The number of D.C. police officers in the District has fallen below 3,800, its lowest level in a decade, breaking a threshold that top District officials once warned would be dangerously thin in a city that continues to grow, reports the Washington Post .
As of Dec. 17, D.C. police had 3,786 officers, according to the mayor's office, falling from more than 3,929 a year ago. Meanwhile this year, homicides across the District have surged more than 50 percent, and a spike in robberies in some neighborhoods instilled renewed fear of a return to the higher crime rates of the 1990s. Though police say violent crime is at its lowest level in seven years, residents polled put crime at the top of their worries this year.