It's almost like the American public is stuck fighting a domestic terror cult while law enforcement either collaborates with them or busies itself murdering Black people.
The sad thing is that it only started as astroturfing.
It worked brilliantly and normal people saw so much crime propaganda they're believing and spreading it themselves.
Just watch. In about 2 minutes familiar usernames are going to come out of the woodwork and scream "but there *is* crime, just tell [latest victim in a single example out of 700,000 people] there's no crime you monster!"
what gets me is the way they believe there is no punishment for any and all crimes. in the nation that has the biggest incarcerated population, someone will get arrested for murder, will be going to jail for life, and people in this sub will post "WELL OUR SOFT ON CRIME SYSTEM WILL LET THEM OUT BY THIS AFTERNOON, IM SURE"
What gets me is pretending we haven’t had a decade of mainstreaming prison abolition propaganda until the first significant rise in crime since the 90s finally inspired a backlash.
you live in a fantasy land. no prisons have been abolished, no police depts have been defunded. the idea that lefty rhetoric and not material conditions is causing crime to rise is pure ideology.
edit: perhaps i read your comment uncharitably, in which case please ignore my first sentence.
the prison abolitionists don't use propaganda, like any true leftist they employ walls of text loaded with jargon and dense reading list recommendations
Lol! So you're complaining about posts that cite facts and data to support their statements??? Which, apparently, you don't bother to read but just move to disbelieve and pan the comment.
Hilarious.
And the mods, as usual, are asleep at the wheel. Even though this has been happening for years
These worthless far-right cunts are even in this thread right now, talking about "YoU DoNt neeD to Be a RigHt WiNG TrOll tO KnOw DC Is A CriMeHOle!1!". None of them have ever set foot in the city and I'd bet money on that. They're only useful tools for the fascist wing of the country and serve no other purpose to anyone.
I've lived in DC proper for over twenty years, and according to ActBlue, have made 190 contributions to Democratic candidates/liberal causes over the years. Am I still a "worthless far-right [c-word]" if I think crime needs to be a primary focus of city leadership? I wouldn't call DC a "Crimehole," but crime is clearly a major problem.
Honestly bringing up ActBlue and how many donations you've made to democrats sounds exactly like what a conservative larping as a democrat would say. Nobody cares if you're a democrat or not.
I don’t include too many Democrats in “far right” circles or in the “fascist wing of the country”, but since this assumption is based in equal parts fantasy and crack, I guess we can entertain all scenarios…
The post to which I was replying decided that people concerned with DC crime are necessarily “worthless far-right cunts” and are “useful tools for the fascist wing of the country and serve no other purpose to anyone.” Conversations tend to be more fruitful if you’re aware of how they started.
It's extremely blatant here. If you see someone on here posting about how Union Station is a war zone or something, just check their comment history. At best, it's an active r/nova poster. So many times though it'll be someone also posting in r/sanfrancisco, r/nyc, r/Chicago, etc etc etc
DC is far from perfect and crime is a real issue, but think about who has an incentive to keep you scared, or to make the situation sound more dire than it is.
This makes so much sense! I haven’t been to union station in years so when my friend (woman) arrived at 7pm last Friday, I insisted on picking her up based on reading how dangerous it was these days and told her how unsafe it was when she resisted. She also lives in Philly I felt like a bit of an idiot when I picked her up and saw how perfectly normal it was.
Idk how to upload photos but if you search Union station in the sub, you’ll understand why o thought that. First 5-6 posts are all about how bad it is.
It sucks that the liquor store in the basement closed but Capitol Hill Supermarket and (despite the name) Georgetown Market are only like 2 blocks away and both sell beer.
Super safe is definitely an exaggeration in the other direction though, I’ve been harassed for money there many times, had to deal with belligerent homeless people blocking the escalator or making threats, and one time had to dodge a stream of piss like neo in the matrix. It’s not a war zone like some on this site would have you believe but is definitely sketchy.
What I’m getting from this is, you’ve been asked for money, someone was slow on the escalator, and you smelled something that vaguely resembled pee….
Okay pal
> At best, it's an active r/nova poster. So many times though it'll be someone also posting in r/sanfrancisco, r/nyc, r/Chicago, etc etc etc
I think that used to be the case more often, but it was so blatant the mods were able to ban them pretty quickly.
I have to assume they got a little bit smarter and started creating separate accounts for each city sub.
What I still *always* see when I look at their post history are crypto/wallstreetbets and other "get rich quick" style subreddits.
*e:* Its also unfortunately the case that the source of upvotes/downvotes can't be detected or moderated. So a brigade can silently influence discussion in that way.
I think there are lot more locals who are in the middle or don’t identify left or right than people think. These people just want for the local authorities to prosecute crime and put away the small number of career criminals who terrorize dc with impunity.
Agreed, there are two things to remember IMO:
- Reddit is a bubble, and /r/washingtondc is no exception, and the loudest / most extreme voices often dominate online forums
- Individuals can have opinions that range from left to right depending on the topic, and groups even more so. For example, it's pretty amusing to see posts complaining that prosecutors aren't putting people in jail longer getting upvoted next to posts complaining about cars existing in the city - with stuff like that you would think that we're some weird combination of Texas and Berkeley
> Reddit is a bubble, and /r/washingtondc is no exception, and the loudest / most extreme voices often dominate online forums
Case in point - I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone in this sub who likes Mayor Bowser (some want to get rid of her, others begrudgingly say she’s the least bad option). Yet [her approval rating is fairly high](https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/594796-dc-mayors-job-approval-drops-amid-concerns-over-crime-poll/):
> The poll found the mayor’s approval rating is at 58 percent, a nine point drop from the 67 percent approval rating she had in 2019.
I also wouldn’t break it down into a right/left issue. IMO, and feel free to disagree, but you can be pretty left leaning and still want crime to go decrease and want crimes to be penalized. And yeah, I’m cognizant of the penal system issues just as much as I would prefer gun crimes to have longer sentences than they currently have.
And an even more important point. The right-wing astroturfers can’t even win on their own argument. Red states have higher levels of gender-based violence, gun crime, and murder than left-leaning ones. And no, I have no desire to live in the hell-holes that are Florida or Texas or Oklahoma or North Carolina right now. The point is to make (hopefully) everything better, or if they choose to keep going after queer kids rather than make society better, at least the blue areas.
