Officer dies in Atlanta shooting near CDC buildings, investigation ongoing
CDC director Susan Monarez, who started in her job this week, said in a social media statement that a gunman 'opened fire on at least four CDC buildings'.
One of them, Building 24, is where the director's office is, on the 12th floor. Monarez was not on campus at the time of the shooting – she had left earlier in the afternoon to return to DC, two agency officials said.
Monarez added that the organisation was 'heartbroken' and that the campus remained locked down on Friday evening local time as authorities continued to investigate.
Officials said the shooter was found on the second floor of a building above a CVS. He had been struck by gunfire, although authorities said it was unclear whether that gunfire was from officers or self-inflicted. He died at the scene, officials said.
Police said they received a call about the shooting around 4.50pm Friday. At least 25 shots could be heard in the area, according to video shared with the Washington Post by a CDC employee.
Rapid-fire shots were heard near the CDC around 4.55pm, according to an employee who was on the 12th floor of Building 24 and spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly. Initially, they said, some people thought the shots were noise from construction.
The building was put on lockdown moments later, prompting the employee and their colleagues to lock the door and push chairs in front of the entrance. 'We were all kind of in shock,' the employee said.
Looking out the window, the employee saw a person in a red shirt directing cars away from the scene of the shooting – 'a hero' – the employee said.
The shooting took place near Emory Point, a mixed-use development with well-known restaurants and shops, as well as apartments, that sits across a busy road from the CDC campus. The Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response (CEPAR) at Emory University, which is nearby, sent out an alert at 5.01pm urging people to 'RUN, HIDE, FIGHT'.
In a statement, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp (R) praised first responders while decrying that 'deranged criminals' had targeted Georgians in two incidents within a week. A US Army soldier allegedly shot five fellow service members yesterday at Fort Stewart.
'Marty, the girls, and I are thankful for all those who answer the call to serve and who protect their fellow Georgians,' Kemp said, referring to his wife, Marty, and their children. 'We ask that you join us in holding them in our prayers, along with those harmed this evening near the CDC Centre.'
Georgia Attorney-General Chris Carr (R) said his office was 'horrified' by the news and praying for the safety of Emory's campus community.
'We stand ready to assist our law enforcement partners with whatever they may need,' he said in a statement.
The FBI's Atlanta office said it was aware of the shooting and was co-ordinating with local law enforcement.
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NZ Herald
3 days ago
- NZ Herald
Mother of kidnapped journalist Austin Tice details recently declassified intel
The documents, she said, showed who was holding Tice and even included details about his captivity down to the times he was taken to seek medical treatment. 'When he had something [wrong] about his teeth, they took him to a dentist. When he had some stomach issues, they took him to doctor,' she said, without offering details about when the documents alleged this to have happened. Austin Tice was a freelance writer contributing coverage of Syria's civil war to outlets including the Washington Post when he was abducted on or around August 13, 2012, at age 31. Numerous US officials have said the search for Tice has yielded little credible, verifiable information. Journalist Austin Tice went missing in Syria in 2012 and has not been heard from since. Photo / Getty Images A Post investigation into the Austin Tice case found that despite efforts that stretched across three US administrations involving diplomats, spies, businessmen, religious figures, journalists, and investigators, solid information about his fate remains elusive, in large part because of obstructions by the Bashar al-Assad regime. The Assad Government repeatedly denied holding Tice. The files that the Tice family showed at today's event included raw intelligence documents, information collected from various sources over the years but are uncorroborated. Information that is considered credible by US intelligence agencies is generally designated with a level of confidence that influences the weight it should be given in decision-making. Since the Assad regime collapsed in December, the 'low-confidence' CIA assessment – which the family disputes – is that Tice is dead. Debra Tice shared several pieces of information on her son's case that she said she learned from reviewing the intelligence files. Soon after Tice disappeared, she said, the Syrian Government attempted to send him back to the US. 