Last week, Chairman Gray soundly beat incumbent DC Mayor, Adrian Fenty.

Gray won mostly from votes in the predominantly African American neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River (83% in Ward 8)

One of Gray's top campaign promises is to bring jobs and economic development to the high unemployment communities (Unemployment tops 28%)

It's foreseeable that Gray can get this done.  He has lived in this community for many years and major developments are already happening today.

The Department of Homeland Security is currently building their headquartes in St Elizabeths (billed as the largest construction project in the history of the U.S. General Services Administration)
This project is expected to bring more than 30,000 jobs (both direct and indirect employment) during its duration with a payroll earnings of approximately $1.2 billion.

Gray will ensure that these projects hire local Washingtonians first and that Ward 8 will be the first to benefit.  More local jobs mean more social services and less drugs.  Everyone knows that illicit drugs is a major source of crime (both violent and petty).

So, provided that the economy in Ward 8 improves drastically over the next four years, meaning more jobs for the residents and higher Gross Domestic Product, the crime rate will surely decrease.

Here is a Supply and Demand model where the X-axis is GDP and the Y-axis is money.

Over time, as the economy improves and so does the GDP, the amount of wealth within the community increases.

With more jobs, greater wealth, the rate of crime (drug related, robbery, assault, rape) will also decrease.

So things are no longer looking Gray for Southeast.