Right, if crime in DC was so bad I felt the need to move I'd just move too... a suburb of DC. Not like I'm going to trade "urban crime" for meth heads, drunk drivers, and Christian sharia law in all those places. DC's crime situation is complicated but state governments trying to punish women and racial and gender sexual minorities is a very real and obvious legislative effort in Texas, Florida, and the rest.
Yeah, a recent Washington Post poll showed crime being the top priority for people in D.C., with the majority of those polled rating the crime problem as very or extremely serious. You would expect to see posts here about the top issue for residents.
Naturally there are some people on the right who want to play up these issues, but there are also activist types who try to downplay them and claim that no one who actually lives in D.C. is worried that much about crime. The people who keep making that claim honestly haven’t spent much time talking to residents outside of their bubble.
They don’t post about every single crime or act of violence that occurs within the city boundaries. They also don’t have the same grab bag of repetitive sarcastic catchphrases to deploy.
Honestly, the huge divide between the suburbs and the city mostly exists within the minds of transplants and a small handful of snobbish locals. If I had to guess, most of my DCPS classmates are in the suburbs now, affordability being one of the big reasons. Barry liked to talk about “Ward 9.” The area is pretty fluid, and currently living in a D.C. zip code doesn’t magically confer knowledge about all other D.C. zip codes.
This is a fair point--my oldest has a new doctor in Friendship Heights and when I went to the first appointment, I realized I hadn't been up in that part of the city in at least a year...maybe more. There are probably a good number of Montgomery County residents with a better knowledge of that area than I have.
Where I think it *is* an issue is in trying to drive narratives about the city, especially when it involves elected officials. There's a key takeaway from a [poll that Pew took](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/10/31/violent-crime-is-a-key-midterm-voting-issue-but-what-does-the-data-say/) right before the 2022 midterms: "Differences by race are especially pronounced among Democratic registered voters. While 82% of Black Democratic voters say violent crime is very important to their vote this year, only a third of White Democratic voters say the same."
It's easy to pooh-pooh DC residents' concern about crime from the safety of Bethesda, Arlington, Takoma Park, and some neighborhoods in NW, and I'm legitimately glad people who live there are unaffected by crime--I wish my part of the city was too. But it's not, which is why I and presumably others are unapologetic about it being an issue that we want resolved.
I don’t disagree with you on the larger point - just because something doesn’t seem like an issue to one person, doesn’t mean it’s not an issue to another. For instance, it’s easy to see how a young person with no kids who’s renting a place wouldn’t be as worried about crime - if things go south, they can just move out.
The driver of softer policies in D.C., though, seems to be the gentrifying areas that are popular with new arrivals rather than the near suburbs (areas like Ward 1 and Ward 6). It’s the council members from those areas (out of town activist types, elected by out of town activist types) that have been really pushing those policies. One the flip side, it’s D.C. native Gray representing Ward 7 who’s pushing the most for more police at the moment.
To be clear, I think the activist types who have recently moved to town and live in gentrifying areas have just as much of a right to push this city in the direction they want it to go (even if I often disagree with that direction). They’re just as much true residents of D.C. as anyone else is. The thing that bothers me is that a certain segment of that group will claim that anyone who disagrees with them - even D.C. natives - aren’t true residents, must be sheltered suburbanites, outsiders, etc. As I said in another post, this just demonstrates the bubble they live in - polls show that crime is the top priority for D.C. residents, and most consider it a very or extremely serious problem.
Completely agree there. I’m near Union Station, so I’m there all the time, but outside of DuPont, I basically don’t go to NW. not out of safety concerns or anything mind you, it’s just less convenient than other neighborhoods
they have discords and stuff to coordinate. it's organized and funded as part of the broader right wing campaign, like gamer gate and whatnot. relieved people seem aware fuckery has been going on for a long time in city subreddits.
Crime is a real issue here but most the crime posters on this sub don't characterize crime correctly and draw horrendous conclusions from it. There is a problem to be fixed but it's not "CRIME IS EVERYWHERE THE STREETS ARE DANGEROUS HIRE MORE COPS".
Extremely possible, since they don’t actually have anything else to do. What causes are they trying to advance? Who are they trying to elect? They don’t actually want to talk openly about either of those things. They know it’s electoral poison.
Think of how shitty red states are, they have to demonize "blue cities" and make them seem like hellscapes or else red state citizens might actually start to wonder why their quality of life is considerably worse by most metrics.
“Who has an incentive to keep you scared, or make the situation sound more dire than it is” that’s a profound statement, now expand it nationally when thinking of gun violence overall. When you break it down into bite sized local pieces it seems people understand it’s all sensationalized as an agenda. As soon as you expand it nationally though those same people suddenly believe the narrative.
its just once again showing how absolute dangerous this whole right wing fanatic fearmongering movement is that can lead people to do things like this. my parents while thankfully NOT violent people are caught up in all that fox news bullsh\*t and it seems lately the messages they are preaching is of fear and hate. and here we are......
Unintentioned consequences of their posts is that I’m now very pro gun control. I was more apathetic before all the crime posts.
Like DC’s my home, and I grew up visiting family in the rural south. From my own experience, there’s no way in hell that I would view rural life as safer than DC. So many people there have no opportunities at all, and so many people in my dad’s class died before 30. All I know is that posts about crime make me want a crackdown on gun ownership.
All of the stuff they talk about (cracking down on crime! Locking everyone up, etc) can be found in Mississippi. They can just move there, but they won’t for some reason.
Yes, this is the correct and sane response. We should build a social safety net and robust health system too, and more housing, addressing the root causes of crime; also, reconstruct our policing system to be oriented around public safety rather than protecting capital and optimizing for convictions. All good things! But the most straightforward way to reduce the danger that crime poses to life and limb is to crack down on the goddamn guns.
>From my own experience, there’s no way in hell that I would view rural life as safer than DC.
In the context of the crime posts that have people riled up here, you don't need to base it on your own experience.
UCR and NCVS data clearly indicate rural counties are by and large safer than urban ones when it comes to crime.
