Police protection in D.C.: separate and unequal.

• Author: Beiles, Nancy
• Position: Unfair police distribution in Washington D.C.

Washington's best cops patrol the city's safest neighborhoods

Every once in a while, from the window of Sgt. Brian Hubbard's police cruiser, you can catch a glimpse of the Capitol dome. Only a mile away, proudly lit, the immaculate marble looks like it's meant to--a monument to justice and power. But Hubbard has other things on his mind. He spots a group of young blacks sitting on milk crates and a pile of dirt in an abandoned lot, and he pulls up to tell them to move on. Near a cemetery, he interrupts a woman leaning into a gray, beat-up car and tells her to move on, too; he thinks she's a prostitute, he says, but there's no way he can be sure. And later, in the vacant lot at Montello Avenue and Queen Street, he tells yet another group to leave. "We're not supposed to do something like that," he says. "But they're gonna move along while I'm on duty." Asked why, he points to the scene beyond his windshield: run-down row houses, empty lots, liquor stores--not a lot of places for young people to go. Whether it's legal or not, Hubbard acts on the grim reality that most shootings occur when people are just hanging out.

Hubbard is the evening supervisor for Washington's Fifth District. He's a genial guy, a little edgy but clearly enjoying his work. But when he gets to thinking about the 85 homicides and 11,007 crimes on his beat last year, he can't help but get frustrated. "This is a jungle," he says. "The stats that we have here are worse than Vietnam per square mile. We go to war when we go to work."

That work is made even harder with his department's slim resources. There are fewer than 300 officers in the Fifth District. And fewer than 20 are on the streets at any one time--not enough to catch criminals, let alone deter them. Ninety percent of the budget goes to personnel expenses, such as pensions and salaries, leaving only $25 million to pay for everything from weapons and cruisers to heat and electricity. With little cash to invest in new technology, Metropolitan Police Department officers spend dozens of hours each week filling out reports by hand (hours they could spend policing the city) because the department's plan to computerize the process still hasn't been funded.

In such meager and dangerous circumstances, crime fighting can get grim. Police have almost given up preventing crime, and spend much of their time shepherding people off their own streets before they turn into victims. At one point on his patrol, Hubbard and his four-man Viper Unit descend on four boys, no older than fourteen, standing on a quiet corner at about eight in the evening. The kids, with their baggy jeans, workboots, and air of nonchalance are used to having policemen...