.
ReplyDelete"Those numbers may seem hard to square with Roginsky's sweeping assertion."
Good; never mind that it's hard to square. The more squealing from Roginsky and his ilk, the better.
Squealing and hate-mongering idiot-Democrats is how we know the swamp-draining goes well. Keep draining the swamp, Mr. President, keep draining the swamp.
Go fuck yoself Mao.
DeleteSo sad for Big Balls that the little girl snuck up on him from behind and pounded the shit out of his face. Normally he defends himself by quickly pulling out his sack and swinging his Big Balls to knock out his little girl adversaries. I hear Marvel Comics is working to develop a new superhero comic based on his Big Balls.
Delete"Regarding the brawls that CNN generates on NewsNight, we think of Professor Brabender's great and justly famous description of human affairs:
ReplyDeleteWhere I come from, we only talk so long. After that, we start to hit."
Somerby just loves this quote ripped from its context in a memoir about baseball and having nothing whatsoever to do with murders anywhere, much less DC. Brabender was not a professor or expert on human behavior either, but a pitcher nicknamed "Lurch" for his height. The "hitting" in his quote may have referred to baseball hits.
Do people start hitting after talking for a while. Not so much. Talking is essential to conflict resolution. AI says:
"Talking, in most cases, helps resolve conflict rather than increase it, but the way it's done is crucial. Open and honest communication, where both parties feel heard and understood, is key to finding common ground and solutions. However, poorly executed communication can escalate conflict if it involves blame, accusations, or dismissiveness. "
So this repeated use of this quote to say something that is not actually true in any way is annoying and unhelpful.
It may be that CNN should discontinue its entertainment show focused on politics. No one suggested that about Rush Limbaugh and he was worse. But Somerby's reasoning seems to be that there must be perfect stats without controversy or else an assertion must be considered wrong. That all-or-nothing black-and-white approach to stats is majorly stupid. When there is a conflict in stats, you must look at the numbers closely and also examine who is saying what, for what purpose. Somerby does none of that. He throws up his hands and says talking is over, let's hit. Let's get rid of a show that has complexities because, in his mind, there is no way to resolve them except by hitting.
I talked about these numbers a few days ago, but Somerby doesn't read his own comments. The Police Union has a political stake and is questioning the accuracy of decreases in crime rates. It is clear that such rates are declining, so the controversy concerns how much they have declined, not whether they are lower. The actual stats have nothing to do with Trump's plan to introduce military and FBI into DC area, nor whether that is necessary at all.
Many viewers of that CNN show will be more sophisticated than Somerby in their response to the format. That makes Somerby's call for the cancellation of the show ridiculous. If he doesn't like it or finds it noisy, chaotic, confusing, HE doesn't have to watch. If Somerby cannot see that absolutely nothing rests upon getting these particular stats correct, then HE has a major problem with his thinking. The same kind of problem that leads him to quote this much abused line about hitting in contexts about violence instead of baseball. There may be political cable shows that are over Somerby's head, that he shouldn't be watching if they upset him like this.
"Somerby just loves this quote ripped from its context"
DeletePlease tell us, what was its context? And since you can't, why did you type that sentence?
The "hitting" in his quote may have referred to baseball hits."
It may have. But nobody talks that way, and if they do, no one quotes them in a book for talking that way.
In addition there are several documented anecdotes about Brabender consistent with Somerby's interpretation of the quote:
Brooks (Robinson) recalled, “We were out for dinner in New York one time, four of us, I think it was Gallagher’s Steak House. The waiter was really obnoxious. We didn’t leave him a very big tip. He came back to complain, and Gene stood up, put his hand on his shoulder, and said, ‘How far do you want to get tipped?”
'Today Mel Stottlemyre goes after his seventh victory and Gene Brabender goes after whatever the Gene Brabenders of the world go after.” When the column was read in the clubhouse, Bender boomed, “Will someone point out that f***er to me?”'