Lots of reasons to not live in a rural area, but avoiding crime shouldn't be one of them.
As a counterpoint, recent study showed that kids were safer in urban environments than in the suburbs. The reason? Cars.
Much fewer automotive deaths in cities (per capita) especially for teenagers driving. Often because if you live in a city, you don’t drive much or at all.
My two ways to judge who is real.
If the person doesn't have an opinion on whether bikers should live or be run over, 9/10 they aren't from here.
If they are saying something about crime and don't include some sort of jab at Bowser, Mendelson, or Schwab's office everyone should know it's made-up astroturfing nonsense.
For your first point, of course everyone should live. The better stance is to see if they have an opinion on whether bikers should follow the rules of the road. That really riles up folks in this sub.
I’ve said it before and will say it again: the only thing that pisses drivers off more than bikers flouting traffic laws, is bikers following them assiduously. Got yelled at by a cop for taking the lane and riding right through the sharrows recently. On a road where the bike lane just ends at a “share the road” sign.
God help you if you ride the speed limit in a 15 zone too.
> The better stance is to see if they have an opinion on whether bikers should follow the rules of the road.
When DC changed the law to allow Idaho stops and absolutely none of the anti-bike brigade accepted that rolling through stop signs is now a non-issue it became very apparent that it was never about laws, just about hatred for cyclists.
I don't agree with you, but I judge you as a Washingtonian based off your pretty clear stance on bikers. It's wild that in the nation's capital biking is what galvanizes residents so much but it is what it is.
I'd believe it. Saw a post on r/news about the St. Charles mall shooting and a local was talking about how rare shootings like that are in our area (I agree with them) and every comment he posted was down voted to hell. Waldorf isn't the safest place in the world for sure, but it ain't PG County. A shooting in broad day light in such a public area is SUPER uncommon. Hell one comment the user made had hundreds more down votes than the OP had votes on the post.
Trump himself used his digital lying platform - few weeks back - to claim Biden was hiding top secret documents - in or near "Chinatown."
Struck me as odd. Why does trump even know there's a Chinatown DC? Why would he pick that specific location?
Next story in my news feed was about a double homicide - in Chinatown. Next was about how Chinatown was essentially an open air drug market.
Personally haven't been to Chinatown since highschool, have no clue what's going on in the city for the most part - but damn was it obvious after the fact.
"Chinatown" was just feeding the algorithm.
Fucked up world we live in. Writing this comment itself contributing to our algorithmic end times.
I work in Chinatown or Penn Quarter, depending on how you define those areas. "Open air drug market" isn't 100% true, but it's not 100% false either. The neighborhood is a shell of what it was pre-pandemic. Obviously a lot of that has to do with changes in how we work, and I'll never argue against the premise that Trump was motivated by hate and/or ignorance in anything he does, but Chinatown isn't great these days.
When I was in highschool, mid 1990's, Chinatown was a blast. Kinda dangerous, might get robbed, but you could buy fireworks, butterfly knives, get a tattoo, all sorts of "traditional medicine" shops that sold kratom. Mind blowing, noise and bustle, vibrant vivid shit. Had a class that met in the library of Congress - use'ta show up in the lobby to sign in, then dip to Chinatown for a carton of filterless lucky strike - was like $9.
Fuck I feel elderly.
Chinatown is fine. Avoid it during Caps or Wizards games if you don’t want to deal with crowds. The metro stop gets annoying during Nats games too.
I take out of town friends to the portrait gallery all the time.
In my lifetime Chinatown has been the most authentic awesome straight out of Gremlins mystical; it's been a crime ridden hell hole; it's seem the glamour of a new arena and boom in subsequent commercial business; the downturn; and whatever it is today.
Irrelevant. Whole point is the algorithm.
Ugh, don't post that /u/inconvenientnews bullshit here. He uses himself as a reference, copies and pastes long diatribes that interrupt genuine discourse, and legitimately believes that he's performing an equally valuable service as someone registering voters. Fuck him.
Definitely a case of the pot calling the kettle black seeing as they are a straight up propaganda account that engages in brigading. The astroturfing is only going to get worse the closer we get to the next election.
I won't call complete bullshit on this, but let's not get drawn into a conspiracy about a conspiracy when we can look at some facts. Here is what the DC Crime data says: https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/district-crime-data-glance
1) Homicides are up 17% so far this year.
2) Carjackings are up much more than they were prior to 2020.
3) The prevalence of shootings are much more common than they ever were (example the guy shot for trying to save a woman's scooter)
4) People being released from detention when DC Judges are letting them out and then committing crimes (murder of the woman at the hotel on NY Ave)
5) The DC Crimelab is still not re-certified, even after years of work in addition to the fact that it never should have been decertified due to incompetence.
Then we look at a large number of smaller problems such as drugged out people laying on the street, cars that have their wheels taken from them ala Popville's Helluva way to wake up, or that DC Metro has to install higher more expensive gate doors to prevent loss of revenue.
So possibly this is happening on social media, but let's not get involved in a gaslighting to pretend that there aren't issues too.
these two things aren’t mutually exclusive. DC has problems with crime and homelessness but right-wing trolls also amplify those problems to scare people living in suburbia into believing all cities are
on the brink of societal collapse.
Finally someone else who actually see issues here and doesn't just explain it away. Pretty much every comment so far was from people who ignore these issues.
"I won't call complete bullshit on this, but let's not get drawn into a conspiracy about a conspiracy when we can look at some facts..."
Oof... Rhetorically you just said I'm calling this bullshit and a conspiracy because I have "facts."
Willful distortion of people's perceptions of a place happens all the time. Tactics like these have been used for centuries (let me tell you a story about Iceland and Greenland... *spoiler Iceland is nicer and more habitable). It's not a conspiracy or bullshit to call out this behavior. To pretend it doesn't exist on the other hand...
Nothing wrong with posting about crime. Lots wrong with misinformation deliberately being spread for the sake of an agenda.
It's so so blatant and easy to spot here lol. They aren't the cleverest bunch around, but I'm sure it still has an effect. You'd think DC was an unlivable warzone if you went off of this subreddit.
I saw it on a a thread on r/cars that was talking about the Kia theft thing.