'The Syrian Government reached out to Hillary Clinton and wanted her to come and get Austin in … August of 2012, and she declined,' she said. The family didn't provide documents at the event to support the claim that the then-US secretary of state refused to bring Austin Tice home days after he disappeared. Two former US officials with knowledge of the case said that no such offer was ever made and that the Syrian Government never even acknowledged holding Tice to the US Government. 'In fact, they vigorously denied any knowledge of Austin right to the end,' one former official said. The Tice family said that between the Trump Administration's decision to grant them access to classified intelligence documents and the collapse of the Assad government, there has been a flood of new information on the case over the past year. Debra Tice said the new information has only fuelled her determination to maintain attention on her son's case. 'We know Austin is alive. We need to find him,' she said. The last visual proof of life of Austin Tice was a video that emerged weeks after he disappeared showing him blindfolded and held by armed men. The video quickly aroused suspicions that it was manufactured to intentionally mislead, making it appear as though Islamist militants had captured him. After the fall of Assad, the Tice family hoped that as Syria's network of repressive detention centres crumbled, new information about their son's case would be unearthed. But after thousands of people were released from Assad regime prisons across the country, Tice did not emerge. - Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.
NZ Herald
4 days ago
- NZ Herald
Global ‘mining mafia' feeds China's appetite for gold, investigation shows
As part of a strategic effort to reduce reliance on the US dollar, insulate itself from potential United States sanctions and build its own capacity to influence the international monetary system, China is procuring gold at a voracious pace. This drive has fuelled and facilitated a surge in illicit gold mining across the Global South, inflicting a trail of environmental destruction from Indonesia to Ghana to French Guiana, a Washington Post investigation found. The Post examination of China's role in the booming trade in illicit gold is based on a review of satellite imagery, trade data, public records, and dozens of interviews with gold researchers, law enforcement and government officials across three continents. In Indonesia, where the proliferation of illicit mining has been among the most widespread and least studied, the Post obtained internal government documents and visited half a dozen secluded gold-mining communities being transformed by Chinese-led operations. Chinese workers at these locations declined to speak to the Post, but Chinese mining operators in Indonesia said in interviews that investment in the country's gold sector is spiking. In videos aimed at investors on Chinese social media, Chinese miners advertise 'free and easy' access to Indonesia's vast gold deposits. In May, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) warned that organised crime was embedding itself so deeply in gold supply chains that it poses a 'serious global threat'. As Chinese demand drives gold prices above US$3000 per ounce, drug cartels, terrorists, and mercenary groups are deepening their involvement in the sector, UNODC said. Almost all these actors work in some capacity with Chinese mining concerns, which are present from 'mine to market' and have the greatest ability to work in the most unexploited locations, according to those who study the gold sector. Many illicit gold operations are being financed and operated directly by Chinese private investors who appear to be operating with little oversight or repercussion from Chinese authorities, investigators say. This has drawn allegations from gold-rich countries that Beijing is permitting the ransacking of gold deposits abroad, enabling a rapidly mutating trade that UN officials warn is propping up a range of other criminal activities. Makeshift tents at an illegal gold mine set up by Chinese investors in the village of Sekotong in Indonesia. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post Chinese officials have pushed back against these allegations, including the Chinese Ambassador to Ghana, Tong Defa, who in June said it was a 'significant injustice' to blame Beijing for the spread of illegal gold mining. The Chinese Foreign Ministry and the China Chamber of Commerce of Metals, Minerals and Chemicals Importers and Exporters did not respond to detailed questions from the Post. The Chinese Embassy in Washington said it was 'not aware' of the allegations made by gold-rich countries about China's role and declined to comment. 