Remember “Operation Clean Sweep”? That was D.C. Mayor Marion Barry’s 1986 effort to pulverize the highly visible street-level drug trade and reduce the killings linked to drug trafficking. The D.C. police deployed a force of more than 100 officers led by program architect Isaac Fulwood, an assistant chief, to target neighborhood drug markets by bringing in police trailers, conducting roadblocks, raiding apartments, seizing cars and executing reverse buys in which undercover officers made sales to drug dealers.
Over 17 months, according to a Jan. 26, 1988, Post report, police made 29,519 arrests, seized $12.4 million in drugs and $1.3 million in cash, and confiscated 809 guns and 394 vehicles — at a cost of about $6 million. With police overtime mounting, however, the program had “become too costly” and violence was still increasing in some neighborhoods.
Despite Clean Sweep’s stated objectives of getting drug dealers off the streets, police and court officials had no figures on how many people went to jail, according to The Post.
But this much was clear: D.C.’s jail and other detention facilities were so crowded that Barry declared an emergency and began releasing hundreds of inmates early. Most of them had been convicted of drug possession. Cops working 16-hour workdays, crowded court dockets and jam-packed jail cells — the criminal justice system was strained to the point of breaking. Operation Clean Sweep collapsed of its own weight, in part for the lack of overtime money and sufficient officers.
Did the tough policing and swift jailing reduce drug crimes? There’s no definitive evidence that it did. By the early ’90s, the crack epidemic was trending downward. But in 1995, the homicide rate was still far higher than it had been 10 years earlier. Which brings us to another much-ballyhooed D.C. crime-fighting program.
Remember “Operation Ceasefire”? On Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1995, Eric H. Holder Jr., previously a D.C. Superior Court judge and then U.S. attorney for the District, rolled out a massive crime-fighting initiative by that name. “Did Martin Luther King successfully fight the likes of Bull Connor so that we could ultimately lose the struggle for civil rights to misguided or malicious members of our own race?” he asked.
Operation Ceasefire was aimed at reducing the number of guns in the city, which Holder contended would save lives. The effort involved D.C. officers stopping cars under the pretext of strict traffic enforcement and using the opportunity to scan inside for illegal guns. Some of those pretextual traffic stops also revealed other legal violations, such as marijuana possession. The operation was carried out largely in lower-income, majority-Black neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River, and most of those arrested and jailed were Black youths. Operation Clean Sweep and Operation Ceasefire helped serve as the basis for the mass criminalization and incarceration era of two decades ago.
Which brings us to this week’s response to the city’s rising crime rates.
This is not the 1990s. But there’s no mistaking the sad facts: D.C. police data reveal shocking increases in crime this year over last: homicides up 18 percent, sexual abuse up 34 percent, robberies up 54 percent and motor vehicle thefts up a skyrocketing 117 percent.
But now, as it was then, residents demand action on violence they view as a threat to them and their families. Fear of crime is not driven by news and social media accounts. Residents know the stories firsthand. That’s how pervasive criminal activity has become.
What’s not being heard today, at least not by the public at large, are calls for mass incarceration or greater reliance on punitive policing. People just want the crime and disorder to be dealt with.
This week, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and city lawmakers — with the exception of council member Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4) — joined to fashion narrowly tailored public safety legislation to address the crime issues facing the city.
Most notably, the council took pains to avoid enacting measures that would lead to the excessive and ineffective incarceration that plagued crime-fighting efforts in the ’90s. In balancing the need for a rapid and effective response to rising crime, legislators included a limited expansion of pretrial detention — a step that prompted George to declare during Tuesday’s debate, “There is no credible evidence that pretrial detention would make D.C. safer.”
Added George, “We’re doing the same thing we did in 1994. This is how mass incarceration happens.” But her amendment to remove that measured expansion of pretrial detention for adults went down in flames, attracting only the support of Ward 7 council member Vincent C. Gray (D).
For her part, Bowser said in a statement, “The legislation that the council passed today will fill gaps in our criminal justice system and, in doing so, will increase accountability for violent and criminal behavior and make our city safer.”
The bill, dubbed the Prioritizing Public Safety Emergency Act, was deftly crafted and steered through the council to Bowser’s desk by Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2), chair of the public safety and justice committee. The measure will be in effect for only 90 days.
Hardly a return to the ’90s. But hopefully sound steps toward a safer D.C. summer.
