spy girl, 21 of the 65 response belong to you know who. keep the bolt on your door, but lighten up, we all know the NG is in that area ... as it has been in many other areas of DC from time to time. Supposedly shedding a light on an issue is suppose to make it go away. Right. But your hysteria hardly helps the problem. People can come to DC and be safe, that's no problem at all. Lighten up, and take a beer out on the circle and rest a spell.

The National Guard installed a system of high powered lights in the Dupont Circle neighborhood to respond to a "rash" of robberies. Spygirl's somewhat more alarmist version implies the NG is patrolling Dupont Circle because the District Police are incompetent. Spygirl quotes the chairman of the neighborhood committee as being "horrified that the city can't do its job." The chairman was referring to the District's failure to fix streetlights which appear to have contributed to the robberies. But again, Spygirl would have you believe that the chairman was referring to the police.

The original Washignton Post article describing this awful event notes: "The slaying took place in an area known more for its restaurants, shopping and night life than violent crime." Spygirl never mentions that. It's news precisely because it is so unusual in Dupont Circle area. And, the murder took place at 2:20 am, not the time most tourists are roaming the streets.

In fact, almost all of the events took place in the early morning hours.

Asd much as I love DC, it is a sad example of what can go wrong. Now after years of clamoring for baseball, the majority of citizens refuse to have a stadium built with public funds. This same city managed to screw up a perfectly free stadium 15 years ago and send it to MD. Yep, managed not to screw in those three lights too. Sad.

Was in DC last weekend... bid on 3* property in Capital Hill/Convention Center hoping to get the Hyatt Capital Hill... got the Renaissance, nice hotel with a freindly staff... Bid $52. It is right next to Chinatown, but kind of out of the way for everything else unless you are going to the MCI Center or the Convention Center.

Check out biddingfortravel.com for recent winning bids in the different area.

Methinks Spygirl is trying to keep the tourists out of town so they don't clog up the metro.
I'm a young female, going on my fifth year here living, studying and working in the area. Lived in and out of the District. Sure there's crime. It's a city. I've never felt unsafe, as I always keep my wits about me and don't walk outside alone at night, etc etc you all know the drill. I've been pretty much all over the city (even outside of NW, gasp) at all times of the day and night, and I've been fine. Of course random violence happens- it happens in EVERY city. Sure, you can only take so many precautions, but unless you want to live life in a bubble, you can't completely guard yourself against random violence. But it's not like there are people gunning down others on every street in DC every day. Check it out- we're on pace for the lowest homicide rate since '85.

http://www.news8.net/news/stories/0804/166690.html

So Tourists, Welcome! But please do stand on the right on all Metro escalators :)

Over 20 people died because of hurricanes in Florida. Should we avoid the entire state because of random weather patterns?

Spygirl, who has the unfortunate habit of referring to herself in the third person, is clearly a "sky is falling" type. If you persue her comments throughout Fodors, this is a constant them to at least half of her posts.

Ok Spygirl...

You want statistics? Here are some 2000 statistics on violent crime rates (rape, robbery, assault) for DC neighborhood clusters popular with tourists, derived from MPDC statistics, reported by DC Agenda's website (www.dcagenda.org):
Georgetown: 5.8 per 1000 persons
Cleveland Park: 2.9
Adams Morgan: 8.5
Dupont Circle: 15.7
(For comparison, the rate in a 'bad' area outside the tourist zone- Ivy City - is 28.8)

Here are some 1999 violent crime rates (per 1000 pop) from the US Justice Department (quoted in www.demographia.com):
Salt Lake City: 7.1
Seattle: 12.9
Philadelphia: 16.1
Nashville: 16.1
Miami: 21.1
Detroit: 22.5

Seems to me that the tourist areas of DC are pretty typical for major US cities. Does this prove anything? Does this mean that you can't be assaulted in DC (or Salt Lake City?) Of course not... it just means that Spygirl's gross generalizations have no real basis in fact, which we already suspected...

Can we move on now?

The crime rate of 16.1 per thousand in Philadelphia includes the tourist areas and the bad areas. The tourist areas in Philly are probably in the 6 to 8 per thousand range like Gtown and A-M in D.C. The bad areas in Philly are probably in the 25 to 28 p.t. like in D.C. The average of all of those Pha areas is 16.1.

The statistics comparing "tourist areas" to "tourist areas" seem to be saying that the Dupont Circle area violent crime rate is twice as high as the average tourist area in the District (and probably twice as high as tourist areas in Philly or Miami). Influential people living in Dupont Circle perceive the problem to be serious.

I think they caught the robbers today.

The millenium edition of the Places Rated Almanac rates the 354 largest metro areas in the U.S. and Canada on their crime problems based on the preceding 8 years worth of crime data. According to this list the 10 worst cities for crime are Miami (rated #354 out of 354), Tallahassee, New York, Gainesville, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Jacksonville, Chicago and Pine Bluff (Arkansas). Washington DC is #219--not even close to the bottom and more than 100 slots safer than Pine Bluff. A sampling of other cities w/ proportionately more crime than DC includes Portland, Indianapolis, Orlando, Anchorage, Wichita, San Diego, Charleston, Vancouver, and Dallas.

Good going, jm67 and Julie 304. You've brought forward the facts that show conclusively that the violent crime which occurs in Washington DC is not some special or unique Washington problem. It's an American big city problem in which Washington shares.

Nonsense. Probably just another misuse of some statistics. The "crime rate in the metro area" is not that relevant to the argument. The last two citations of statistics are pretty much the same: a metro crime rate is not really relative to the "crime rate in tourist areas".

Not so wonderful, mrwunrlfl.

No way the two presentations of evidence by jm67 and Julie304 are "just about the same. You say they are both metro area statistics and "Not relevant to crime in tourist areas." Didn't you even read jm67's piece and see that it specifically presented figures on tourist areas?

Are you really ignorant of the fact that lots of tourists go to Georgetown and Dupont Circle, in particular? Or did you just hope readers would accept your slur against the findings shared by jm67 without looking up a few posts to notice that what you said is straightforwardly false?

And concerning Julie304's figures--why in the world aren't metro area figures relevant to Spygirl's argument that Washington's crime problem is "unlike anywhere else in the U.S." and "unigue?"
It was Spygirl's critics, not Spygirl herself, who asked that the discussion center on comparing tourist areas.

Metro area statistics do include the high crime areas of DC (and Prince George's County) that would present the strongest support for Spygirl's arguments.

If, when these areas are included, the DC metro area has a lower crime rate than many other metro areas, then DC itself can only have a "unique" crime problem if its suburbs have such an incredibly low crime rate that when added in they conceal a Washington city rate that is way above "anywhere else"'s.

Do you seriously think the DC suburbs (particularly PG County) are really so outstandingly safe compared to other cities' suburbs? Do you have any comparative evidence to support such a belief?

Unless this unlikely proposition is true, Julie304's figures sre extremely relevant to debunking Spygirl's fearmongering rant that people should be much more scared to come or stay in Washington than other big U.S. cities.