'Chinese networks have become deeply involved in the illicit gold trade,' said David Soud, a minerals analyst who has written reports on gold for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 'Much of the gold they mine or otherwise acquire goes to China via highly opaque supply chains.' This is routinely done without the payment of local taxes or royalties, officials and analysts say. Illicit Chinese syndicates, according to Soud and other investigators, operate differently from both traditional, artisanal gold miners and industrial, legal mining companies, including those from China. A woman sifts through crushed ore for gold deposits on Sumbawa. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post While artisanal miners use little to no machinery, illicit Chinese operators employ crushers, excavators and other tools to extract at a scale that rivals industrial mines. Unlike industrial mines, analysts say, the syndicates operate without regard to environmental, health and safety regulations, degrading forests and rivers at rates not seen before in many communities. In the sites where they operate, Chinese syndicates are also driving a transition from using mercury for processing to cyanide – a more effective but also more hazardous process when employed without strict controls, according to mining experts. 'This system has gotten much more complex and much more organised,' said Brad Brooks-Rubin, a former US State Department official who worked on mineral supply chains in the Biden Administration. 'The Western policy world has largely missed what has happened.' The operations of PT Amman Mineral International, a legal Indonesian-owned mine on western Sumbawa. Illicit mining is spreading on the eastern side of the island. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post In a sign that the issue is just now emerging as a policy concern, the Trump Administration in March for the first time designated gold among the minerals vital to the US as part of an executive order to 'reduce our reliance on foreign nations'. In a hearing a few days later, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa, Representative Chris Smith (Republican-New Jersey), described China and its mining interests as the 'greatest beneficiaries' of the illicit gold trade. Beijing has rebuffed appeals from regulators in gold-rich countries to help crack down on Chinese-run mining syndicates and opted out of multilateral efforts to counter the underground trade, officials and advocates said in interviews. According to a Post review of government statements, court records and news reports, authorities in at least 15 gold-rich countries have brought cases against Chinese nationals and companies over illicit gold mining since the start of 2024. – In Ghana, Africa's top gold-exporting country, officials say Chinese syndicates have laid waste to swathes of Ghana's west and south, and are now moving to the country's north. 'The Chinese Government is doing nothing about it,' said Ghanaian lawmaker Tiah Abdul-Kabiru Mahama, calling the Chinese Communist Party 'complicit' in the destruction. Hundreds of Chinese nationals have been arrested just in recent months. Ghana has tried seeking the help of Chinese authorities, but to little avail, Lands and Natural Resources Minister Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah said in an interview. Miners who are deported are routinely able to find their way back into the country, Buah said, adding, 'It has been tough'. – In Indonesia, Asia's biggest gold producer after China, officials at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources say they receive reports almost daily of illegal gold mines across the country's sprawling archipelago, the biggest of which are linked to Chinese nationals, based on preliminary investigations. In one high-profile case last year, Indonesian authorities asked the Chinese Embassy to help identify its citizens and assist with the probe. 'They were not co-operative,' said an Indonesian official. The Chinese suspects fled Indonesia, the official added. - In French Guiana, an overseas department of France in South America, Chinese investors form a 'crucial logistical chain' in an illicit gold market that the French military spends tens of millions of dollars annually to combat, said the Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS), a defence think-tank funded in part by the French Government, in a 2023 report. 