Back in August, Aaron Brazell over at Technosailor did some enterprising digging at Everyblock, a hyperlocal news and statistics site recently acquired by MSNBC.  In his post, he reported that if you chop DC up into its quadrants, the number of crimes reported, according to Everyblock is highest in NW DC, a neighborhood that is known to be far safer and more well-to-do than any other part of the city.

Since August, the numbers haven’t really changed.  NW has more than double the number of crimes reported in the past month at 1,428 than NE DC, the next closest quadrant, with 701.

According to Everyblock, they are getting their numbers from the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), which hosts a searchable crime statistics database on its site.  While the MPD’s data isn’t searchable by DC quadrant, it is searchable by Ward.  However, Ward borders weave in and out of the quadrants, making the assembly of current crime statistics by quadrant very difficult.

Northwest DC is certainly the largest quadrant in geographic size and population, however there are entire swaths of NW for which crime simply is not an issue, and crime is a far larger problem in Southeast or Northeast DC than it is in Northwest.  So why the lower reported crime numbers in those areas?

At this point, the common problem of police distrust in those neighborhoods has to be a contributing factor.  I’d be interested to explore the relationship that Southeast DC residents have with the MPD, and what that relationship has in common with relations between residents of East Baltimore and the BCPD.

The other problem here is the relative indifference that residents of Northwest DC have for the rest of the city.  It starts with the dearth of coverage given to these neighborhoods, specifically by the Washington Post.  I’ve lived in DC since April and have scoured the Post for coverage in Northeast and Southeast DC to get a feel for the other side of the city, and my resulting knowledge of the problems these areas face is nebulous at best.  For people in Northwest DC, Anacostia might as well be another country.

Part of what I’ll be working on in my MA program will try to clarify the crime narratives of areas outside of Northwest DC.  Stay tuned.