Why Is Violent Crime Declining in U.S. Cities?: Jeffrey Goldberg
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Feb. 14 (Bloomberg) -- One night, in June 1989, a man namedNathaniel Thomas was shot to death on a street bisecting apublic housing project in the Northeast quadrant of Washington,D.C.
Like many homicides in Washington, this one took placewithin distant view of the U.S. Capitol. I covered the nightpolice beat at the time for the Washington Post, and for cubreporters the shadow of the Capitol dome was an irresistiblecliche, which I inevitably folded into my two-paragraph write-upof what one homicide detective labeled “misdemeanor homicides” -- unimportant murders of young black men involved with the drugtrade -- and which my editor just as inevitably excised.