How Washington turned into a violent drug-infested swamp with crack addicts in sight of the White House

Daily Mail​

6 days ago

It was the crime that finally shamed the nation's capital.
On August 3, Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old Elon Musk protégé, was attacked on the street and left battered and bleeding.
A week later, at the intersection where it happened, the scene remains just the kind that that President Trump wants to eradicate by sending in 800 National Guard troops to end 'bloodshed, bedlam and squalor'.
Close to where Coristine - nicknamed 'Big Balls' - was brutally assaulted, the front window of a Post Office is covered in graffiti, and so are the walls of other buildings. Cans, pizza boxes and detritus litter the streets while garbage cans overflow.
Homes have bars on the windows and security alarm signs planted prominently outside, along with guard dog warnings in English and Spanish.
According to local residents, things have got worse since the pandemic.
'What I see are more homeless people suffering from addiction and severe mental health issues,' said one woman.
In another hangover from the pandemic, criminals are now wearing Covid-era medical masks to disguise themselves as they launch late-night attacks and carjackings.
In the surveillance footage police released in the Coristine case, a suspect is wearing one.
Meanwhile, Washington's mayor, Muriel Bowser, has argued that there is no crimewave in the city.
After Trump adviser Stephen Miller suggested the murder rate was worse than Iraqui capital Baghdad, Bowser said that was 'hyperbolic and false'.
She accepted there was a spike in 2023 but said there was a significant drop after that, with violent crime currently down 26 percent compared to last year.
However, what Bowser didn't say is that the sense of spiraling crime in the city comes partly from where it is happening - in central areas, including close to the White House, rather than long-blighted outlying zones.
The attack on Coristine happened in an trendy enclave popular with young Republican and Democrat staffers, just a mile north of the White House.
A few minutes down the road, in early July, congressional intern Eric Tarpinian-Jachym, 21, was shot dead.
That fatal shooting happened in a seemingly quiet residential neighborhood at 10:30pm
It began with an altercation between two groups that escalated into gunfire near a block of apartments, an underground station and a Metro outlet, according to police reports.
Eric's mother, Tamara Jachym, accused the city's council of treating violent crime like a 'joke'.
'Your constituents are dying. They're getting killed and maimed. This isn't OK,' she appealed to municipal authorities.
She called on the council to lean on the federal government for help.
Near the White House itself, it is common for people to take crack cocaine or relieve themselves in little-patrolled alleyways.
One homeless man on a street corner, within sight of the White House, told the Daily Mail the crime he was witnessing at night was 'getting worse', including a recent incident involving a man with a rifle.
When told the president was sending in the National Guard, the man said he may head for Nevada.
Meanwhile, the brazenness of car break-ins is now so bad one Washington restaurant worker left a note in their window pleading for criminals to leave them alone, following four previous attacks.
It read: 'There is nothing of value in this car. Only restaurant supplies and broken dreams.