Insecurity: Crime can seem kind of abstract until it happens to you. For six of the past 11 years, I have lived in Moscow, the Balkans, and Turkey. Moscow in the midst of a wrenching transition from the Soviet centrally controlled economy to free market Wild West chaos, a coup, casinos, the rich and poor, the whole mess. The Balkans in the midst of two wars and post-wars. While in Bosnia, I walked through morgues of those killed in horrific ways, and in Kosovo, I was at scenes of massacre, in the midst of cross fire, and was twice in a fairly awful situation at Serb police checkpoints. But in all of those cases, I can say I was never the victim of a robbery, a mugging, an assault, I was never the victim of a crime. No one so much as stole an extra dinar or mark from me. And these were in places where people were REALLY poor, where people were living on humanitarian aid, where they had lost family members and often homes and jobs, and seen a lot of violence. Maybe I was protected to a degree by being a foreigner or an American. Maybe I was just lucky. (For sure, the crimes I am talking about are minor and petty when compared with the violence that had overtaken those societies.) Nevertheless, I did not live in a compound as US diplomats do, I always rented apartments downtown and went out plenty. I wasn't reckless, but I had an occasional impromptu unrecommended argument with people in Belgrade bars, people not at all remotely friendly to the American position regarding Kosovo and Milosevic and war crimes. No one so much as laid a finger on my wallet.

I've lived in DC for almost three years, and in the past six months my husband and I have been held up at gunpoint while walking home. Ok, no harm done, we lost $40, and the police at least made a huge effort at chasing the guys, helicopters, scenter dogs, the whole magilla. No matter the investigators never seemed to follow up.

But last week, something really eerie happened, although it involved no violence. The kind of thing that makes you seriously think you can't be safe in your own home. I happened to wake up extremely early, and went downstairs to read. Putting down the shades on a downstairs window, I thought I saw a shadow moving on top of our back gate. Is it a cat, I wondered? A raccoon? The shadow seemed too big for the squirrels which claim our back deck as their own real estate. Then the motion detector lights on our garage flicked on, and I was shocked to see a blond haired man atop our back gate, trying to jump into our tiny back deck. (In case you are ever in a similar situation, you should do a better job than I memorizing what the person looks like.) I was fairly shocked. It was 430am in the morning. All of our neighbors leave their back gates unlocked and it was fairly inconceivable to me what this person could want in our particular unremarkable back deck. Lawn furniture?

I called for my husband while rapping on the window so hard, I saw later that I had shattered the glass. Hearing me, the guy backed out into the dark of the alley. I called 911 and the police came fairly quickly. We made coffee and they asked us if we had an alarm (we do). They told us they have a lot of peeping toms in this neighborhood, and also people trying to steal petty stuff from the garage like bicycles. FYI, I bought my bike at a garage sale up the street for approximately $70 and it would hardly be worth breaking and entering someone's garage to get.

You cannot stay in the room where I was before and not look at the closed window shade and not wonder what is out there.

Yesterday came news DC has the highest homicide rate in the country, per capita. Speculation that a rise in gang violence has fueled it. But there is something else creepy about DC. No crime ever seems to be solved. From the murder of Chandra Levy to the daily muggings and robbery every one we know has experienced. The police I have talked to at crime scenes after the fact have been wonderful, dedicated, they came fast, they ask lots of questions, they knock themselves out trying to find the perpetrator at the scene. But there is absolutely no follow up by investigators afterwards. Essentially there is no accountability. Get an alarm, cancel your credit cards, take a cab at night, etc.

Would we have been safer having a gun? I don't think so. In the mugging, we simply wouldn't have had enough time to do anything with it. In the more recent incident, I don't think I could shoot someone for the crime of trying to jump into our back yard, although I am very curious what his motives were.

So we've kind of barricaded ourselves in the house, turning on the alarm at night, which of course, if you have an alarm, you know, you end up setting off all the time simply forgetting you have it.

I love living in DC and urban life and walking everywhere and our friends and going to Congressional hearings and think tank meetings, but a few more of these incidents and one would seriously have to consider moving.

Follow up: A friend sends this chart comparing statistics of crime in New York versus in Washington, D.C. Fairly shocking. New York City, with 12 times the population of DC, has almost 2/3 the number of violent crimes per 100,000 citizens, and half the number of property crimes than DC. Why is that?

Follow Up II: Here's a case of someone who know how to do what we did not. Still, it was a different case. He pulled a gun on her, she pulled out her own gun, he missed, she did not.

Posted by Laura at November 5, 2003 08:48 AM