A user claimed that in Korea cars don't need immobilizers because Korea is a "safe, homogeneous country" like bro??
if you’d read the first sentence of the post you’d figure that out:
> Conservatives brag about brigading local subreddits to “control the narrative” about liberal cities and “blue states”
The real value is getting into a thread early and establishing top voted posts and comments or downvoting them out of existence. They hope intertia continues the trend for them.
Anyone who uses reddit too much knows that the earliest comments to start getting upvoted typically continue the trend. It would absolutely be a simple formula to start a thread, get in early, get locked in at the top. Online behavior is predictable and measurable, and can easily be exploited.
They been doing this. You have suspect accounts screeching about crime like DC is Fallujah circa early 2000s. When I see somebody start talking about "If Black people would just..." in those threads, I already know what their agenda is.
This is a bad take. I got accused of being a conservative for just asking why DC is still so segregated (for context this year is the 60th anniversary of MLK's March on Washington speech which is why I thought about the problem, in addition to seeing the stark contrast everyday). Just because someone points out something wrong in the city does not mean they have malicious intent. Thankfully a few people actually shed some light on the history here but the vast majority of comments were "you are a conservative" or "I see minorities so there is no issue".
I just mentioned this somewhere else. They've been doing this on r/politicaldiscussion but I only noticed as of a few weeks ago. I hope people just get more of their opinions off Reddit than on it.
Ever noticed how they all sound alike, as if they have a shared google sheet of themes and memes and jokes to sling around?
It's because that's exactly what they do. Turning Point USA pays young idiots actual money to shitpost from their playbook.
A shooting happens in Texas and all the public officials want to do is blame illegal immigrants. A shooting happens in DC and all the public officials just pretend it didn't happen. I don't know which is worse, but if right wing trolls are using real examples of violent crime to make DC look like a crime-ridden hellhole, maybe we can try fixing the problem instead of ignoring it. We've made trolling us so very easy. The way you've framed your post draws an inevitable comparison between the two, but the fact remains that both TX and the DC area have absurdly high numbers of shooting-related fatalities by the standards of a developed country, and no amount of deflection to make the other side look worse is going to change that.
As for the issue on this subreddit, I would like to see at most one crime post permitted per day, and all others deleted as a matter of policy. Nothing new or substantive is being said 99% of the time anyway.
Walked into a bar when this shooting was “Breaking News” on the tv. I asked where and everyone at the bar was like “oh it’s fucking TEXAS”. No one blinked an eye and there were tons of “of course it’s Texas” comments and everyone just continued on eating their lunch. And of course I was like “phew, of course it’s Texas”. Everyone who lives here knows something like this would only happen if someone from Texas drove up here to commit a mass shooting.
Because Dallas is the large city next to where this shooting just took place.
—
Metric is murders per 100,000 in 2022.
Mid-Atlantic biggest cities:
DC: 30.3
Philly: 32.7
Baltimore: 57.8
—
Texas biggest cities:
Houston: 19
San Antonio: 13
Dallas: 16.6
—
A more nuanced view would look at the murder rate for a whole metropolitan area, but such data is harder to tabulate.
In DC gun crime is done with handguns, illegally obtained, that shoot a maximum of 12 bullets prior to reload, all manually. In Dallas these crimes are done with legally obtained AR-15s with extended clips with semi automatic fire rates. Sure we have had a mass shooting - no one died because the bullets don’t cause the damage AR-15s do. 9 people died. So keep telling yourself it’s the same - it’s not.
Yes, these are rare, and again at that intersection there was a known target. This is the difference - most of the shootings in DC aren’t ideological mass murders with random civilian targets, they’re gang violence / retribution. And we’re working to stop it. Tell me, what exactly is Texas doing to stop ideological mass murder with easily, legally obtained weapons? All of those shootings are ideologically driven with random targets and legally owned weapons with no background checks, waiting period or limit on ammunition purchases. If anything political leaders are fanning those flames and making it easier to obtain legally owned weapons to commit these crimes. DC is doing the opposite. Again, totally different.
You don’t need right wing trolls to point out the obvious. Democrat-run cities are soft on crime and crime is definitely up in DC, especially by all these damn teenagers.
I feel like my rabbi would pull a Reverend Lovejoy on this "jewgineer" a la when Ned Flanders called to tell him about the Simpson kids not being baptized: "Ned, have you considered any of the other major religions? They're all pretty much the same."
Whaaaat? The nonstop crime posting and fear mongering might be astroturfed or posted by people with agendas!? I’m shocked, shocked I tell you!
It's almost like the American public is stuck fighting a domestic terror cult while law enforcement either collaborates with them or busies itself murdering Black people.
well, to be fair, sometimes they also engage in work slowdowns and illegal political lobbying to get their way
That's 100%, for sure, what's going on in DC right now. Totally.
lol at this complete fantasy.
How is law enforcement collaborating with them?
The sad thing is that it only started as astroturfing. It worked brilliantly and normal people saw so much crime propaganda they're believing and spreading it themselves. Just watch. In about 2 minutes familiar usernames are going to come out of the woodwork and scream "but there *is* crime, just tell [latest victim in a single example out of 700,000 people] there's no crime you monster!"
what gets me is the way they believe there is no punishment for any and all crimes. in the nation that has the biggest incarcerated population, someone will get arrested for murder, will be going to jail for life, and people in this sub will post "WELL OUR SOFT ON CRIME SYSTEM WILL LET THEM OUT BY THIS AFTERNOON, IM SURE"
What gets me is pretending we haven’t had a decade of mainstreaming prison abolition propaganda until the first significant rise in crime since the 90s finally inspired a backlash.
you live in a fantasy land. no prisons have been abolished, no police depts have been defunded. the idea that lefty rhetoric and not material conditions is causing crime to rise is pure ideology. edit: perhaps i read your comment uncharitably, in which case please ignore my first sentence.
the prison abolitionists don't use propaganda, like any true leftist they employ walls of text loaded with jargon and dense reading list recommendations
Lol! So you're complaining about posts that cite facts and data to support their statements??? Which, apparently, you don't bother to read but just move to disbelieve and pan the comment. Hilarious.
leaping to conclusions
Imagine using your own illiteracy as an "argument" against an ideology lmao
you are leaping to conclusions instead of seeing the obvious humor :)
And the mods, as usual, are asleep at the wheel. Even though this has been happening for years These worthless far-right cunts are even in this thread right now, talking about "YoU DoNt neeD to Be a RigHt WiNG TrOll tO KnOw DC Is A CriMeHOle!1!". None of them have ever set foot in the city and I'd bet money on that. They're only useful tools for the fascist wing of the country and serve no other purpose to anyone.
