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I agree that this sounds like some sort of gang initiation. Crime happens everywhere, this only confirms what anyone who lives in a big city already knows: always stay alert and keep your guard up, specially if you're walking alone.
And these seem to have taken place in northern Petworth. Northwest is the largest quadrant in the city and has an incredible variety of neighborhoods. Generalising them all to look like Dupont Circle or Friendship Heights is just foolish.
isnt northern Petworth usually considered safer than southern Petworth?
Living there, I'd like to think so. I also don't think it's gang related. Some kid probably all junked up on PCP. He lived on the same street he was caught. Pretty serious lack of judgement, even for a crew kid.
When I read about this it brought back unhappy memories of the nutjob who drove around Mount Pleasant and Columbia Heights - then in the middle and early stages of gentrification in the early 1990s- shooting people with a sawed-off shotgun. Seemingly random acts of violence by a seriously deranged individual.
You mean crime is not strictly confined to the city? Kudos for pointing that out, albeit in the most obvious "tit-for-tat" way possible. I really no idea and always assumed that the only reason why suburban jurisdictions even bothered to have police departments was to rescue cats from trees.
Both the shotgun stalker and head-bludgeoner in DC temporarily create[d] a sense of sheer panic among residents of areas of DC that were seen as improving. And, quite honestly, before the killer was arrested, one thing that went through residents' heads before, and likely again, was "is this guy doing this because he doesn't like the changes to the neighborhood?" That's clear from some of the recent posts speculating as to whether the Petworth incidents were part of a gang initiation. In the early 90s, before the shotgun stalker was arrested and sent to St. Elizabeth's, I remember cab drivers who, at midnight, would not wait 10 seconds for me to get to my door from the curb because they were so afraid that someone would pull up in a sedan and start shooting at either me or them. That's the type of memory - of random, unpredictable violence directed at innocent victims - that the report of the Petworth head-bludgeoner dredges up.
Human trafficking is serious stuff, and deserves to be punished, but it does not have the same in terrorem effect on neighborhood residents. I would have thought that was pretty obvious. If you really just want to point out that bad things happen in the suburbs, too, you probably should have noted that all but one of the Muhammad/Malvo victims was shot outside DC. However, the difference in that situation was that the attacks were spread out over a much wider region, and not concentrated in a particular area as with the Mount Pleasant/Columbia Heights attacks and the more recent incidents in Petworth.
You mean crime is not strictly confined to the city? Kudos for pointing that out, albeit in the most obvious "tit-for-tat" way possible.
This thread has pointed out (check the OP) that crime in DC is not confined to high crime areas in DC, and your post was a further reminder of that.
I'm not sure why "gang initiation" necessarily means "gentrification pushback" and it looks like it was not a gang initiation.
yes, different types of crime create different reactions. That being said, I do not think anyone browsing this thread should have a special fear of spending time in DC, where the most serious crime continues to decrease, even as the population grows.
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