Metropolitan Police Department: Public Oversight Hearing on

Public Oversight Hearing on
Metropolitan Police Department Performance in Homicide Investigations

Charles H. Ramsey
Chief of Police
Metropolitan Police Department

Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey delivered the following testimony to the Committee on the Judiciary, Kathy Patterson, Chairperson, Council of the District of Columbia.

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Madame Chair, members of the Committee, staff and guests … I appreciate the opportunity to present testimony this morning concerning recent trends in homicide in the District and also important changes the Metropolitan Police Department is taking to improve our performance in this critical area. As a reminder to our viewers on Channel 13, the text of my testimony is posted on the Police Department's Website: mpdc.dc.gov.

Also being posted on our Website and distributed in hard copy is this report: the MPD's Murder Analysis, a study of homicides in the District of Columbia over the past decade, with a particular focus on the years 1998 through 2000. This report contains a wealth of information about homicide offenses, victims, offenders and murder investigations in the District. This information has been particularly valuable in analyzing and evaluating recent efforts to reduce DC's homicide rate. And it has helped to guide and inform the changes I will explain today in how our Department will organize and manage homicide investigations in the future. Copies of the report are being distributed to all Councilmembers, and additional copies are available if you would like them.

The Murder Analysis report paints a mixed picture of homicides in the District. The positive trend, of course, is that our city's homicide rate is at its lowest level in 15 years. In 1999 and 2000, the annual number of homicides occurring in the city - 241 and 242, respectively - was half what it was at the beginning of the 1990s. And thus far in 2001, homicides in DC are down 16 percent when compared with last year at this time - 173 murders as of this morning. If this trend continues, the District of Columbia will end the year with the fewest number of murders since the mid-1980s. I find it particularly encouraging that the number of juvenile homicide victims has declined sharply in the last few years - from 28 in 1999, to 17 in 2000, to 5 so far this year.

The reductions in our homicide rate are, I believe, an affirmation of our "Policing for Prevention" strategy of community policing. And they are a testament to the creative talent, hard work and dedication of our police officers and our partners in the community. For years, many people - including many police officials - argued that policing could not possibly impact the homicide rate … in effect, that homicides could not be prevented. I think our success here in DC - and in cities across the country - have proven those skeptics wrong.

But as encouraging as the homicide reductions over the past decade have been, our Police Department and our community cannot - and must not - be satisfied with the number of murders taking place in our city. The District of Columbia is still far too violent a city. Ideally, this Murder Analysis report should be studying 40 to 50 homicides a year, not 240 as we experienced the last two years.

Reaching that goal will not be the result of any one program or policy. Homicide is a complex, multi-faceted problem for which we must develop comprehensive and multi-faceted prevention strategies. The Murder Analysis report helps to pinpoint the specific types of homicide motives, victim and offender profiles, geographical patterns and other factors that contribute to our intolerably high homicide rate. These are the very same factors that our Department and everyone else committed to safer communities must focus on, if we are to reduce the homicide rate even further.