'The involvement of Chinese players,' FRS said, 'is part of a global context of resource capture and predation, encouraged or facilitated by the Chinese government.' Mystery holdings China has been among the world's biggest buyers of gold for over a decade, according to data from the World Gold Council, a trade association. But it's a mystery, analysts say, as to how much gold it actually has – and where it comes from. The Chinese Communist Party is heavily involved in acquiring gold for the state, whether through the People's Bank of China, brokers or via industrial policies that have encouraged retail buying and incentivised gold mining abroad, gold and financial analysts say. In 2017, Song Xin, then president of the China Gold Association, said the Belt and Road Initiative, China's US$1 trillion ($1.68t) global infrastructure programme, is 'also a golden road'. From 2000 to 2024, Chinese state-owned creditors inked 85 loan commitments for gold extraction and processing projects across the Global South, according to data provided to the Post by AidData, a research lab at William and Mary in Virginia. It's now easier for Chinese miners to find work outside China than at home, said Zeng Shanyue, a Chinese gold-mining investor based in Indonesia. Many of those going abroad originate from the southern province of Guangxi, which has a long tradition of mining. But businessmen from elsewhere in China, like his province of Zhejiang, are also moving in. 'Everyone,' Zeng said, 'is mining'. A ute carries gold ore for processing at an illegal gold mine in eastern Indonesia. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post To China's strategic thinkers, it is not enough. 'China's gold reserves are still insufficient and should be increased further,' said Liu Ping, a senior CCP official, in March at the annual meeting of China's top political advisory body. Gold is 'a crucial tool' for the country's national security, said Zhang Zhigang, another party official. While many countries are not fully transparent with their gold holdings, there are exceptionally large discrepancies between what Chinese authorities say they have and independent assessments from trade groups and banks. In a September 2024 research document, Goldman Sachs said its estimates of the Chinese central bank's gold purchases have been in certain months as much as 60 tonnes higher than the central bank declared. Over the course of 2024, said gold analyst Jan Nieuwenhuijs at Money Metals, the People's Bank of China covertly bought 570 tonnes of gold, and it has now accumulated more than twice the gold it says it has. The scale of China's acquisitions is changing the gold market, Nieuwenhuijs told the Post. 'And the reason is that they really see the gold as an alternative to the dollar,' he said. The People's Bank of China did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, China's General Administration of Customs said it follows 'international conventions' on compiling and publishing information. 'China's gold import and export data is open and transparent,' it said. Given gold's strategic value, it's natural for China's holdings to be 'classified', said Zhao Qingming, an adjunct professor at the School of Finance of the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. 'No country openly discloses whether its gold reserves are acquired domestically or internationally, or how much is sourced from each channel,' Zhao said. The problem, researchers say, is that this lack of transparency increasingly conceals large quantities of gold that was mined illegally. Martin, a local gold miner in the village of Taliwang on Sumbawa, said he has watched warily as Chinese mining operators spread in nearby communities. 'If they enter here, we can't compete,' he said. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post Conservative estimates place the value of the illicit gold sector at more than US$30 billion or 400 tonnes a year. A study released in 2024 by the non-profit Swissaid found that gold smuggling out of Africa doubled between 2012 and 2022. Individually, unsanctioned mines may be smaller than legal ones. But aggregated over a country, over multiple countries – 'it's a massive, massive amount', said Pete Chirico, associate director of the US Geological Survey's Florence Bascom Geoscience Centre, which provides scientific assessments of resource extraction to the US government. Once smelted, illegal gold is virtually impossible to differentiate from legal gold – and equally as valuable to the world's biggest buyer. 'If you have a strategic interest in gold, you don't want to just rely on the industrial gold-mining sector,' Chirico said. 'You're trying to mop up gold wherever it is.' 'People's mining' Lalu Adimiyat, 40, looked out the window of a muddied Toyota SUV as it bumped along the pockmarked slopes of his village in eastern Indonesia. Stepping out into blustering winds, he caught the eye of a few local men peeking out from tented shafts. He nodded stiffly and turned away. It wasn't safe to stay long, he muttered. Chinese gold-mining investors began arriving here on Lombok island, an hour's boat ride from the holiday destination of Bali, in 2022, said Lalu, a community activist. In his village of Sekotong, locals had mined small amounts of gold for years, scaling the hills on motorbikes and using hand tools to scoop out gold-mottled ores that they sold to traders in the valleys. Indonesian workers move gold ore on the island of Sumbawa, where Chinese mining operators are becoming dominant. