Three people, including two teenagers, were shot Thursday night in Southeast Washington—and the suspects, described only as three masked males, remain at large. If the people running this country can't keep the streets safe in their own capital, why should any American trust them with anything else?
According to D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department, Seventh District officers responded to the 2700 block of Langston Place SE just before 11 p.m. They found a man, a teenage boy, and a teenage girl, all conscious and breathing, with gunshot wounds. D.C. Fire and EMS transported all three to area hospitals. Police are looking for three masked males. No arrests have been announced.
WJLA reported the basic facts straight. What the outlet didn't do—and what the establishment press rarely does—is connect the dots between the policy choices that have emptied jails, weakened policing, and made consequences optional, and the bodies that keep turning up on city streets.
The same night, Rochester, New York, saw its own triple shooting. The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reported that officers on an unrelated call around 2:17 a.m. heard gunfire near Whitney Street and LaSalle Street. They found a 31-year-old man shot in a lower extremity, a 43-year-old man shot in the upper body, and a 43-year-old woman shot in a lower extremity. All three were taken to Strong Memorial Hospital with injuries described as non-life-threatening. No suspects were in custody as of Friday morning.
Two cities. Six victims. Zero arrests. The Rochester paper noted the bare facts and moved on—active investigation, call 911 if you know something. Business as usual.
But this isn't business as usual, or at least it shouldn't be. In the nation's capital, where the lawmakers who write the laws walk past armed security to get to their offices, a teenage girl now carries a bullet because three masked men felt bold enough to open fire in a residential neighborhood at 10:44 on a weeknight. That kind of brazenness doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens when criminals learn that the system won't hold them.
D.C. has cycled through years of criminal justice reform sold as progress. Progressive prosecutors, reduced sentencing, bail policies that put repeat offenders back on the street before the paperwork is dry. The result: a city where two kids can catch a bullet and the official response is a phone number and a shrug.
Anyone with information on the D.C. shooting is asked to call MPD at (202) 727-9099 or text 50411.
The question that ought to keep every American up at night is simple: if this is the capital of the free world, who exactly is it free for?
