So they're importing tactics from Iraq now. That certainly doesn't bode well.

I agree that a means of eliminating the root cause should be the goal, but if you were living in some of the areas which will be covered by this then you might see a police state as a respite from violent anarchy.

If a local state of emergency exists, which I think it may, then temporary measures to lessen the impact on residents is well in order.

I'm in favor of letting residents of DC have their 2nd rights granted under our nation's constitution. Certainly the existing 1975 handgun ban hasn't prevented violent thugs from arming themselves.

I don't think it's "holding people hostage".

They're free to leave and return at any time.

I'm a DC resident and recently witnessed a shooting during daylight hours a 1/4 block from the metro. I posted about it on my own blog (http://kittenswithmittens.blogspot.com/2008/06/in-safety-of-day.html) and argued similar things about getting to the core root of the issues.

But, as much as I'm anti-police state and think that siphoning off neighborhoods isn't the best idea, it should be mentioned that it is a result of 5 people being murdered in that area in one weekend. Five people. So, as you can imagine, the residents of DC are scared. Now, I personally think that upholding our ban on guns is extremely important. LogrusZed, the ban has helped--look at the difference in crime states from 1975 to now. In fact, if we banned all guns, it'd be even harder to have any guns at all... There is no way you can convince me otherwise. Especially after the shooting I just saw.

But, I digress--the main thing that DC needs is our voting rights recognized and to have autonomous freedom from the political restrictions that Congress places on us and our budget. Go to www.DCvote.org to learn more about how DC can have the same rights as every other American citizen and maybe, just maybe, get out of red tape long enough to sort out some of our problems with poverty, social justice, and education. Maybe then we wouldn't be stuck in a situation where a police barricade seems like the only answer...

I've noticed that all around the public housing in my town, there's no street parking from 9pm to 5am and I read that this was to cut down crime in the area...

I'm with Miriam; wish we would deal with the root causes of crime rather than cutting people off.

I live in one of these "high crime" neighborhoods of DC. I get shit stolen all the time, get broken into, i've heard (thank god not seen) a lot of shootings, and a lot of my friends have been robbed at gunpoint. Yes, something needs to be done.

But GEEZ. That is RIDICULOUS. When will people learn to put money into plans that are directed at the CAUSES of crime and violence, not the symptoms?

"the ban has helped--look at the difference in crime states from 1975 to now."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Dc_crime.png

the violent crime rates peaked in the 90's, and have steadily decreased since.

solving the violence problem is not as simple as banning the sale of guns in licensed gun stores.

I am from the DC area, and lived in the city all through college. This is extreme, but I fully support it.

When you live in an inefficient, suffocating bureaucratic, blatantly segregated city, nothing gets done until extreme measures are taken. As mentioned in one of the earlier posts, 5 people were murdered in one weekend. This is unacceptable.

Whoa. I just finished reading a book called "Little Brother" by Cory Doctorow, a near future sci fi book based on a growing police state. This story is a page right out of that book.

Great book by the way. I highly recommend it.

In a suburb of my city it's legally required that homeowners also own a gun. Their crime rate is ridiculously low.

Nice to see that the attempts to bring "low-intensity conflict" strategies back home after testing them in imperial wars are bearing fruit. I had wondered when someone would have the idea to turn poor neighbourhoods into strategic hamlets/pueblos de desarrollo/concentration camps (in the original, pre-WWII sense of the term).

The question, as always, is: whose security is this intended to protect? Somehow, I doubt that it will be much of a boon for the safety of people who are already disproportionately subject to arbitrary police violence and harrassment.

But - like the experience with California's "gang injunctions" - it will be useful in preventing the sorts of community organising efforts that threaten people in power (it's kind of hard to hold a meeting if you have to get the cops' permission to enter).

I agree that a means of eliminating the root cause should be the goal, but if you were living in some of the areas which will be covered by this then you might see a police state as a respite from violent anarchy.

This sort of argument is all too common, and completely misses a central issue. There's plenty of violence and fear in a police state. It just doesn't count as "crime" because the perpetrator is the state itself.

Repressive measures such as this don't so much reduce crime as de-privatise it. Does anyone seriously think that fewer people are going to get shot in an area in which police have already claimed the right to arbitrarily restrict the movement of people?

It's only a matter of time until someone gets shot on his way home because he didn't have proper ID on him (or because he was trying to get it out of his pocket).

