Washington, DC is facing a severe surge in homicides, with a 37% increase in 2023, putting it on track for its deadliest year in over two decades

What’s behind the Washington, DC murder spike?

The capital of the United States of America is threatening to reclaim its reputation as the nation’s murder capital, as well.

According to preliminary data for 2023 from Washington, DC’s Metropolitan Police Department, a total of 214 homicides had been committed in the metropolis as of September 29, constituting a 37 percent increase over last year. This is the first time in a quarter-century that Washington’s homicide count has exceeded 200 before October.

Victims include 10-year-old Arianna Davis, who received a stray bullet to the head on Mother’s Day; 16-year-old Jamal Jones, shot near his high school on September 25; and 31-year-old father of four Nasrat Ahmad Yar, a Lyft driver shot on Capitol Hill in July.

Ahmad Yar had fled Afghanistan after serving as a translator for the US armed forces, only to end up a casualty of US gun violence in imperial headquarters itself – a morbid twist, no doubt, on the theme of “bringing the war home”.

As usual, the bulk of this year’s homicides have taken place in Washington’s poorer neighbourhoods, which, in keeping with the system of racist classism that passes for democracy in the US, also happen to be the city’s Blacker neighbourhoods.

But why the spike in killings in the nation’s capital when various other major US cities are experiencing a post-pandemic decline in the homicide rate?

Of course, the “tough-on-crime” crowd has its own convenient explanations for the trend, such as that wishy-washy criminal justice policies in Washington let people get away with murder and that there aren’t enough police. Never mind the intermittently homicidal behaviour of the police themselves, like in March when a DC officer fatally shot Black teenager Dalaneo Martin in the back.

And as if a militarised police force weren’t enough, the likes of Washington, DC Councilmember Trayon White have called for the deployment of the National Guard on local streets to deal with the “state of emergency” and veritable “war zone”. After all, there is clearly nothing more conducive to a cohesive and harmonious society than making folks feel like enemy combatants in their own land.

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