The Committee asked that I provide data on the nature and extent of crime in our schools. Based on our data, there were at least 522 serious (or “Index”) crimes reported on DC Public School property during calendar year 2004. That compares with an estimated 510 such crimes in 2003, for an increase of about 2 percent. It should be noted that the vast majority of these crimes – about 73 percent in 2004 – were property offenses such as thefts, thefts from autos and stolen vehicles. While the more serious crimes of violence – robberies, assaults and even homicides – occur less frequently in our schools, there were still 139 violent crimes reported on school property during 2004. That is an increase from 117 in 2003. So far this year, the number of crimes reported at DC Public Schools has declined 18 percent, when compared with the same period of 2004. So we are encouraged that some of the steps we have already taken to combat school crime may be having an impact.
As the MPD assumes management responsibility for school safety, we will continue to emphasize data collection and analysis. This will help us in deploying our resources – both School Resource Officers and contract security personnel – in the most effective manner possible.
In the community at large, juvenile involvement in crime – both as offenders and as victims – remains a serious concern in the District of Columbia, although there may be some encouraging trends that are emerging here as well. During 2004, there were 24 juveniles murdered in DC. That is nearly double the number of juvenile homicide victims in 2003, when there were 13, and is 41 percent higher than the 2002 total of 17. So far this year, there have been five juvenile homicide victims, down from 13 such victims at this time last year. We are hopeful that last year’s spike in juvenile homicides was a one-year aberration, not a statistical trend.
What is most perplexing about the 2004 increase in juvenile homicides was that it came during a year in which the total number of homicides in the District declined by 20 percent, to its lowest level in 18 years. In 2003, about 5 percent of all homicide victims in our city were juveniles, but in 2004, the figure was 12 percent – about one out of every eight homicide victims last year was age 17 or younger. A report analyzing all juvenile homicides between 2002 and 2004 – including information about victims, offenders, methods, location, time and other factors – has been made available to the Committee and is posted on the MPD website as well.
During 2004, MPD officers arrested approximately 2,950 juveniles for a variety of crimes – from homicide, robbery and weapons violations to various misdemeanor offenses. The 2004 arrest total is approximately 15 percent higher than the 2003 total, and almost 22 percent higher than the 2002 total. So far this year, officers have made just over 1,000 juvenile arrests, which represents a slight decrease from the 2004 total but still reflects the enhanced attention we are paying to juvenile crime.
It is difficult to know whether recent increases in juvenile arrest activity are the result of more crime committed by young people or more vigorous enforcement by the police – or some combination of factors. It is interesting to note that as arrests of adults increased 14 percent last year, overall crime in DC declined by 18 percent. I can tell the Committee that our Department has placed increased attention on juvenile crime in the last few years, particularly on such “gateway” crimes as unauthorized use of a vehicle, narcotics and burglary. And we are hopeful that this increased attention to offenses committed by juveniles will have a positive impact on juvenile crime trends.
We have also substantially increased our enforcement of truancy and curfew laws, as well as our investigations of child abuse. Over the past 17 months, MPD officers have picked up more than 4,300 truants, including approximately 1,200 since the beginning of this calendar year. Curfew violations increased from only about 230 in 2003 to more than 1,200 in 2004 and approximately 800 so far this year already. And the number of newly reported cases of child abuse investigated by the MPD increased by more than 50 percent between 2003 (1,088 cases) and 2004 (1,672 cases), and this number continued to rise during the first quarter of 2005. These statistics provide further evidence of our Department’s commitment to reducing juvenile crime – both victimization and offending – and to intervening early in the cycle of crime by investigating child abuse.
