Washington — While heading to work on Monday afternoon, a suspect in Washington, D.C., opened fire, injuring an off-duty police officer.
Just after noon, the officer “observed a vehicle driving very erratically” in front of him in the 5800 block of 7th Street Northwest, with two occupants inside, according to Chief Pamela Smith of the Metropolitan Police Department. The officer was headed to the 4th District station. After that, the automobile “stopped very abruptly,” according to her, and one man got out and started shooting at the officer’s car.
Uncertainty surrounds whether the gunmen were aware that the unnamed victim was a police officer. The officer, an eighteen-year veteran of the MPD, was operating his car and was not wearing a uniform. Despite his injuries, which were not life-threatening, he managed to drive himself to the 4th District station and from there was taken to a hospital. Smith was unable to verify if flying debris or gunfire caused the officer’s injuries.
A portion of the license plate and the vehicle’s description were provided by the police. The vehicle was tracked by police using a helicopter, and they chased it across the Maryland border until it crashed in Landover, Maryland. In the car, two males were taken into custody.
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The capital city’s police have had difficulty reining in violent crime, with a spike in carjackings and killings in 2023. Homicides are down 26% and carjackings are down 30% from the same period last year, according to Smith and Mayor Muriel Bowser, who argue that improvements in law enforcement tactics and policy have had an impact.
Smith declared, “This kind of violence in our city will not be tolerated.” “We’re going to do everything in our power to make sure that no one gets away with this kind of crime.”
