D.C. Blue-Very Blue - The force that Marion Barry built - or wrecked

National Review, August 20, 2001 by John J. Miller

Jaywalking may be a petty crime, but on the night of March 30, 1967, it had disastrous consequences. At the corner of 13th and U Streets, in the Upper Shaw neighborhood of Washington, D.C., a young black man tried to cross against the light. Two cars nearly hit him, right in front of a stopped police vehicle. A white officer rolled down his window and asked, "Can't you tell the color of a streetlight?" The reply came as a string of obscenities, some of it racial. The cop had intended merely to issue a warning. Provoked, he was now determined to hand out a $5 ticket. This led to a scuffle that grew to include several onlookers: A group of black citizens pitted themselves against white policemen. There were no serious injuries in the altercation that followed-just a few minor bruises on both sides-and the jaywalker was carted off to the precinct house. His name was Marion Barry Jr.

If the decline of the D.C. police department had to be traced to a single event, the decision to challenge Barry that night is a strong candidate. In the trial that followed, according to Harry S. Jaffe and Tom Sherwood in their book Dream City, Barry summoned a long convoy of black and white character witnesses, who claimed their friend was a responsible member of the community who never could have done the awful things alleged by the police. Barry was already a minor figure in local political life; many in the city regarded him as a brave man who exposed police racism. Upon acquittal, the victim became a hero. Eleven years later, the hero became the mayor. And he was determined to level the D.C. police.

As the country has fixed its attention on missing intern Chandra Levy, it has also become acquainted with the D.C. police. Cable-news devotees have witnessed a string of elementary blunders: the repeated insistence from earliest days that Democratic congressman Gary Condit is "not a suspect," the inexplicable delay in searching his apartment, the leaking to the press, and so on. While it's wrong to judge an entire police force on its performance during a single investigation-let alone one that may hold further developments-the Levy case points to a broader, crippling problem: the fundamental inability of the D.C. police department to carry out many of its duties.

Just a generation ago, the D.C. police department was considered one of the best in the country. Today its reputation is near the bottom. The story of its decline is more important than any lurid, momentary fascination the public has with the Levy case. The D.C. experience serves as a red-alert warning to cities such as Cincinnati, still recovering from racial riots sparked by charges of police misconduct earlier this year, and even New York, which will lose its tough-on- crime mayor, Rudy Giuliani, in a few months. It is fraught with important lessons for urban centers caught in the toxic mix of black radical activism and white liberal guilt.

Yet the D.C. story is also a tragedy unto itself. Consider simply the homicide numbers: 1,500 unsolved murders over the last decade; 225 killings by alleged repeat offenders, including 125 who had been arrested previously (most of their charges were dismissed); and an arrest rate badly trailing that of comparable cities. Two-thirds of all homicides now go unsolved in D.C. A detective told the Washington Post last year that in some parts of the city, the force "is spread so thin, you might not get a detective if there's a murder."

There was a time when crime figures this bad would have been unthinkable. In 1968, there were about 2,900 officers on the D.C. force; race riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. made plain the need for more personnel, as buildings just a few blocks from the White House went up in flames. Troops descended on the city to stop the violence. President Nixon came into office determined to make sure chaos would not reign again in the nation's capital. He poured resources into the police department, even getting the Pentagon to encourage retiring soldiers to apply for jobs there. The number of cops rose to 5,100 within a few years, their ranks swollen with veterans. They cut the D.C. crime rate in half, even as the national crime rate was rising. The homicide closure rate moved above the 90 percent mark. The city bucked a depressing trend, and showed that a serious commitment to fighting crime can yield impressive results. Which is another way of saying the D.C. police had a long way to fall.

In 1978, Barry was elected mayor. He had an animus against the police force, based not just on the jaywalking incident, but also on a perverse view of law enforcement in general. He viewed the police not as a force city politicians were supposed to improve and reinforce, but as an "occupation army" (as he once put it) that must be restrained. One of his top goals as mayor was to shrink the police department. Within eight years, he had chopped it down more than 25 percent, to 3,800 officers. The police force began to rot from within as well. Training virtually halted. Equipment problems became so severe that police cruisers used tires discarded by the Park Police. Many of the best officers grew demoralized and quit, and the mayor made sure they weren't replaced. He lorded over the police, insisting that he approve every promotion above the rank of captain. Choking on patronage, the department became a personal security force that facilitated Barry's own crimes (though these were eventually exposed). Most infuriating of all, from a law-enforcement standpoint, was how Barry reveled in this dubious achievement: The downfall of the police was marketed as uplift of the people. The only thing that went up, however, was the crime rate. Barry seemed unconcerned. "I'm not going to let murder be the gauge since we're not responsible for murders, can't stop the murders," he said in 1989.