Of course, that violence rarely is counted as such in the media, just as it rarely makes its way into official crime statistics. But its victims are just as dead, bruised, or terrified as those of private violence.

(On another subject: For some reason, my comments are being moderated all of the sudden after posting here for over a year. Would someone be able to look into that?)

I don't know. It seems like the police are assuming that all violence is committed by people from other neighborhoods. I find it reasonable to believe that a lot of crimes are committed in a heighborhood by someone who legitamately lives or works there.

Normally I would agree, but there was something like 27 murders here in ONE weekend. They have to do something to keep innocent people safe right now.

VT Idealist: you're right, a lot of the time. a lot of the crime in my area is from people who live there. So regardless of the fact that this tactic is bordering on "police state"-y, I don't even see how its going to be particularly effective. except, of course, in affluent areas, where they can keep the "riff raff" out. bla.

Elise:

That's a deflection. The fact is there are murderous people out there right now, people who have problems which were never addressed as you rightly suggest they should have been; however, barring time travel, they will continue to be dangerous individuals.

The key, to borrow from medicine, is to treat the symptoms as well as treating the disease. Sadly there is no great interest, or at least no consensus on a methodology, in treating the cause. so you're left with two choices "Do nothing, because this problem should have been averted in the first place" or "Do something which isn't the best solution by a long stretch but which may at least help out some of the people suffering."

Nobody here, at least not that I've read, is arguing that this is the best way to deal with this problem; but I think the argument is that this shitty tactic is at least slightly less shitty than the SOP of doing nothing at all.

This is standard procedure in Iraq called Traffic Control Points (TCP).

If people don't stop they are killed and our soldiers are often sitting ducks and lose their lives all too often at TCP's as well.

To me this is just another form of racism, can you imagine this in a white neighborhood?

"Another soldier, Geoffrey Milfred, told the Nation about an incident he knew of that occurred at a checkpoint: “This unit sets up this traffic control point and this 18-year-old kid is on top of an armored Humvee with a .50-caliber machine gun. This car speeds at him pretty quick and he makes a split-second decision that that’s a suicide bomber and he presses the butterfly trigger and puts 200 rounds in less than a minute into this vehicle. It killed the mother, father and two kids. The boy was aged four and the daughter was aged three. And they briefed this to the general... And this colonel turns around to this full division staff and says, “If these fucking hajis [derogatory term for Arabs] learned to drive, this shit wouldn’t happen.”

http://washingtonindependent.com/view/anti-war-veterans

Italian Journalist Giuliana Sgrena was fired upon at a TCP. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4324251.stm

The key, to borrow from medicine, is to treat the symptoms as well as treating the disease.

Yes, and this policy does neither, and will in fact be likely to exacerbate the problem, unless we accept the standard convention of excluding violent and criminal acts committed by agents of the state from the term "violent crime".

This is just another example of police treating low-income, inner-city neighbourhoods like occupied territories, the rights of whose residents don't have to be respected by the people who matter.

It is misleading to suggest that this is intended to treat the cause or the symptom. It seems unlikely that the people who imported this policy from (US-occupied) Vietnam, Iraq, and Chile under Pinochet were under any misapprehensions with regard to its effects.

This has nothing to do with safety, certainly not that of the people living in the occupied zones. It's about control and intimidation, which have long been the main policing policies in the inner cities. No one pays all that much attention, so you can get away with just about anything (even a blatant constitutional violation such as this) and call it an "anti-crime/anti-violence strategy".

There is a broad consensus on the causes of the sort of crime one sees in our inner cities and other places where populations declared superfluous live. However, alleviating poverty and giving the residents of these areas some degree of control over their own lives doesn't have the salutary efficacy of terrorising them with checkpoints, random shootings, and other little reminders to keep their heads down.

ArmySGT:

So you fell that the implementation of this problem in certain neighborhoods which are predominantly homes to people of color is racist, disregarding that the violence that this is attempting to thwart does not happen in "white" neighborhoods. Am I reading you correctly?

So to be fair money should be spent in equal measure to set up similar checkpoints in neighborhoods which have no need for them.

Seems kind of silly.

I agree that something needs to be done, but this tactic is not OK.

It's like taking an aspirin to get rid of a stomachache when you really have appendicitis. You may feel better temporarily, but the damn thing's still going to rupture and then everything will be even worse.