On Tuesday night, DC residents gathered to lament the state of their city.
“We are mad. We are scared in this community. There was a murder in our building just 10 days ago. A woman was shot in the face across the street on Saturday,” one resident told D.C. police Chief Pamela Smith at Tuesday’s town hall.
Smith did her best to respond to these frustrations, but real culprits — champagne race-baiters like Ibram X. Kendi and Patrisse Cullors — were nowhere to be found. Their ideas, however, are painfully present in the daily lives of Washingtonians.
In the capital of the most powerful nation the world has ever known, violent crime is up 38 percent in just one year. Gun violence breaks out in front of upscale restaurants. Eighty-five-thousand people in the city’s poorest ward are about to lose their only grocery store due to unrestrained retail theft. Police gave up on stopping carjackers and started handing out free steering wheel locks instead.