Shooting darts into the walls above guys’ heads with a homemade blowgun was another of Gene’s little pastimes.
https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/gene-brabender/
Here is how carefully Trump handles stats and sweeping generalizations. Trump said about Elizabeth Warren:
ReplyDelete"I watched her the other night. She was all hopped up, endorsing a communist in New York City. And she was all excited and jumping up and down. She’s gotta take a drug test! She really does, she’s gotta take a drug test. There’s no way somebody can act that way and be normal. What she has done to our financial institutions, she destroys people. Do you know that you had a lot of great banks in the Midwest, and banks that loaned to farmers, and others, and they went out of business. She put’em out of business, stone-cold mean. Banks that were open 150 years, family banks that supplied the farmers and manufacturers and others. And she put’em out of business. She’s a mean, horrible human being."
Meanwhile, her impact on farmers and community banks is the opposite of Trump's accusations. She has urged targeted deregulation for community banks, opposed big bank consolidations and encouraged competition, advocated greater capital requirements for big banks and opposed risky mergers among them (leveling the playing field for smaller banks), addressed agricultural consolidation and discrimination, and increased credit access for diverse farmers. The impact of the Dodd-Frank Act is still being studied and it is complex. Warren's intentions have been to help smaller farmers and community banks, not hurt them. Trump's remarks are so vague as to be defamatory.
Where is Somerby's essay about the unfairness of such accusations, totally without specifics or examples, or any substance beyond name-calling. And this is what our President does, not a casual remark by someone on a talk show.
This occurred at a press conference at which there was no defense of Warren despite the unfairness of Trump's attack on her. Prior to this excerpt, he called her hopped up on something, accused her of lying about being an Indian, called Pocahontas again, and said she needed to take a drug test.
When this is the level our President functions at, the nitpick over how much murders have declined compared to when, is a big fat nothingburger. This is especially so, given that the issue is whether it is legal for Trump to put military troops on US streets, not whether they are needed there -- they manifestly are not.
A DOJ worker threw his subway sandwich at a fed and was charged with felony assault. This what right wingers think is a crime wave. I am sorry the guy lost his cool and did that but no one was threatened except the man with the sandwich, who was arrested and fired. If this kind of interaction is being treated as major crime, something is wrong with Trump's enforcement effort and it will be a danger to everyone. Next thing, baseball players will be hauled off in paddywagons for arguing with the ump, instead of being benched for a game. Baseball cards will have arrest records on the back, along with the hitting stats.
You can tell anyone defending Trump on his military deployments on our (black woman run) city streets is full of shit because they never mention the obvious illegality of it.
DeleteThat black woman running DC? She went to Martha’s Vineyard on personal business.
DeleteLinguistic charity occurs when a listener ignores a speaker's minor errors in order to follow the overall gist (broader meaning) of what is being said. Without such charity, communication would be impossible.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, people overlook a wide variety of ambiguities and confusions over intentions and assumptions when interacting during a conversation. You cannot take insult at every possible slight and still maintain a conversation. We've all seen conversations where someone is determined to take umbrage no matter how genuine and polite the speaker. Goodwill dictates that others be given the benefit of the doubt when it sounds like they are saying something offensive.
The right wing (more than the left) likes to inflate minor quibbles into major objections over trivialities. It never takes the steps needed to clarify a situation. It goes from 0 to huffy in seconds. Somerby does that routinely here when he wants to attack someone, manufacturing a problem where none exists, as in today's stats on murders, which have obviously gone down considerably. This is a non-issue and so is the degree of yelling on the show. The right invented that style of talking over people and shouting them down. Its viewers find watching it exhilarating because their guys are behaving in ways that are not allowed in polite discourse, being uncivil. It is like watching hockey skaters throw elbows. No one takes it seriously except Somerby today, for his own purposes, which are to knock the lefty guest for saying murders decreased, which they have.
This is a stupid waste of time. Somerby knows that too, so why does he do this? Obviously, to blame the left for storylines. And that's unfair when it is the right trying to dispute whether crime is still out of control or not, using suspect data from a biased Police Union that supports Trump. But Somerby prefers to overgeneralize this to a non-existent problem on the left. As always.
Here comes the police state:
ReplyDelete"Federal immigration officials detained at least one person outside of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) speech on Thursday discussing Texas’s push to redistrict its congressional map, according to local news.
