DC Government Forgetting Who It’s Supposed to Serve

Colbert King shares the frustration of many: DC bureaucrats are more concerned with their jobs than the safety and care of its citizens.  King laments on the number of unsolved murders, unprocessed rape kits, and sub par education in the District:

Official figures on unprocessed sex kits were unavailable. But Hughes reported that 60 percent of sex-offense cases recorded thus far in 2009 have been closed. In 2008, the police closed only 53 percent of such cases.

Such a low closure rate for sex offenses, as with unsolved murders, ought to be cause for alarm. It probably is elsewhere. Not in the District.

There are no rallies at Freedom Plaza over sexual mayhem and dead bodies on streets east of Rock Creek Park.

Instead, we resort to songs and prayers on behalf of a forensic lab because hope of stopping murder and rape in the first place has been all but abandoned. Or so it would seem.

This much is true: Words about murder and rape hardly pass through the lips of clergy, who much prefer getting worked up to a fare-thee-well over the possibility of same-sex marriage.

So, too, the media, which dwell on the relative merits of speed humps in upscale neighborhoods, political jockeying between Mayor Adrian Fenty and the D.C. Council, and teacher demands for respect from Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who’s not inclined to give them any.

Oh sure, there are children trying to learn while street gangs are shooting outside their schools. And there may be girls worried about reaching maturity without getting sexually molested. But who really cares?

The politicians, prodded by the unions, prefer to bemoan cuts in the teaching ranks. Students, however, are left to contend with more than the loss of a teacher, guidance counselor or janitor. For many, their safety is at risk.

Makes me wanna holla for sure.

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