On WTOP's "Ask the Chief" program last week, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier said that sexual assault reports are up in the District this year. In several of D.C.'s police districts, "they're up double-digit percentages," Lanier said—and according to WTOP's Mark Segraves, "serious sexual assaults" in the Seventh District are up by as much as 325 percent over the past six months.
Given the huge percentage of sexual assaults that are never reported to the police—and the added concern that D.C. police don't always investigate reports they do get—this could actually be a good sign for the District. Lanier didn't go that far: "You can't just look at numbers and not do any analysis and use that as something to warn or scare people with, you gotta kinda look at what the facts are," she told WTOP. She agreed to come back with more information on the problem in her next appearance on the program.