With four months left to go in the year, Washington, D.C., has already surpassed the number of murders committed in the city in all of 2014.
Despite an “all hands on deck” initiative conducted by city police this past weekend, ten people were shot in separate incidents overnight Friday and two of them died, The Washington Post reports.
So far this year there have been 105 murders committed in the nation’s capital, comapred to 72 at the same time last year. That accounts for a 45 percent increase.(RELATED: DC Mayor To Consider ‘Legislative Changes’ To Gun Laws Amid Spike In Violence)
The two men who died were involved in the same shooting incident, which also left another man wounded. It happened just before midnight Friday in Southeast D.C.
The two victims were identified as Omoni Johnson, 26, and Shaheed James, 21.
The city is reeling from several high-profile murder incidents this summer, including a shocking quadruple murder in one of D.C.’s wealthiest neighborhoods that saw three family members and their nanny tortured and murdered before their house set on fire.(RELATED: Drive-By Shooting At Busy DC Metro Station Has Whole City Unnerved)
D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier said during a Thursday radio interview with National Public Radio’s local affiliate WAMU that the city’s 8th ward, by far the poorest region of D.C., has seen a 95 percent rise in murders over last year.
“We’re seeing a dramatically increasing number of people who are out on community release, under supervision, that have long, violent criminal histories that are just continuing to commit crime,” she said.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced a new plan Thursday aimed at combating violent crime in the city.
The plan, dubbed “Safer, Stronger DC,” will put more officers on the streets in D.C.’s “hardest hit areas,” create an incentive program asking businesses and homeowners to install security cameras and make it harder for people to be charged with assault on a police officer.
While introducing the new initiative, Black Lives Matter protesters repeatedly interrupted the mayor, and the event devolved into a shouting match between the two sides.
The protesters were upset because Bowser’s police initiatives include a plan that will allow police officers to search people on probation or parole at will.
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