There's a lot of talk about President Trump taking over the DC police department. Argument about whether the District has much or not so much crime. The answer is "much" and it has been that way for decades.
The DrsC spent two years in the DC metro area back in the mid-1970s. My university loaned me to the FedGov to be an in-house consultant for the Dept. of Agriculture. We lived and worked in suburban Maryland, inside the Beltway but outside the District.
USDA has a big footprint in the DC area. The USDA headquarters is downtown on the Mall but they also had a multistory building in Hyattsville and, outside the Beltway, the Ag. Library and the Ag. research station at Beltsville.
Parking downtown was limited so during business hours they ran a 20 passenger shuttle bus on a loop that stopped at all of their area locations. If we needed to go downtown for a meeting we'd take the shuttle and leave our car in Hyattsville where parking was plentiful.
Crime in the District was so bad the Ag. shuttle took a circuitous route to avoid hardcore slums and "war zones." Only the last mile or so before we reached the Capitol transited a rough neighborhood.
And that, dear reader, was nearly 50 years ago. Random gunfire is much more prevalent now.