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post Indonesian authorities allowed this as long as it remained small-scale, providing permits to citizens for what is called in Indonesian 'tambang rakyat', or 'people's mining'. When Chinese investors came, however, they came with excavators, crushers and pumps that stunned local miners, Lalu recalled. The Chinese built their own processing facilities at the top of hills, installing sprinkler systems to douse ore with cyanide – a chemical that local miners had never used before. They brought in towering Chinese-made mills with rollers that spun 160 times a minute. Soon, Chinese investors were moving quantities of gold in a single day that would take locals months or even years to extract, Lalu said. 'We felt defeated,' he recalled. After several clashes, hostilities boiled over in August 2024 when villagers set a dormitory for Chinese miners on fire. National authorities arrived to find one of the biggest illegal gold mines ever uncovered in Indonesia – an operation that spread across the size of 184 American football fields, producing gold with an estimated market value of US$5.5 million per month. 'I never expected that,' remembered Dian Patria, 58, who inspected the site in October. A plain-speaking, moustachioed bureaucrat in Indonesia's anti-corruption commission, Dian said he has watched Chinese illicit networks spread across Indonesia, corrupting offices from village councils to national ministries, amid a broader expansion in Chinese investment. In the country's far-flung eastern provinces, which he oversees and where mineral deposits are concentrated, the most coveted prize has been gold. 'They are robbing us,' Dian lamented from his office in Jakarta. 'Openly.' Indonesian officials say they are aware of dozens of large-scale illegal gold-mining operations on Sumbawa. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post In previous decades, when American companies such as Newmont dominated gold mining in Indonesia, authorities could rely partly on US and international anti-corruption regulations, such as the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, to stave off excessive graft. Not so with Chinese operators, who face few barriers to engaging in corruption abroad, Dian said. Indonesia has stepped up efforts to find and prosecute illegal mining syndicates, earlier this year opening a law enforcement arm within its minerals ministry and increasing enforcement against cyanide smuggling rings. The bribing of officials, however, means that even when regulators believe they have found damning evidence, their superiors may not be inclined to prosecute, Dian said. Indonesian authorities have reported major illicit gold operations run by Chinese networks in at least four provinces over the past year. None have led to convictions. In one case in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo, authorities found a mine that stretched over 1.5km and employed as many as 80 people. Chinese nationals were brought to trial but then abruptly acquitted – a decision that the Indonesian Judicial Commission later said was marred by ethical breaches and misconduct by judges. In June, one of the Chinese defendants still in Indonesia was retried and given a sentence of three years in prison and a fine of US$1.8m. Haruki Agustina, director of climate change mitigation at the Indonesian Environment Ministry, said she thought the punishment was insufficient given the mine's damage to the environment, particularly with regard to the unregulated use of cyanide. 'Way, way too low,' she said in an interview. Villagers have long fished on Lake Lebo in Taliwang. Now, they say it is becoming contaminated with chemicals like mercury and cyanide from illegal gold mines. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post On Lombok, internal Indonesian government documents obtained by the Post say the illegal mine in Sekotong encroached into protected forest area, and operations were carried out by three companies – two led by Chinese nationals and one by Indonesians – none of which had the requisite permits. In addition, the documents say, there are dozens more illicit mines on Lombok and its neighbouring islands that the Government is aware of. The Sekotong investigation, which was handed over to police last year, has stalled, said a senior official at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, adding that the reasons have not been shared with the ministry. The police did not respond to requests for comment. When Post reporters visited Sekotong in May, the police lines set up last year had been torn down. Trucks brimming with gold ore trundled along cliff edges, and the mines appeared operational. Lalu sucked his teeth as he raised his phone to take a video. 