Newsom’s office posted images of ICE agents outside the event and wrote, “TRUMP’S PRIVATE ARMY IS ILLEGALLY ON PRIVATE PROPERTY!!!! WE WILL NOT BE INTIMIDATED BY THIS WEAK LITTLE MAN!!!” [Mediaite]
There was no danger of anyone murdering anyone else at Newsom's press conference. This is what intimidation looks like. The purpose of Trump's troops is to bully people, not to decrease crime in DC or anywhere else.
One of the procedures being used by ICE agents is to have a target person's name then to "mistakenly" arrest someone else without allowing the arrestee to show any ID or proof they are not the one being sought. They are pointing guns at people, putting them in handcuffs, all without letting anyone explain that they are not guilty of anything. They did this to a 15-year old boy outside a school in CA today.
We cannot allow fear of crime (dressed up as fear of homeless, fear of drag queens, fear of carjackers, fear of kids doing wheelies on ATVs/bikes) to be used as an excuse to take away our fundamental rights in the USA, where freedom is part of our national heritage, our legal system, our culture and our way of life.
ReplyDeleteSomerby's silly quibble supports a corrupt legal system that now arrests people with violence before ascertaining they even have the right victim (much less a real perpetrator). This is wrong and it is time to say so loudly and repeatedly.
Somerby needs to stop justifying Trump's actions here if he wants to pretend to be a lefty. It annoys everyone but the trolls.
In case you missed this:
DeleteDC 20-Year Homicide Trend
2011: 108
2012: 88
2013: 104
2014: 105
[...]
2021: 226
2022: 203
2023: 274
2024: 187
This isn't really a question about the extent of crime in DC, as Somerby's headline suggests. Such a discussion would sound a lot different from what Somerby is quoting.
ReplyDeleteDoes this appear to be a valid way to reduce homicides in DC:
ReplyDelete"Last night, ICE agents, some Guards, and the cops deployed to 14th Street Northwest, one of the city’s liveliest streets, chockablock with restaurants and stores patronized by a very cross-class and cross-racial clientele. As is rarely the case in Los Angeles, the sidewalks on such commercial streets in D.C. are invariably filled with pedestrians during the evening hours—and no such street more so than 14th Street last night, when ICE agents began pulling over cars to check, they said, for seatbelt compliance, and then checked the drivers’ and passengers’ IDs—with the cops standing by to assist when necessary. The dragnet lasted until 10 p.m., during which time ICE arrested at least two motorists, and appeared to infuriate the overwhelming majority of other motorists and passing pedestrians, who began chanting, “Shame! Shame!”
"
In the one 14th Street incident guaranteed to enter the Urban (Verified) Legend Hall of Fame, one such pedestrian threw a Subway sandwich at an ICE agent on Sunday night, for which he was arrested and charged with a felony. The pedestrian, it turned out, was actually an employee of the Department of Justice, from which he was summarily sacked.
Though Trump’s choice as D.C.’s federal prosecutor—right-wing TV celebrity Jeanine Pirro—boasted that the sandwich-hurler faced a year in jail, it’s going to be very difficult to find a D.C. grand jury willing to indict him, much less a trial jury willing to convict him. In the 2024 presidential election, 90 percent of D.C. voters cast their ballots for Kamala Harris, against just 7 percent who voted for Trump. We’ve already seen this kind of jury resistance to the spurious charges leveled by the Trump-appointed federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, Bilal Essayli, where a number of grand juries have refused to charge ICE protesters who raised their hands to fend off ICE agents’ blows for the crime of raising their hands to fend off ICE agents’ blows."
"...In Washington, D.C., no such massive groups of Guards or troops have been sent out, but in Washington, as is not the case in L.A., there are a few streets where heavy pedestrian traffic can be safely counted upon. Hence, Trump and Miller have concluded they can provoke a kindred level of civil disorder with a smaller force of federal and federalized agents, provided they’re strategically deployed."
I am having a really hard time seeing how provoking people out for an evening of eating and drinking is going to reduce homicide rates anywhere. Unless you consider that Subway sandwich to be a lethal weapon.
The response to Trump's move is normal for the resisters -- the people and media who automatically oppose and awfulize everything Trump does.