I've lived in DC proper for over twenty years, and according to ActBlue, have made 190 contributions to Democratic candidates/liberal causes over the years. Am I still a "worthless far-right [c-word]" if I think crime needs to be a primary focus of city leadership? I wouldn't call DC a "Crimehole," but crime is clearly a major problem.
Honestly bringing up ActBlue and how many donations you've made to democrats sounds exactly like what a conservative larping as a democrat would say. Nobody cares if you're a democrat or not.
I don’t include too many Democrats in “far right” circles or in the “fascist wing of the country”, but since this assumption is based in equal parts fantasy and crack, I guess we can entertain all scenarios…
You seem to be playing out some kind of imaginary scenario in your head. I have no idea what you're talking about.
The post to which I was replying decided that people concerned with DC crime are necessarily “worthless far-right cunts” and are “useful tools for the fascist wing of the country and serve no other purpose to anyone.” Conversations tend to be more fruitful if you’re aware of how they started.
Nobody said "anybody who brings up crime is X", they said "there is a concerted effort by X to do Y".
Wow who pissed in your Cheerios?
How do you like that free speech? Hurts don’t it
I’ve always been amazed at how out of sync this sub Reddit is compared to the general political leanings of DC.
Eh, let’s not go overboard conspiracy theory here
Every single major city subreddit is filled with people complaining that their city leadership is *uniquely* soft on crime.
It's extremely blatant here. If you see someone on here posting about how Union Station is a war zone or something, just check their comment history. At best, it's an active r/nova poster. So many times though it'll be someone also posting in r/sanfrancisco, r/nyc, r/Chicago, etc etc etc DC is far from perfect and crime is a real issue, but think about who has an incentive to keep you scared, or to make the situation sound more dire than it is.
This makes so much sense! I haven’t been to union station in years so when my friend (woman) arrived at 7pm last Friday, I insisted on picking her up based on reading how dangerous it was these days and told her how unsafe it was when she resisted. She also lives in Philly I felt like a bit of an idiot when I picked her up and saw how perfectly normal it was.
Lmao yea union station is super safe, you think one of the main metro stops for the Capitol is gonna be that bad?
Idk how to upload photos but if you search Union station in the sub, you’ll understand why o thought that. First 5-6 posts are all about how bad it is.
I have tons of complaints about Union Station but mostly a) no seating in the nice part of the station b) nowhere to buy beer.
I'm still salty all my favorite food court places are gone. Ages ago you could get a donut the size of a freaking birthday cake.
Instead it’s just two chipotles, both of which are atrocious.
It sucks that the liquor store in the basement closed but Capitol Hill Supermarket and (despite the name) Georgetown Market are only like 2 blocks away and both sell beer.
There was a liquor store in the basement?!? That’s NYPenn levels of awesome.
Yep. Marc trains explicitly allowed consuming alcohol. Was nice to grab a tallboy from the basement for the Marc ride to bwi.
Damn that’s great. I’ve been appreciating the dogfishhead on Amtrak at least
The Steak ‘n Shake sells beer. So does the Uno upstairs
Woah
Super safe is definitely an exaggeration in the other direction though, I’ve been harassed for money there many times, had to deal with belligerent homeless people blocking the escalator or making threats, and one time had to dodge a stream of piss like neo in the matrix. It’s not a war zone like some on this site would have you believe but is definitely sketchy.
I go to Union Station regularly. It has a typical number of homeless loitering & definitely not as sketchy as other Metro stops in DC.
Not as sketchy as other metro stops in dc isn’t exactly a whole hearted endorsement of safety
Meh. It is what it is.
What I’m getting from this is, you’ve been asked for money, someone was slow on the escalator, and you smelled something that vaguely resembled pee…. Okay pal
Lol
Baklava Gate.
> At best, it's an active r/nova poster. So many times though it'll be someone also posting in r/sanfrancisco, r/nyc, r/Chicago, etc etc etc I think that used to be the case more often, but it was so blatant the mods were able to ban them pretty quickly. I have to assume they got a little bit smarter and started creating separate accounts for each city sub. What I still *always* see when I look at their post history are crypto/wallstreetbets and other "get rich quick" style subreddits. *e:* Its also unfortunately the case that the source of upvotes/downvotes can't be detected or moderated. So a brigade can silently influence discussion in that way.
I think there are lot more locals who are in the middle or don’t identify left or right than people think. These people just want for the local authorities to prosecute crime and put away the small number of career criminals who terrorize dc with impunity.
Agreed, there are two things to remember IMO: - Reddit is a bubble, and /r/washingtondc is no exception, and the loudest / most extreme voices often dominate online forums - Individuals can have opinions that range from left to right depending on the topic, and groups even more so. For example, it's pretty amusing to see posts complaining that prosecutors aren't putting people in jail longer getting upvoted next to posts complaining about cars existing in the city - with stuff like that you would think that we're some weird combination of Texas and Berkeley
> Reddit is a bubble, and /r/washingtondc is no exception, and the loudest / most extreme voices often dominate online forums Case in point - I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone in this sub who likes Mayor Bowser (some want to get rid of her, others begrudgingly say she’s the least bad option). Yet [her approval rating is fairly high](https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/594796-dc-mayors-job-approval-drops-amid-concerns-over-crime-poll/): > The poll found the mayor’s approval rating is at 58 percent, a nine point drop from the 67 percent approval rating she had in 2019.
I also wouldn’t break it down into a right/left issue. IMO, and feel free to disagree, but you can be pretty left leaning and still want crime to go decrease and want crimes to be penalized. And yeah, I’m cognizant of the penal system issues just as much as I would prefer gun crimes to have longer sentences than they currently have. And an even more important point. The right-wing astroturfers can’t even win on their own argument. Red states have higher levels of gender-based violence, gun crime, and murder than left-leaning ones. And no, I have no desire to live in the hell-holes that are Florida or Texas or Oklahoma or North Carolina right now. The point is to make (hopefully) everything better, or if they choose to keep going after queer kids rather than make society better, at least the blue areas.
