Washington, D.C. and other U.S. cities becoming war zones as crime skyrockets under Democrat control

American cities are becoming war zones under liberal leadership, and a quintuple shooting in Washington, D.C. is just the latest example of this tragic trend.

When police were called to the intersection of Saratoga Avenue NE and 14th Street following reports of a shooting, they found three men with gunshot wounds. Two of the men involved were pronounced dead at the scene, but a third was conscious and breathing. Two others brought themselves to a nearby hospital, with one now in stable condition and the other in critical condition.

Police were looking for three men in a gray SUV after locals reported that around a hundred rounds were fired using an automatic weapon. One local journalist said that the hundred shots were fired across three separate incidents spanning a period of ten minutes, while a neighbor said that it sounded like a “war zone.”

According to police, the incident is a “crew-on-crew” shooting that took place as a result of “historical beefs.”

Acting Chief of Police Pamela A. Smith said: “We are having these crew on crew senseless arguments with firearms being introduced when folks have disputes as opposed to being able to resolve them.”

She added: “Our officers were present in this area, as they always are. The officer just so happened to be on another block when this incident occurred.”

This week, Washington, D.C. reached the dubious milestone of 200 homicides so far this year after a shooting in Northwest D.C. left a teenager dead and another fatal shooting took place in Southeast D.C. The first incident was a dispute between two groups of people that turned deadly, while the second fatality was a man who got caught in the crossfire of two cars shooting at each other.

This marked the third year in a row D.C. registered more than 200 homicides, although that figure was not reached last year until December 29.

Scared residents are fleeing Democrat-run cities

Residents of the city have said they are changing their routines in response to high crime, with homicides and robberies climbing 29 and 67 percent, respectively. One lobbyist said he stopped walking in his neighborhood after an attack near Dupont Circle, eventually relocating to Maryland to get away from the crime-ridden city. Other residents have reported taking measures such as using alternative entrances to their building and avoiding going to gas stations at night. The general consensus is that the city has taken a major turn for the worse; while crime was largely limited to those associated with drugs and gangs in the past, now innocent people are being shot in nice neighborhoods.

While Smith blamed the situation on “too many guns on our streets,” the truth is that many liberal-run cities are experiencing a similar problem, with some cities actually less safe than legitimate war zones. For example, there are some zip codes in the city of Chicago, which is run by a Democratic mayor, where young adult men have a higher likelihood of being shot and killed than American soldiers were in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Although that may sound like an exaggeration, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found the homicide rate for young men in the 60624 zip code of Chicago was more than 1,200 for every 100,000; the average yearly deaths for American soldiers engaged in heavy combat were 395 and 330 per 100,000 in Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively.

Chicago is in Cook County, whose Soros-backed DA, Kim Foxx, dropped charges against 30 percent of its felony defendants in 2020.

In fact, 27 of the top 30 crime-ridden cities in the nation are run by Democrats, whose failure to rein in crime are turning many of these locations into war zones and sending longtime residents fleeing.

Sources for this article include:

DailyMail.co.uk

Fox5DC.com

DailyMail.co.uk

JAMANetwork.com

DailySignal.com