'No, no, no accountability,' he said. Beijing's 'plundering' In January, hundreds of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo demonstrated against what they called the 'plundering' of the country's gold by Chinese operators. Asked about the demonstrations, Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry, said, 'The Chinese Government always asks Chinese citizens and companies overseas to strictly observe local laws and regulations.' Officials in gold-rich countries, however, say Beijing has done little to enforce that sentiment. Chinese authorities have been unco-operative in efforts to identify and deter Chinese nationals responsible for illicit gold mining, according to international investigators and officials in Ghana and Indonesia. Chinese authorities have also withheld data that could help quantify and track illicit gold flows, and are noticeably absent from multilateral discussions on the topic, researchers say. In May, for example, at the 2025 OECD conference on responsible mineral supply chains in Paris – widely seen as the most important annual forum on the topic – a small Chinese delegation spoke about industrial mining but did not participate in discussions on illicit flows, attendees said. In these conversations, 'China is the missing elephant in the room', said Guillaume de Brier, a researcher at the International Peace Information Service, a Belgium-based institute focused on mining in the African Great Lakes region. 'We talk about them,' he said. 'They are not there.' Futile resistance Indonesian villagers on Sumbawa have done artisanal mining for decades, using hand tools to extract and refine gold. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post Artisanal mining in the village of Lantung dates back decades, locals say. But large-scale mining only began three years ago, when a middle-aged Chinese man known to villagers as 'Mr Xi' began striking deals with smallholders to dig on their land. He promised compensation that did not materialise, villagers said. But attempts to protest have had little effect. Runoff from the gaping pits on the mountaintops is killing crops. Every week, it seems, cattle downstream of the mine's cyanide pools drop dead, locals say. 'Everything you see here, that hill and that hill and that one. … Everything you see that is stripped land is the Chinese,' said Sabuddin, a local villager. Wearing a long-sleeved shirt that hung loose on his scrawny frame, Sabuddin, 49, who like many Indonesians goes by only one name, stood perched on a jagged bluff. He said he did 'rakyat' mining, working with a hammer and pickax. He dug sometimes in areas like this one, which Chinese operators had excavated and then abandoned, Sabuddin said. But he had never mined for the Chinese. 'They work illegally,' he explained. 'I don't want to be involved in all that.' Yet, looking across the jungles he'd trekked through as a boy, he sometimes felt a sense of awe at the scale of the Chinese operation, he said. He pointed out a building with zinc roofs on the opposing crag – a dormitory for workers who guard the illicit mine. Even when night falls, the lights in those buildings don't turn off, he said. The crushers keep whirring; the excavators keep inching forward. Locals couldn't run an operation like this, Sabuddin said. 'No,' he continued. 'Only the Chinese.'
NZ Herald
6 days ago
- NZ Herald
Trump says crime in Washington DC is out of control. Here's what the data shows
Local and federal data, though, paint a contrasting picture. DC police have made about 900 juvenile arrests this year - almost 20% fewer than during the same time frame last year. About 200 of those charges are for violent crimes, and at least four dozen are for carjacking. This northern summer, DC officials have also implemented stricter curfew laws for teens in response to concerns about large brawls - recorded in videos that spread on social media - breaking out in communities across the city. Violent crime in DC has been on the decline since 2023, when a generational spike in killings rendered the nation's capital one of America's deadliest cities, plunging communities into grief and igniting a local political crisis that escalated to Congress. The decrease since then is part of a nationwide drop over the past two years that in 2024 brought homicide rates to their lowest level in decades. This year, homicides are down more than 30% in data that the Washington Post collected from more than 100 police departments in large US cities. Reports of burglaries and robberies also dipped by double-digit percentages. Discussing crime today, Trump pointed to other cities that he said 'are bad, very bad', appearing to suggest the federal government could take action in places beyond Washington. Jeanine Pirro, US Attorney for Washington, DC, holds a news conference. Photo / Tom Brenner, for The Washington Post 'You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is. We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. 