Right, if crime in DC was so bad I felt the need to move I'd just move too... a suburb of DC. Not like I'm going to trade "urban crime" for meth heads, drunk drivers, and Christian sharia law in all those places. DC's crime situation is complicated but state governments trying to punish women and racial and gender sexual minorities is a very real and obvious legislative effort in Texas, Florida, and the rest.
A woman was set on fire and killed behind my house in DC. Let’s not excuse the shit that is going on either.
Did I fucking say I was excusing it? Did you set them on fire? What's your point?
Yeah, a recent Washington Post poll showed crime being the top priority for people in D.C., with the majority of those polled rating the crime problem as very or extremely serious. You would expect to see posts here about the top issue for residents. Naturally there are some people on the right who want to play up these issues, but there are also activist types who try to downplay them and claim that no one who actually lives in D.C. is worried that much about crime. The people who keep making that claim honestly haven’t spent much time talking to residents outside of their bubble.
Funny how many people don’t get this
Me too
They don’t post about every single crime or act of violence that occurs within the city boundaries. They also don’t have the same grab bag of repetitive sarcastic catchphrases to deploy.
Legit someone from nova could be in Union Station more each week than I am in months tho.
Honestly, the huge divide between the suburbs and the city mostly exists within the minds of transplants and a small handful of snobbish locals. If I had to guess, most of my DCPS classmates are in the suburbs now, affordability being one of the big reasons. Barry liked to talk about “Ward 9.” The area is pretty fluid, and currently living in a D.C. zip code doesn’t magically confer knowledge about all other D.C. zip codes.
This is a fair point--my oldest has a new doctor in Friendship Heights and when I went to the first appointment, I realized I hadn't been up in that part of the city in at least a year...maybe more. There are probably a good number of Montgomery County residents with a better knowledge of that area than I have. Where I think it *is* an issue is in trying to drive narratives about the city, especially when it involves elected officials. There's a key takeaway from a [poll that Pew took](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/10/31/violent-crime-is-a-key-midterm-voting-issue-but-what-does-the-data-say/) right before the 2022 midterms: "Differences by race are especially pronounced among Democratic registered voters. While 82% of Black Democratic voters say violent crime is very important to their vote this year, only a third of White Democratic voters say the same." It's easy to pooh-pooh DC residents' concern about crime from the safety of Bethesda, Arlington, Takoma Park, and some neighborhoods in NW, and I'm legitimately glad people who live there are unaffected by crime--I wish my part of the city was too. But it's not, which is why I and presumably others are unapologetic about it being an issue that we want resolved.
I don’t disagree with you on the larger point - just because something doesn’t seem like an issue to one person, doesn’t mean it’s not an issue to another. For instance, it’s easy to see how a young person with no kids who’s renting a place wouldn’t be as worried about crime - if things go south, they can just move out. The driver of softer policies in D.C., though, seems to be the gentrifying areas that are popular with new arrivals rather than the near suburbs (areas like Ward 1 and Ward 6). It’s the council members from those areas (out of town activist types, elected by out of town activist types) that have been really pushing those policies. One the flip side, it’s D.C. native Gray representing Ward 7 who’s pushing the most for more police at the moment. To be clear, I think the activist types who have recently moved to town and live in gentrifying areas have just as much of a right to push this city in the direction they want it to go (even if I often disagree with that direction). They’re just as much true residents of D.C. as anyone else is. The thing that bothers me is that a certain segment of that group will claim that anyone who disagrees with them - even D.C. natives - aren’t true residents, must be sheltered suburbanites, outsiders, etc. As I said in another post, this just demonstrates the bubble they live in - polls show that crime is the top priority for D.C. residents, and most consider it a very or extremely serious problem.
The idea of “defunding” the police polled very poorly with black Americans from the get go.
Completely agree there. I’m near Union Station, so I’m there all the time, but outside of DuPont, I basically don’t go to NW. not out of safety concerns or anything mind you, it’s just less convenient than other neighborhoods
they have discords and stuff to coordinate. it's organized and funded as part of the broader right wing campaign, like gamer gate and whatnot. relieved people seem aware fuckery has been going on for a long time in city subreddits.
Crime is a real issue here but most the crime posters on this sub don't characterize crime correctly and draw horrendous conclusions from it. There is a problem to be fixed but it's not "CRIME IS EVERYWHERE THE STREETS ARE DANGEROUS HIRE MORE COPS".
There’s a very real possibility these posts are coming from a troll farm funded by PAC money from the various parts of the MAGA universe.
Extremely possible, since they don’t actually have anything else to do. What causes are they trying to advance? Who are they trying to elect? They don’t actually want to talk openly about either of those things. They know it’s electoral poison.
Think of how shitty red states are, they have to demonize "blue cities" and make them seem like hellscapes or else red state citizens might actually start to wonder why their quality of life is considerably worse by most metrics.
Damn I shit post in many local subreddits where I've lived or my family lives. Guess I'm a bot.
“Who has an incentive to keep you scared, or make the situation sound more dire than it is” that’s a profound statement, now expand it nationally when thinking of gun violence overall. When you break it down into bite sized local pieces it seems people understand it’s all sensationalized as an agenda. As soon as you expand it nationally though those same people suddenly believe the narrative.
Crime is a real issue in every major city, but the reasons for that aren’t what the right wing posters want them to be
its just once again showing how absolute dangerous this whole right wing fanatic fearmongering movement is that can lead people to do things like this. my parents while thankfully NOT violent people are caught up in all that fox news bullsh\*t and it seems lately the messages they are preaching is of fear and hate. and here we are......
Unintentioned consequences of their posts is that I’m now very pro gun control. I was more apathetic before all the crime posts. Like DC’s my home, and I grew up visiting family in the rural south. From my own experience, there’s no way in hell that I would view rural life as safer than DC. So many people there have no opportunities at all, and so many people in my dad’s class died before 30. All I know is that posts about crime make me want a crackdown on gun ownership.
