My brush with death in DC

The last thing I heard before my ears started ringing was my left turn signal clicking.

I was stopped at a red light on a Saturday afternoon, waiting to glide into my parking lot near the Waterfront Metro stop in Washington, DC when a loud crack suddenly deafened me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a bullet-sized wound in my windshield. 

It wasn’t a windy day, and no cars had been passing by to kick a loose stone up at my beloved Camry, so it only took me only a half-second to realize what had happened. When the fight or flight kicked in, I briefly (and foolishly) fled the vehicle before diving back in to take a left on red. 

The two Metropolitan Police Department officers my 911 call summoned didn’t show up until a half-hour later, even though the nearest station was only a two-minute walk away. Gesturing toward my broken windshield, I asked them for confirmation of what I already knew had happened. Yes, my car had probably been shot with me in it, they agreed before informing me that all they could do was record the incident. 

If I wanted, they said, I could ask nearby apartment buildings and businesses for security footage and report back to them. And then they were off; my ears were still ringing.

That was only the most notable of my many experiences with the post-Covid crime wave that made DC such an unsettling place to live during my two years in the district. There was also the time a man on a motorcycle swerved onto the sidewalk to stare me down as my fiancée hid behind me; the time her cousin was mugged; and the time my friend from college was killed in a hit-and-run. On our way home from the grocery store one afternoon, we observed a high school boy beating up a girl roughly his age as their presumed classmates looked on. I called the police and began loudly describing the situation as I approached the culprit and victim, causing all involved to flee. I sat outside for over an hour waiting for the cops to show. They never did. 

On Monday morning, President Donald Trump announced that his administration would be taking control of MPD, as well as deploying the National Guard inside of the district. “Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs, and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people,” asserted Trump. “And we’re not going to let it happen anymore.”

For those of us who have lived that reality, it was like watching the sun rise for the first time after a half-decade of darkness.

Trump’s critics have portrayed his decision to take action in DC as a thinly-justified power grab. After only a little reflection, though, it’s hard to believe it took this long for a president to do something, anything, about its embarrassing state.

“But the murder and violent crime rates are down!” wailed America’s shameless progressive establishment on Monday. Yes, from the historic highs they reached in 2023. It’s only August and the district – which has a population of only a little over 700,000 –  has already seen 189 carjackings, 99 homicides, and 2,909 motor vehicle thefts this year. Last year, it had one of the highest murder rates of any major American city. Early Monday evening, just a few hours after Trump’s press conference, a man was shot and killed around the affluent Logan Circle neighborhood. During a visit back to the city last year, I walked to our favorite sushi restaurant near my fiancée’s old apartment to make it for happy hour. On the way back, I found a street I had used only an hour earlier had been shut down after a gunfight. Try – if you’re brave enough – walking around DC for a few hours and then uttering the words “this a safe, clean and pleasant place to live” without laughing or crying. You’d be lucky if you made it without coming across a crime scene – or becoming a crime statistic.

And as if the “but crime rates are down” argument couldn’t get any more pathetic, there is a scandal brewing over the books being cooked by high-ranking city police officials to downplay the ongoing crisis.

Washington, DC is a city with endless potential and should be a point of pride for all Americans. It is a cultural melting pot filled with fantastic restaurants, moving monuments and stunning museums. It’s also the political center of not just the country, but the world. Yet for years now, it has been the modern model of corrupt, complacent governance – a national embarrassment that no one seemed to care enough about to try to fix.

Should Trump have activated the National Guard? Could he have possibly used a lighter touch? Such questions pale in importance compared to this one: did something need to be done in the federal district to carry out government’s most basic mandate, the protection of its citizens?

The President answered, “Yes” yesterday. God bless him for it.