Justice & Law Quote by Marion Berry

It is a masterpiece of accidental candor: a politician trying to launder a headline by deleting the headline-worthy part. Marion Barry’s line works because it exposes, in real time, the rhetorical trick that often underwrites “crime” debates in Washington: define the problem down until the numbers behave. “If you take out the killings” is doing the same work as “excluding outliers” in a policy memo, except here the “outlier” is the very violence residents and reporters are most afraid of. The repetition - “very very” - signals a man pleading with the frame, not arguing with facts.

The intent is defensive and managerial. Barry isn’t making a philosophical point about statistics; he’s trying to protect the city’s reputation, tourism, investment, and by extension his own political standing. In the 1990s and early 2000s, D.C. carried the stigma of a murder capital, a narrative eagerly amplified by national media and suburban politics. Barry is reaching for a counter-narrative: day-to-day life is not a war zone; most people aren’t being robbed on every corner.

The subtext, though, is harsher: some crimes count more than others because some victims are easier to abstract. By cordoning off homicide as an inconvenient category, the quote inadvertently mirrors the way institutions compartmentalize tragedy. It’s also a glimpse of Washington’s perennial tension between lived reality and branding: a capital that sells power and monuments while struggling to account, honestly, for the bodies that don’t fit the brochure.