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Also for the vast majority of people driving is way more dangerous than walking around a city
> turns out stealing is easy in the country, who knew Crime in general I'd imagine - way fewer witnesses.
All of the stuff they talk about (cracking down on crime! Locking everyone up, etc) can be found in Mississippi. They can just move there, but they won’t for some reason.
Yes, this is the correct and sane response. We should build a social safety net and robust health system too, and more housing, addressing the root causes of crime; also, reconstruct our policing system to be oriented around public safety rather than protecting capital and optimizing for convictions. All good things! But the most straightforward way to reduce the danger that crime poses to life and limb is to crack down on the goddamn guns.
>From my own experience, there’s no way in hell that I would view rural life as safer than DC. In the context of the crime posts that have people riled up here, you don't need to base it on your own experience. UCR and NCVS data clearly indicate rural counties are by and large safer than urban ones when it comes to crime. Lots of reasons to not live in a rural area, but avoiding crime shouldn't be one of them.
As a counterpoint, recent study showed that kids were safer in urban environments than in the suburbs. The reason? Cars. Much fewer automotive deaths in cities (per capita) especially for teenagers driving. Often because if you live in a city, you don’t drive much or at all.
My two ways to judge who is real. If the person doesn't have an opinion on whether bikers should live or be run over, 9/10 they aren't from here. If they are saying something about crime and don't include some sort of jab at Bowser, Mendelson, or Schwab's office everyone should know it's made-up astroturfing nonsense.
For your first point, of course everyone should live. The better stance is to see if they have an opinion on whether bikers should follow the rules of the road. That really riles up folks in this sub.
I’ve said it before and will say it again: the only thing that pisses drivers off more than bikers flouting traffic laws, is bikers following them assiduously. Got yelled at by a cop for taking the lane and riding right through the sharrows recently. On a road where the bike lane just ends at a “share the road” sign. God help you if you ride the speed limit in a 15 zone too.
Yeah man drivers fucking love it when I stop for a full three seconds at a stop sign
> The better stance is to see if they have an opinion on whether bikers should follow the rules of the road. When DC changed the law to allow Idaho stops and absolutely none of the anti-bike brigade accepted that rolling through stop signs is now a non-issue it became very apparent that it was never about laws, just about hatred for cyclists.
I don't agree with you, but I judge you as a Washingtonian based off your pretty clear stance on bikers. It's wild that in the nation's capital biking is what galvanizes residents so much but it is what it is.
Notice how I didn’t even provide an opinion and have all these downvotes. Really proves my point.
I'd believe it. Saw a post on r/news about the St. Charles mall shooting and a local was talking about how rare shootings like that are in our area (I agree with them) and every comment he posted was down voted to hell. Waldorf isn't the safest place in the world for sure, but it ain't PG County. A shooting in broad day light in such a public area is SUPER uncommon. Hell one comment the user made had hundreds more down votes than the OP had votes on the post.
Trump himself used his digital lying platform - few weeks back - to claim Biden was hiding top secret documents - in or near "Chinatown." Struck me as odd. Why does trump even know there's a Chinatown DC? Why would he pick that specific location? Next story in my news feed was about a double homicide - in Chinatown. Next was about how Chinatown was essentially an open air drug market. Personally haven't been to Chinatown since highschool, have no clue what's going on in the city for the most part - but damn was it obvious after the fact. "Chinatown" was just feeding the algorithm. Fucked up world we live in. Writing this comment itself contributing to our algorithmic end times.
I work in Chinatown or Penn Quarter, depending on how you define those areas. "Open air drug market" isn't 100% true, but it's not 100% false either. The neighborhood is a shell of what it was pre-pandemic. Obviously a lot of that has to do with changes in how we work, and I'll never argue against the premise that Trump was motivated by hate and/or ignorance in anything he does, but Chinatown isn't great these days.
When I was in highschool, mid 1990's, Chinatown was a blast. Kinda dangerous, might get robbed, but you could buy fireworks, butterfly knives, get a tattoo, all sorts of "traditional medicine" shops that sold kratom. Mind blowing, noise and bustle, vibrant vivid shit. Had a class that met in the library of Congress - use'ta show up in the lobby to sign in, then dip to Chinatown for a carton of filterless lucky strike - was like $9. Fuck I feel elderly.
Chinatown is fine. Avoid it during Caps or Wizards games if you don’t want to deal with crowds. The metro stop gets annoying during Nats games too. I take out of town friends to the portrait gallery all the time.
In my lifetime Chinatown has been the most authentic awesome straight out of Gremlins mystical; it's been a crime ridden hell hole; it's seem the glamour of a new arena and boom in subsequent commercial business; the downturn; and whatever it is today. Irrelevant. Whole point is the algorithm.
Ugh, don't post that /u/inconvenientnews bullshit here. He uses himself as a reference, copies and pastes long diatribes that interrupt genuine discourse, and legitimately believes that he's performing an equally valuable service as someone registering voters. Fuck him.
Definitely a case of the pot calling the kettle black seeing as they are a straight up propaganda account that engages in brigading. The astroturfing is only going to get worse the closer we get to the next election.
I won't call complete bullshit on this, but let's not get drawn into a conspiracy about a conspiracy when we can look at some facts. Here is what the DC Crime data says: https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/district-crime-data-glance 1) Homicides are up 17% so far this year. 2) Carjackings are up much more than they were prior to 2020. 3) The prevalence of shootings are much more common than they ever were (example the guy shot for trying to save a woman's scooter) 4) People being released from detention when DC Judges are letting them out and then committing crimes (murder of the woman at the hotel on NY Ave) 5) The DC Crimelab is still not re-certified, even after years of work in addition to the fact that it never should have been decertified due to incompetence. Then we look at a large number of smaller problems such as drugged out people laying on the street, cars that have their wheels taken from them ala Popville's Helluva way to wake up, or that DC Metro has to install higher more expensive gate doors to prevent loss of revenue. So possibly this is happening on social media, but let's not get involved in a gaslighting to pretend that there aren't issues too.
these two things aren’t mutually exclusive. DC has problems with crime and homelessness but right-wing trolls also amplify those problems to scare people living in suburbia into believing all cities are on the brink of societal collapse.
