Residents of the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Washington, D.C., and Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Denise Krepp want to know why crime is spiking in their area and if a low prosecution rate is to blame. Hundreds of residents gathered last month for an anti-crime meeting. Officials were unable to provide any information about the prosecution rate, so Krepp filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Department of Justice. The answers, however, will be costly: $40 an hour for potentially hundreds of hours of research.
In response, the determined residents came up with a creative way to raise the needed funds—a bake sale. “I want to know why we have criminals on the street when they should be locked up,” Krepp told NBC 4. “But if you have no idea how many cases you’ve prosecuted, then you have no idea what the crime level is in Washington, D.C. And if you don’t, who does?”
