Curfew in Washington DC as crimes increase

Washington will introduce a 10 pm curfew for teenagers and deploy more police officers following a crime wave that saw 15 murders in July.

WASHINGTON: Authorities in the US capital have cleared the way for a 10 pm curfew on youths in a dramatic bid to stop a surge of killings and robberies that has exposed the city’s racial divide.

With 15 people slain this month, homicides are running at nearly twice the monthly average. Washington police chief Charles Ramsey declared a citywide crime emergency last week.

City council members followed up on Wednesday by approving a package of measures, including extra money to step up police patrols and permission for Mayor Anthony Williams to tighten the city’s curfew for under-18 youths- currently midnight — to 10 pm.

The bill also allows police to install surveillance cameras in Washington residential neighbourhoods for the first time, matching a trend in many cities around the world. The measures are initially limited to 90 days, but Williams hopes they will become permanent.

Beyond its tourist sites and stately government buildings, Washington — formally known as District of Columbia — displays extremes that play out in many other US cities.

Lobbyists and politicians in the northern quadrants live in contrast to the poorer, predominantly black neighbourhoods in the southern parts. Critics charge the emergency in the notoriously crime-ridden capital was triggered in part because a British activist was fatally stabbed in Georgetown, an elegant, mostly white neighbourhood where Jacqueline Kennedy once entertained the rich and powerful.

Several robberies on the National Mall, famed for its museums and monuments, have increased the sense of fear, as have police warnings that criminals are travelling further from their neighbourhoods - that is, from black areas to white areas.

After the Briton’s slaying, Ramsey reassigned a senior police officer who had urged Georgetown residents to be vigilant because black people were “unusual” in their neighbourhood. The officer has apologised for the remark.

Some local civil liberties groups have complained that the new measures are too strict, but the mayor disagreed. “These are changes that enjoy overwhelming community support,” Williams said on Thursday.

“Can anyone seriously argue that 15-year-olds ought to be allowed to loiter on street corners at midnight? And I have yet to meet anyone in the community who objects to closed-circuit cameras in our hot spots to discourage drug dealers and crooks.”

Washington Mayor Anthony Williams said, “The city is much safer than 10 years ago but we can do better,”  adding that the crime rate in the capital was lower last year than at any point since the late 1960s.