'And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland,' Trump added, calling them 'so far gone'. Every city Trump mentioned by name has seen homicide and violent crimes decline this year. Not captured in statistics, though, is the grief, pain, and shattered sense of safety that follow each crime. A few hours before 19-year-old software engineer and Elon Musk protege Edward Coristine was beaten, a man suffered a non-fatal gunshot wound. Later that day, a 27-year-old man would be fatally shot blocks from the Capitol. The following night, a 38-year-old Northwest Washington resident was killed in gunfire in Columbia Heights. None of these crimes made national headlines. But the image Trump shared of Coristine continues to ricochet online. Last week, the President described crime in DC as 'out of control', with young 'thugs' and 'gang members' who are 'randomly attacking, mugging, maiming, and shooting innocent Citizens'. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser (Democrat) refuted that image on Monday, noting the recent drops in crime while adding that the city could use the federal government's help with other law enforcement priorities, such as adding more prosecutors and judges in the city. 'If the priority is to show force in an American city, we know he can do that here,' Bowser, who had been silent since the President initially threatened to take over the city, said of Trump in an interview on MSNBC. 'But it won't be because there's a spike in crime.' FBI arrest data collected by the Washington Post shows juvenile arrests nationwide have largely been dropping since the 1990s. In 2024, the rate was about 439 arrests per 100,000 juveniles, down 7% from 2023 and five times lower than in 1997. Juvenile arrests are down in DC this year, but the trend doesn't hold everywhere. In Baltimore, police made 1377 juvenile arrests in 2024, a 47.4% increase from the previous year, according to FBI data. In New York City, juvenile arrests were up 10.9% in 2024 compared with 2023 and are continuing to rise. New York police made more than 5200 arrests from January through June this year, up almost 10% from the same period the year before. And Chicago is seeing an even sharper rise, but the juvenile arrest count there remains less than half of the 2019 figure. US Attorney Jeanine Pirro, the Trump-appointed prosecutor who handles most of DC's adult crime, said the nation's capital shields violent youngsters from consequence. She joined the President in advocating that more teenagers, including those as young as 14, be funnelled into the adult justice system. In DC, suspects as young as 15 can be charged as adults. 'Young people are coddled, and they don't need to be coddled anymore,' Pirro said last week at a news conference. 'They need to be held accountable.' A sign in response to the city's summer curfew on youths. Photo / Eric Lee, for The Washington Post Eduardo Ferrer, policy director of Georgetown Law's Juvenile Justice Initiative, said it was important to keep in mind that the vast majority of DC's teenagers are doing the right things. And for that minority of young people who commit serious violent crimes, the solution should not be charging them as adults, Ferrer said. He pointed to an influential Centres for Disease Control study from 2007 that found youths charged as adults were 34% more likely to be rearrested than those who went through the juvenile justice system. 'The evidence shows that this is a policy that may sound tough on crime but actually undermines public safety,' Ferrer said. Since early July, an 11pm citywide curfew has been in effect for those aged 17 and younger. It runs until the end of the month. Local leaders also implemented stricter curfew laws for teens in response to concerns about large brawls, including at the Southwest Waterfront and in the U Street corridor in Northwest Washington. The city has had four 'juvenile curfew zones' this summer - locations with more restrictive rules from 8 to 11pm. The night Coristine was attacked, a curfew zone was in place in parts of Southwest and Northeast Washington. There have been no reported violations of those curfews, according to DC police. Hours after Coristine was attacked, residents in a nearby block were awakened by shouting on their usually quiet, tree-lined street. One person described seeing a rowdy crowd of youngsters, some in masks. Later, they saw a young man, beaten and bloodied. When DC police arrived, 'all parties had fled the scene and the officers had nothing found', according to a department spokesperson. When asked whether there were other incidents in the area in the predawn hours, the spokesperson said 'there were unfounded reports of suspicious groups; however, officers did not locate any such groups'. The weekend's incident unnerved residents, even before the nearby attack of Coristine captured the President's and the nation's attention. 'This is a safe city, but overhearing and witnessing gang threats and then watching the camera footage of the thuggery is disturbing,' said one resident. The crowd of teens, he said, were roaming the street and appeared to be checking for unlocked cars and things to steal. 'The language Trump uses to describe DC is wrongbut clearly there is something bad going on that needs to stop.'
