Carjacked in the capital: The 'crime of the pandemic' is still roiling D.C. Rich SchapiroAugust 24, 2025 at 4:30 AM Michael Waller sits in his car in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 18. He was carjacked on the same street in 2021. (Caroline Gutman for NBC News) It was just after 8 p.m.
- - Carjacked in the capital: The 'crime of the pandemic' is still roiling D.C.
Rich SchapiroAugust 24, 2025 at 4:30 AM
Michael Waller sits in his car in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 18. He was carjacked on the same street in 2021. (Caroline Gutman for NBC News)
It was just after 8 p.m. when Michael Waller pulled up to his home on a well-to-do block near Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Waller, then 59, glanced at his phone to check his email. Within seconds, two men appeared on either side of his gray Mercedes waving Glock handguns.
The man on the passenger side opened the door and slammed his gun into Waller's right ear and scalp, knocking him out for a moment. When he came to, he was still strapped into his seat belt, blood flowing down the side of his head.
The gunmen ordered him out of the car and commanded him to throw his phone into the bushes. As they began to drive away, one pointed his gun at Waller and threatened to kill him on the spot — prompting Waller, battered and bloodied, to duck into an alley.
"These guys knew what they were doing, and they were so smooth about it," said Waller, a defense and foreign policy strategist at the Center for Security Policy, a conservative think tank. "They seemed like real professionals."
Michael Waller sits in Stanton Park in Washington, D.C. (Caroline Gutman for NBC News)
The carjacking in August 2021 made no headlines. It was part of a crime wave that shook the city during the pandemic. Four years later, the capital is teeming with National Guard troops and federal officers called in by President Donald Trump, who also took over the Metropolitan Police Department after highlighting the recent attempted carjacking of an administration staffer.
The takeover has sparked a fierce debate over the state of crime in D.C. What's beyond dispute is that carjackings exploded in Washington and several other major cities in the U.S. after 2019.
It's a particularly brutal crime, experts say, one that often causes lasting psychological damage. And while most types of crime that surged during the pandemic have since dropped off, carjackings are one of the few that have remained well above pre-pandemic levels in certain big cities like D.C., police data shows.
"It became the crime of the pandemic," said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a D.C.-based organization of current and former law enforcement officials focused on improving policing. "And the reason you still have it is because juveniles learned how to do it. That presents a lot of challenges for the justice system."
Pastor Kevin Simmons, who was shot during a carjacking in Milwaukee in 2023, stands next to the vehicle he was driving at the time. He said police arrested a 15-year-old in connection with his case. (Mike De Sisti / Milwaukee Journal via USA Today Network)
The soaring number of young people who have engaged in carjacking is indeed one of the key factors that has driven the surge in the Washington area and beyond, according to interviews with more than a half-dozen police officials, criminologists and youth advocates.
Some of these perpetrators stole vehicles to use them to commit more crimes. Many others commit carjackings simply for the thrill of it, or to earn respect and attention on social media, according to police investigators and advocates who have spoken to the young offenders.
Many of those who were arrested in or around Washington were out of police custody in a day or two, the investigators and advocates said. In Waller's case, court records show that the men who were later arrested for being in the stolen car were not prosecuted at all — an outcome that those familiar with the system in D.C. said was not uncommon.
Over the last 18 months, the carjacking numbers have fallen in the D.C. area. Sgt. Josh Scall, a supervisor in the carjacking unit in neighboring Prince George's County, Maryland, said he's proud of the numerous arrests his unit has made in recent years, and the impact that's having on the crime rate. But even one carjacking is one more than he wants to see in his county.
Leslie Marie Gaines, 55, was killed in June 2024 when Kayla Kenisha Brown, 22, carjacked an SUV from MedStar Washington Hospital Center with Gaines still inside and crashed, police say. (Andrew Leyden / AP file)
"People look at these numbers and they don't take a minute to realize, numbers are people," Scall said. "These are people who were violently removed from their vehicle and are going to be psychologically changed for the rest of their lives."
"We can parade that we're not at 573," Scall added, referring to the record number of carjackings recorded in Prince George's in 2023. "But it's still unacceptable in our books."
'Spiraled out of control'
Peter Newsham was entering his fourth year as the chief of Washington's Metropolitan Police Department when Covid began to sweep across the country. Crime skyrocketed in D.C. and other major cities spurred by a perfect storm of factors, including school closures, mass layoffs and social unrest following the death of George Floyd.
"I had never seen anything like it in my time in Washington, D.C.," said Newsham, who joined the force in 1989.
