“Dear PoPville,
My younger brother was mugged walking from Adams Morgan to the Dupont metro late Saturday night past midnight and had to give up his watch. The guy was in a ski mask on a moped. My brother and his friend called 911 and they told him he could either a) wait there for the police to arrive or b) go to any DC police station later to report the crime. Naturally he just wanted to get home and didn’t want to wait around forever late at night nearby where the incident had just happened.
So I accompanied my brother today (Sunday) to go to the 2nd District police station nearby where I live. I’m writing to you because the experience there was incredibly frustrating and concerning. The police officer at the front from the very beginning acted incredulously, asking him why didn’t he wait for the police to report at the incident last night (he explained what the 911 dispatcher told him, and she didn’t find that an “acceptable” answer). She said that
he couldn’t file the report at the 2nd district because the incident occurred in the 3rd district (without even yet getting the specific location, which we found later to be technically just inside the 2nd district, near the border with the 3rd) and kept asking us why we didn’t go to the 3rd district station like we were stupid. She even asked my brother (after it had already become abundantly clear that they weren’t going to file any report, so it’s not like she needed details) why he gave his watch and why didn’t he give up his wallet to the mugger. Which is an insane question to me, why would she be asking him why he didn’t give up more?? The police officer was incredibly rude, was not helpful and prevented us from filing a report, did not make us feel safe, and showed absolutely zero compassion about the situation whatsoever. Not even something as simple as saying “I’m sorry to hear that happened.”
This is why people don’t trust the police and don’t report crimes. We were so taken aback from the situation that we didn’t get the officer’s name and badge number, so we weren’t in a position to make a complaint.
We’re struggling to understand why the police would be acting like this, and there’s only one remotely logical explanation that I can come up with: they’re trying to keep crime stats down, and trying to prevent the data from being recorded in their district.”