ReplyDeleteWe really don't know what the true figures are for DC. Also, to say that the crime rate is lower than it was during some past period or in some other city is not to say that the crime rate is acceptable. AFAIK nobody thinks DC crime is at an acceptable level. But, the Trump resisters immediately jump in to deny that crime is a problem, to deny that the National Guard will reduce crime, and to claim that Trump has a nefarious secret motivation.
Go fuck yourself, you fucking fascist freak. Those Hitler resisters must have annoyed you too.
DeleteMSNBC host Joe Scarborough suggested that some liberal media figures blasting President Donald Trump’s federal takeover of Washington, D.C. were not being entirely honest about their concerns over crime in the nation’s capital, on Tuesday’s “Morning Joe.”
DeleteScarborough said he found it “interesting” that some reporters critically covering the Trump takeover have privately expressed concerns about their own safety.
“This is interesting,” Scarborough said. “I actually heard from a reporter when this happened, going, ‘Well, you know, if he doesn’t overreach, this could actually be a good thing for quality of life,’ etc., because in DC right now, I had this happen to my family and I had that, and they go down the list. And then I saw him tweet something completely different.”
Go fuck yourself two faced fascist Dave. Why do you support the jagoff breaking the law you nasty POS.
DeleteThree words dickhead, Posse Comitatus Act. You all a bunch of jagoff. Think how hard you scream if Biden acted like a pussy throwing military at civilians when not needed. You suck.
Delete@6:51 - The Posse Comitatus Act does not prohibit the use of the National Guard.
DeleteThey can stay 30 days, after which there needs to be congressional authorization for them to remain. Meanwhile, the troops have been told they will be there until Sept 25. That is more than 30 days, so there may be some conflict if they remain.
DeleteCrime is not out of control in DC.
DeleteIt's not that concerns about crime are always unjustified. It's that Trump's approach is:
Delete1. Performative.
2. Ineffective
3. Unjustified
4. And will certainly become illegal past 30 days.
Deploying the national guard is typically done in response to some overwhelming events. To go back to the discussion yesterday: we are being prepped for the military to be stationed in our cities.
Joe Scarborough, fuckface? The republican who impeached President Clinton for getting an unauthorized blowjob.
DeleteScram, dickhead, you fucking fascist troll.
Joe Scarborough, murderer of interns.
DeleteGo fuck yourself DiC.
DeleteIlya - by "performative" I guess you mean Trump doesn't really believe that the National Guard will reduce crime in DC. What evidence is there that Trump doesn't sincerely believe that his actions will reduce crime?
DeleteIlya -- Also, what is the evidence that Trump is prepping us for the military to be stationed in our cities?
DeleteDavid, I am not Ilya, but I want to offer some response. First, yhere is a field called criminology that has expertise in how to reduce crime. The measures that help are not what Trump is doing. He is not even supporting the police by increasing their resources, as someone interested in reducing crime would do. The #1 cause of crime is poverty. Trump has no interest in reducing poverty but is doing the opposite.
DeleteEvidence that Trump is prepping us for military occupation is the fact that there are now troops in 2 cities (LA & DC), both with fabricated excuses, and Trump has talked about putting troops in more cities. His own words and actions are evidence.
"what is the evidence that Trump is prepping us for the military to be stationed in our cities?"
DeleteThe jaggoffs own words,
"We're not going to lose our cities over this," Trump said as he mentioned plans to potentially expand his crackdown on crime to New York, Chicago, Baltimore and other cities. "This will go further.""
Fuck you David you fucking lying piece of shit.
TIME TO FIRE SOMEBODY
ReplyDelete"Wholesale prices increased in July at the quickest pace since February, putting the Federal Reserve in a tough position as it faces pressure to keep prices low and employment high.
The 3.3 percent yearly increase — which blew past economists’ expectations — comes as economists are keeping a sharp eye on inflation data amid President Trump’s trade war."
As is commonly the case in this administration, justice is meted out according to economic strata. The criminals provoking Trump's National Guard action undoubtedly have a certain demographic that is easily distinguished from the criminals benefiting from a 31% reduction in manpower on the enforcement side in the IRS. Reducing the constraints on crime is no big deal as long as the thieves have starched shirts and clean fingernails.
ReplyDelete