Police Chief Peter Newsham runs an outdoor roll call to maintain social distancing during the early days of the Covid pandemic on March 24, 2020. (Jonathan Newton / The Washington Post via Getty Images file)
Carjacking was among the crimes that rose the highest and the fastest. Newsham's department was dealing with a staffing crisis, low morale and new legislation that reduced penalties for young offenders.
Even when investigators were successful in tracking down suspects, Newsham said, they were often right back on the street in a matter of days. That was especially true for those under the age of 18, who amounted to 65% of the 243 arrests the department made for carjacking in 2020 and 2021, according to police data.
"These young people knew they could get away with it," he said. "There was very little consequence, and it spiraled out of control."
Roughly 150 carjackings took place in the district in 2019. In 2020 that number more than doubled to 360, according to police data.
Newsham left the department in January 2021 to become chief of police in Prince William County, Virginia. That year, the number of carjackings in D.C. rose to 424. It went even higher — to 484 — in 2022.
But the next year was when the situation got really out of hand. A total of 957 carjackings — nearly three a day — were reported in D.C. in 2023, according to police data.
Lt. Scott Dowling, who leads the more than two dozen detectives in the Metropolitan Police Department carjacking task force, said a relatively small group of offenders helped drive the explosion in cases.
"The same people were committing multiple, multiple, multiple offenses," Dowling said. In one case in 2023, a search warrant led to the arrest of three people suspected of carrying out roughly 50 carjackings and thefts, according to Dowling.
The carjacking trajectory in D.C. during the pandemic mirrored that of other major U.S. cities.
Evidence markers placed at the scene where a Rideshare driver was shot and wounded in a carjacking in Chicago in June 2024. (Kyle Mazza / NurPhoto via AP file)
Philadelphia went from 224 carjackings in 2019 to 409 in 2020. The numbers kept rising over the next two years — to 866 in 2021 and 1,311 in 2022.
In Chicago, carjackings rose from 603 in 2019 to 1,852 in 2021. The city experienced a slight dip in 2022, recording 1,649.
The numbers began to drop sharply in those cities and many others in 2023. Not so in D.C. or one of its closest neighbors — Prince George's County.
Situated along Washington's eastern border, the sprawling, 900,000-person county is more residential than the nation's capital. It's home to the National Harbor and the main campus of the University of Maryland but also has pockets of low-income areas with high crime.
Sgt. Scall, the carjacking unit supervisor, said the volume of cases was so extreme in 2023 that he would go to bed with his phone in his hand.
"We had some really bad incidents happen where we were surveilling for cars and we were shot at," Scall said. "That happened three times. It was pure insanity."
Scall said the stolen cars were rarely going to chop shops, where the perpetrators could make quick cash. It was far more common for people to steal cars for the thrill of it, to get recognition online or to use them to commit other crimes, he said.
Prince George's County Police investigate the scene of a carjacking in National Harbor, Md. on Dec. 28, 2023. An unidentified off-duty police officer and two family members were carjacked and the suspect fled the scene in the officer's personal vehicle. (Michael A. McCoy for The Washington Post via Getty Images file)
And it wasn't just young people from poorer neighborhoods behind the crimes.
"There's no quintessential carjacker," Scall said. "We've done search warrants at million-dollar houses. It really crossed over financial lines."
The number of carjackings in Prince George's County dropped to 368 in 2024, down nearly 40% from 2023. So far this year, there have been 113, which is roughly 50% fewer than the 250 recorded at this point in 2024.
Scall attributes the drop to his unit's increased prowess in busting the carjackers.
"If you do a carjacking in Prince George's County, we're usually closing it in a day or two," he said. "We've sharpened our skills. We know what to do. We know where to look."
But it's not lost on Scall that the numbers this year are still trending far higher than the 93 recorded in 2019. He said policy shifts have helped keep repeat offenders off the street for longer than before, but he thinks the juvenile justice system is "still playing catch up."
"If they are a juvenile, I don't expect them to go to jail for 20 years," Scall said. "But I think if you violently rob someone you should probably sit out for a little bit."
In D.C., 183 carjackings were recorded through July of this year. That's about 40% fewer than the same period in 2024. But it's already higher than the 152 incidents in all of 2019.
The case that got Trump's attention — the attempted carjacking of Edward Coristine, 19, better known by his online nickname "Big Balls — took place in the early morning hours of Aug. 3. According to the police report, officers on patrol spotted about 10 "juveniles" assaulting Coristine, who worked under Elon Musk at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, before moving to the Social Security Administration. The officers managed to arrest two suspects – a boy and girl, both 15.
