YEMISI EGBEWOLE: DC’s Teen Mafia Mayhem Exposes The Hard Truths Blue Cities Don’t Want To Deal With

We need to talk about the kids in Washington, DC, and why blue cities need to wake up.

Last weekend, about 200 young people flooded Navy Yard, one of the city’s busiest dining and entertainment districts. What followed was exactly the kind of chaos DC residents have become far too accustomed to: fights, robberies, businesses locking their doors, terrified residents ducking inside, two guns recovered and a 15-year-old accused of firing shots into the air. Three young people were allegedly robbed. Two of them were beaten badly enough to go to the hospital.

And my first thought when I saw the videos was not shocked. It was, “Oh no, not again.” That’s the problem.

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These so-called teen takeovers are no longer treated as a five-alarm warning. They become background noise in a city that begins to normalize behavior that should never be normal.

Residents of the Navy Yard have been sounding the alarm for months. There were similar incidents last year, including large, disorderly gatherings, fights and Halloween chaos that required a law enforcement response.

The response from too many people, especially online, is the same tired excuse. The kids need more places to go. They need more recreation centers. They need more third spaces.

Please. We don’t live in 1998. These aren’t kids wandering around at 10pm looking for an open gym. They’re on their phones. They’re on TikTok. They organize online and meet in places where adults live, work, eat and spend money. And even if that weren’t the case, the answer to a twelve- or thirteen-year-old walking around a chaotic nightlife district late at night isn’t to think of a better meeting place. The answer is that they need to be at home.

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That may sound harsh, but it’s not cruel. It’s common sense. And when people say, “Well, sometimes home isn’t safe,” my answer is simple: that’s a failure that should trigger government intervention, child welfare, and social services. It is no justification for children roaming the city streets at night, in the middle of violent gatherings.

Mayor Muriel Bowser got this right after the latest Navy Yard incident. She said she was disappointed and returned to the idea that the problem is simply that children have more to do. According to her, children have enough programs. What is missing is responsibility for families and children who find it acceptable to interact with a neighborhood in this way. She’s right.

These so-called teen takeovers are no longer treated as a five-alarm warning. They become background noise in a city that begins to normalize behavior that should never be normal.

Children need compassion, yes. But they also need instruction. They need boundaries. They need consequences. They need adults who care enough about them to say no. What too many progressive leaders offer instead is a form of neglect dressed up as empathy. They hear discipline and think of punishment. They hear responsibility and think of cruelty. In reality, refusing to correct dangerous behavior is a form of abandonment in itself.

The curfew debate in DC shows exactly how unserious this city can be. The curfew for young people starts at 11 p.m. across the city, and police have also had the authority to establish curfew zones earlier, starting at 8 p.m., in hotspots where large groups of minors gather. That instrument was used at the Navy Yard just before the last takeover. But now the authority for those previous curfew zones is set to expire in April, and there may not be enough votes in Council for them to remain in place.

Let me be clear: a curfew is not a long-term solution. It’s not a panacea. But it’s something. It’s one of the few tools city leaders currently have to create immediate order while they work on larger interventions. If the Council cannot provide a real long-term answer, then removing even the short-term instrument is political malpractice.

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And this is where the DC mayor’s race matters. Voters deserve to hear in plain English what candidates like Janeese Lewis George and Kenyan McDuffie are actually up to. Lewis George has raised concerns about the curfew approach. McDuffie has argued that curfews are not a permanent solution and should not replace deeper investment. Fine. Permanent solution or not, residents still need to know what their Democratic leaders are planning here, because “more compassion” can’t just mean more chaos.

There is also a larger moral problem here. Civil society is a contract. People work. They pay taxes. They obey the rules. In return, they expect a basic level of order and security. They expect to be able to go to dinner, attend a baseball game, walk home or sit in their neighborhood without fear that a pack of unsupervised minors can bring the whole place to a standstill. If the government fails to honor that contract, people will lose confidence. And when people lose confidence, cities decline.

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What happened in the Navy Yard was not innocent teenage mischief. It was a warning. Teenagers test boundaries. That’s what they do. But when the adults in charge refuse to enforce boundaries at all, those tests become more dangerous. This time a gun was fired into the air. Next time a child may die.

Tolerating this behavior is unfair to residents, unfair to businesses and unfair to the children themselves. If Democrats want voters to trust them to govern, they must show that they can still do the most basic thing government is supposed to do: protect the public and tell the truth about what’s going wrong. And in cities like D.C., maybe that should start by saying something that shouldn’t be controversial at all: Our kids need more discipline, more responsibility, and a lot fewer excuses.

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