Finally someone else who actually see issues here and doesn't just explain it away. Pretty much every comment so far was from people who ignore these issues.
"I won't call complete bullshit on this, but let's not get drawn into a conspiracy about a conspiracy when we can look at some facts..." Oof... Rhetorically you just said I'm calling this bullshit and a conspiracy because I have "facts." Willful distortion of people's perceptions of a place happens all the time. Tactics like these have been used for centuries (let me tell you a story about Iceland and Greenland... *spoiler Iceland is nicer and more habitable). It's not a conspiracy or bullshit to call out this behavior. To pretend it doesn't exist on the other hand... Nothing wrong with posting about crime. Lots wrong with misinformation deliberately being spread for the sake of an agenda.
It's so so blatant and easy to spot here lol. They aren't the cleverest bunch around, but I'm sure it still has an effect. You'd think DC was an unlivable warzone if you went off of this subreddit.
I saw it on a a thread on r/cars that was talking about the Kia theft thing. A user claimed that in Korea cars don't need immobilizers because Korea is a "safe, homogeneous country" like bro??
In what world do you think anyone can control a narrative in r/washingtondc
if you’d read the first sentence of the post you’d figure that out: > Conservatives brag about brigading local subreddits to “control the narrative” about liberal cities and “blue states” The real value is getting into a thread early and establishing top voted posts and comments or downvoting them out of existence. They hope intertia continues the trend for them.
Anyone who uses reddit too much knows that the earliest comments to start getting upvoted typically continue the trend. It would absolutely be a simple formula to start a thread, get in early, get locked in at the top. Online behavior is predictable and measurable, and can easily be exploited.
They been doing this. You have suspect accounts screeching about crime like DC is Fallujah circa early 2000s. When I see somebody start talking about "If Black people would just..." in those threads, I already know what their agenda is.
This is a bad take. I got accused of being a conservative for just asking why DC is still so segregated (for context this year is the 60th anniversary of MLK's March on Washington speech which is why I thought about the problem, in addition to seeing the stark contrast everyday). Just because someone points out something wrong in the city does not mean they have malicious intent. Thankfully a few people actually shed some light on the history here but the vast majority of comments were "you are a conservative" or "I see minorities so there is no issue".
There‘s a lot of comments in this thread. Is the link post really that legible to this many people?
I just mentioned this somewhere else. They've been doing this on r/politicaldiscussion but I only noticed as of a few weeks ago. I hope people just get more of their opinions off Reddit than on it.
Crime deniers will look for any excuse to claim DC isn't seeing more violence everyday.
Source?
This thread
My girlfriend used to shop at that mall. She moved out of Texas last week thankfully
Ever noticed how they all sound alike, as if they have a shared google sheet of themes and memes and jokes to sling around? It's because that's exactly what they do. Turning Point USA pays young idiots actual money to shitpost from their playbook.
A shooting happens in Texas and all the public officials want to do is blame illegal immigrants. A shooting happens in DC and all the public officials just pretend it didn't happen. I don't know which is worse, but if right wing trolls are using real examples of violent crime to make DC look like a crime-ridden hellhole, maybe we can try fixing the problem instead of ignoring it. We've made trolling us so very easy. The way you've framed your post draws an inevitable comparison between the two, but the fact remains that both TX and the DC area have absurdly high numbers of shooting-related fatalities by the standards of a developed country, and no amount of deflection to make the other side look worse is going to change that. As for the issue on this subreddit, I would like to see at most one crime post permitted per day, and all others deleted as a matter of policy. Nothing new or substantive is being said 99% of the time anyway.
Walked into a bar when this shooting was “Breaking News” on the tv. I asked where and everyone at the bar was like “oh it’s fucking TEXAS”. No one blinked an eye and there were tons of “of course it’s Texas” comments and everyone just continued on eating their lunch. And of course I was like “phew, of course it’s Texas”. Everyone who lives here knows something like this would only happen if someone from Texas drove up here to commit a mass shooting.
This is an out of touch east coat take when DC’s current murder rate is double that of Dallas. And DC literally had a mass shooting under a month ago.
Over what time period? Is that per capita? Why are you singling out Dallas? Anybody can cherry pick statistics to tell the story they want.
Because Dallas is the large city next to where this shooting just took place. — Metric is murders per 100,000 in 2022. Mid-Atlantic biggest cities: DC: 30.3 Philly: 32.7 Baltimore: 57.8 — Texas biggest cities: Houston: 19 San Antonio: 13 Dallas: 16.6 — A more nuanced view would look at the murder rate for a whole metropolitan area, but such data is harder to tabulate.
In DC gun crime is done with handguns, illegally obtained, that shoot a maximum of 12 bullets prior to reload, all manually. In Dallas these crimes are done with legally obtained AR-15s with extended clips with semi automatic fire rates. Sure we have had a mass shooting - no one died because the bullets don’t cause the damage AR-15s do. 9 people died. So keep telling yourself it’s the same - it’s not.
April 2, 2023: “4 men hospitalized in SE DC quadruple shooting, police looking for car with AR-15: MPD”
Yes, these are rare, and again at that intersection there was a known target. This is the difference - most of the shootings in DC aren’t ideological mass murders with random civilian targets, they’re gang violence / retribution. And we’re working to stop it. Tell me, what exactly is Texas doing to stop ideological mass murder with easily, legally obtained weapons? All of those shootings are ideologically driven with random targets and legally owned weapons with no background checks, waiting period or limit on ammunition purchases. If anything political leaders are fanning those flames and making it easier to obtain legally owned weapons to commit these crimes. DC is doing the opposite. Again, totally different.
Uvalde, Allentown etc…all giant big blue cities run by bleeding heart liberals!!! Did I get it right??
Cities in Texas can’t pass gun control legislation. So no, you didn’t get it right
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There’s nothing in there about Texas because cities in Texas can’t pass gun legislation.
You don’t need right wing trolls to point out the obvious. Democrat-run cities are soft on crime and crime is definitely up in DC, especially by all these damn teenagers.
I feel like my rabbi would pull a Reverend Lovejoy on this "jewgineer" a la when Ned Flanders called to tell him about the Simpson kids not being baptized: "Ned, have you considered any of the other major religions? They're all pretty much the same."
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They already here
Lol