Every time I hear that our saucy Police Chief Cathy Lanier is calling for an “all hands on deck” weekend, she loses a little more credit in my book. Does she really think that forcing our officers to work on weekends is going to somehow prevent heinous crimes from occurring? If anything, she’s going to piss her police force off (“Damn, she wants us to work another weekend? So much for that Redskins game.”). It seems that Lanier thinks that throwing bodies at a problem will prevent bodies from piling up.
According to an article from the Examiner, of the 14 homicides since October 21, only one of them occurred on a Friday or Saturday. So basically these all hands weekends are just causing thugs and criminals to readjust their schedules so that they shoot people during the week rather than on the weekend. I guess in that sense, their weekends are just like ours – time off!
Come on Ms. Lanier. Let’s shake things up in this town and come up with a real plan to take a bite out of crime. I suggest you read The Tipping Point and take a lesson from Rudy Giuliani on how to fight crime by getting at the root of its cause. In the meantime I think I’ll thank every officer I see this weekend for being a team player, whether it’s effective or not.
Photo by yasmin.david.
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
