The Washington Post-Crime in Chinatown has been a focus of arena talks Its nearly flat

2024-02-15T16:14:56.057Z

D.C.’s Chinatown has long been a kaleidoscope of humanity.

The perfume peddlers, the Black power guys with their mics, the drunken hockey fans, the scalpers, the Asian grandmothers with the giant wheelie shopping bags, the toddler meltdowns because Mommy wouldn’t buy the $20 spinning-light thing at the arena’s ice skating show have all been there.

And that’s just the stuff I’ve seen over the past 25 years.

“There used to be this homeless Caucasian guy who grabbed at all the women I worked with, on their way to the office right there,” said Byron Sullivan, who used to work in the accounting department of a nonprofit right next to the magnificent Chinatown arch he pointed to on Thursday, before shrugging. “It’s the city.”

Sullivan was headed to check out the diner that recently opened inside the Crimson Whiskey Bar when he stopped to puzzle at a new storefront that seemed a strange addition to the entertainment district.

There, under the arch, was a hub for police and social service providers that the city opened to fanfare this week. It’s an attempt by Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) to address elements of Chinatown that have always been around, but are now in the spotlight over Monumental Sports & Entertainment CEO Ted Leonsis’s efforts to move the Wizards and Capitals from the Capital One Arena to Northern Virginia.

“These hubs are one more way we can bring city services closer to the community and stay connected to residents and businesses in the neighborhood,” Bowser said at the hub’s opening on Monday. “When we talk about a whole-of-government approach to public safety, these are the people and teams who are working together every day to keep our city safe and healthy, and we are grateful for their wide range of expertise, compassion, and commitment to our community.”

Ever since the sports tycoon announced he’s leaving D.C., crime in Chinatown has been under a microscope — in part because of public comments he and his staff have made.

And yes, total crimes in Police Service Area 101, which includes the arena, are up in the past year, comparing most of 2023 to 2022.

By how much?

Four. Four incidents.

The Crime Card stats from D.C. police show that between Feb. 15, 2022, and Feb. 15, 2023, there were 597 crimes reported.

Between Feb. 15, 2023, and Feb. 15, 2024, there were 601.

Over that same time, violent crime went down by eight incidents — there were fewer assaults with a deadly weapon and robberies than in the previous year.

The thing that went up was property crime — there were two more burglaries, 41 more thefts and three more cars stolen.

We’re not even counting the legal crimes that happen inside Capital One Arena — $6 bottles of water and $17 tall boys of beer.

In other words, Chinatown is not the deadly pit of violent hell that would make two huge franchises escape to Virginia.

If you want to play the crime statistic game, a quick search of the Alexandria police district that Leonsis is proposing as the new home of the Caps and the Wizards — a sprawling 181L which includes shopping centers and vacant land — returns more than 500 incidents in the past year.

And if you really want to talk about crime in Chinatown, let’s look back at the times before the arena opened in 1997. Waaaay back.

“Chinese gunmen, of a type more daring and cunning than the American gangster and racketeer, have killed with impunity in the Nation’s Capital during the last decade,” wrote William E. Peake, in the July 21, 1929, edition of The Washington Post.

One night on Oct. 14, 1928, “spouting automatics shattered the quiet early Sunday night,” killing two members of rival gangs in Chinatown, bringing the total to seven unsolved murders in the neighborhood.

Nothing like this is happening in today’s Chinatown.

The neighborhood did have a police substation that closed before the pandemic and Michael Shankle, chairman of an Advisory Neighborhood Commission in Chinatown, said they’ve been fighting to get it back. He sees the new hub as an answer to their requests, especially because it has a social services aspect.

But the public focus on the neighborhood right now is distorting the truth. This is not about crime, although Leonsis and his employees floated that as the reason they’re fleeing.

“One of the things I lived in fear of?” Leonsis said in an interview with NBC4 News last week. “A fan gets injured. A fan is robbed.”

Oops, maybe he’s forgetting that the biggest story of a fan getting injured at the arena was when he allegedly assaulted a jeering Jason Hammer, who was a 20-year-old hockey fan when Leonsis grabbed him by the neck and threw him to the ground after Hammer led a mocking chant against the Caps owner in a 2004 loss to the Flyers.

Though Hammer didn’t press charges after Leonsis called to apologize, the National Hockey League fined the owner $100,000 and suspended him for a week.

Leonsis has walked back his finger-pointing at crime as the reason. It’s been laid out by many journalists that it’s a super-sweet deal for Leonsis to move his teams to Virginia, where taxpayers will foot much of his bill.

But shining the light on crime the way he did and the way his employee did at a town hall meeting last summer gave too many businesses the green light to blame crime for their decisions to leave D.C.

We’re a downtown struggling with the new world of white-collar workplaces upended by the pandemic and the shift to hybrid schedules.

The restaurant industry cited that massive population shift as one of the key reasons in so many restaurant closures. But they also cite rising food costs and staff shortages that are a crisis across the country.

More than 50 restaurants closed in D.C. last year

D.C. went through a similar panic when Zengo and Fuddruckers pulled out of Chinatown almost a decade ago (was anyone besides my 9-year-old really upset that Fuddruckers and their sneeze-guard garnish bar left in 2017?).

While crime is increasing in pockets of the city, and no amount of crime is okay, the conversation changes the perception of a city, which in turn frightens tourists, consumers and investors away.

The community safety hub that Bowser opened on H Street here wasn’t very busy this week.

The guys who stand at the top of the Gallery Place Metro said they won’t go check it out. Maybe they will, eventually.