A large American flag hangs near a sign that reads "Heal Fast Big Balls Thanks, Trump!" on Aug. 7, on a building near the White House. (Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)
Dowling said he believes new tracking software in cars, as well as new laws that raised penalties for gun crimes and thefts, helped to bring down the incidents of carjacking. But old-fashioned police work also played a significant role, he said.
"My detectives are phenomenal," Dowling said. "I often say that I don't get impressed very easily, but they impress me."
Helping teens
Jawanna Hardy, the founder of the nonprofit Guns Down Friday, has devoted her adult life to helping victims of crime and young people caught up in the criminal justice system in the D.C. area. That gave her an intimate glimpse into the factors driving the carjacking crisis.
As the pandemic took hold, children suddenly lost the structure that school brought. Many in lower income areas experienced losses far dearer to them, Hardy said.
"A lot of my kids lost their grandparents, their strongest support system, during Covid," said Hardy.
Jawanna Hardy at her home in Washington. (Caroline Gutman for NBC News)
Video clips glorifying car thefts caught fire on social media. Hardy noticed that young people in different cities were boasting about their exploits.
"Everybody had a name. They had a song," Hardy said. "I could understand why the children were into it. It was exciting."
As the months went on, Hardy also noticed that the youths who were being brought to her for mentorship after getting caught up in the justice system were younger than she was used to seeing.
"For some reason, the 15-year-olds were tearing the city up," she said. "I'd say 75% of the kids I was working with were 15 when they started committing these crimes."
When NBC News first reached out to Hardy last week, she was with a 15-year-old who had recently been arrested for stealing cars. He was one of the so-called Kia Boys, who had been using basic tools to break into the vehicles and start them.
"I don't know what made me decide to do it," the teen said. "There was just a freedom. You're not supposed to be inside a vehicle, but it's moving fast at your feet. I enjoyed feeling that rush."
Accounts like that sparked a light bulb moment for Hardy.
"I realized we were addressing the violent piece, but we weren't addressing the need to want to drive," she said.
So for young people who were at least 16, she began to help them navigate how to get a learner's permit. It was clear they wanted to drive. Why not help them do it legally?
"That's what we're doing right now," Hardy said. "We're trying to get kids into the mindset of, 'I can get a license. I can get a car. I can do this the right way.'"
Bullets and a first aid kit that Hardy uses in demonstrations during "Stop the Bleed" classes she teaches to youth. (Caroline Gutman for NBC News)'Why have laws?'
A day after Waller's Mercedes was stolen, Prince George's County officers spotted it at a busy intersection 6 miles from his home. When they tried to pull the car over, the driver sped off, according to a police spokesperson. The Mercedes crossed into D.C. but crashed into another vehicle on a highway there.
D.C. police arrested the four occupants, one of whom had a handgun with an extended magazine, according to a police report on the incident. Investigators also recovered pills with labels indicating they were oxycodone, according to the report.
The suspects included two brothers, Davon Alston, 18, and Juvan Alston, 19. The two other suspects were 18 and 21. The four were booked on a range of charges, including carrying a pistol without a license, unauthorized use of a vehicle, fleeing a law enforcement officer and possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance, the police report says. (It does not make clear who was hit with the gun charge.)
For reasons unknown, federal prosecutors declined to bring charges, according to court records obtained by NBC News. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia did not respond to a request for comment.
Waller, for his part, knew that his car had been recovered and that some suspects had been arrested. A detective had asked him to participate in a virtual line-up, but Waller said it took him too long to identify the one gunman he got a decent look at, the one who had pistol-whipped him.
The neighborhood where Michael Waller was carjacked in 2021. (Caroline Gutman for NBC News)
Waller said he never heard back from the police or prosecutors. When NBC News informed him this week that the men in the car weren't charged, Waller noted that he had no way of knowing whether the four were involved in the carjacking.
Even still, he was aghast.
"They're literally letting criminals in a stolen car, who are escaping police, back on the streets," Waller said. "Then why have laws?"
Eleven months after the carjacking, a 17-year-old was shot dead outside a home in Southeast D.C. Two teenagers were arrested and charged with murder: the Alston brothers.
The stolen vehicle police say Juan Alston was in before shooting a 17-year-old in 2022. (Superior Court of the District of Columbia)
They have pleaded not guilty and their trials are slated for next year.
Police charging documents say a video posted to Instagram 30 minutes after the fatal shooting showed Davon Alston and a second person riding in a Mercedes that was believed to have been used in the shooting.
According to the documents, it had been carjacked about an hour earlier.
Source: "AOL General News"
Source: Astro Blog
Read More >> Full Article on Source: Astro Blog
#LALifestyle #USCelebrities