WASHINGTON — For most of Tuesday, a Capitol Police officer was posted at K Street and New Jersey Avenue Southeast in Navy Yard at the scene of another D.C. carjacking.
This time the victim was U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar coming home from dinner around 9 p.m.
"Three guys came out of nowhere and they pointed guns at me," said Rep. Cuellar.
The Texas Democrat and part-time Navy Yard resident says three "young looking" men in ski masks greeted him with guns drawn just as he pulled up to his condo.
"I do have a black belt," said Cuellar. He added that facing three armed men he gave up his car and phone. "You got to keep calm under those situations," he said.
Several of Cuellar's neighbors say they are concerned the attack is part of a larger safety problem in D.C.
"I don't know if it was a coincidence or whether he was a member, and it really doesn't matter. I think everybody has the right to feel safe," said fellow Democrat Ohio Congresswoman Joyce Beatty who lives nearby.
"I don't walk late at night because of the number of occurrences that have happened," Rep. Beatty said.
Navy Yard is a neighborhood with a lot of high-profile people, but neighbors here say proximity to power has not stopped the spike in D.C. crime from affecting them, too.
"My partner and I met 30 years ago at a bar over here and at that time...the older people they know how bad it was," said one of Rep. Cuellar's neighbors, Steve Sowers. "We just don't want to see it go back to that," he said of D.C. and its crime rates in the 1980s.
While police search for the three carjackers, some here hope the spotlight will bring with it changes in how D.C. handles crime.
"It is often the people with the least resources who are most affected by crime," said neighbor Tammy Williams. "If this can shed some light on that and provide some support to those who need it most then hopefully there can be some good that comes from it."
Sowers, who has lived a total of more than 35 years in D.C., said, "I hope it brings some light, some pressure on the mayor...whoever needs to get started down here because it's getting bad. It is bad."
Rachelle Harrison had just pulled up to make a delivery at the Congressman's building when she said she saw the carjackers "rush" him.
"Next thing I know he came up and said, 'Can I use your phone? Someone call 911. I've just been robbed for my car,'" Harrison said. "We stood there with him while he called the police."
Tuesday, Harrison was reluctantly back at the building for another delivery - a job she says she does not feel safe doing in the neighborhood, at least not at night.
"That's why when I saw this delivery I didn't want to take it. But I took it because it's daytime," said Harrison.
Within about two hours after Congressman Cuellar was attacked he said police had recovered his car, his phone and even his leftovers. Police are still searching for the attackers.
What people who live here hope they can get back is the sense of safety built up over the past several years.
"It's just sad what's happened to this city," said Sowers. "You know, we lived here in the eighties. It just seems to be going back. You've got to put the bars back on the windows. And I just don't want to see that."
According to crime stats from MPD robberies, car thefts, and assaults are all up here in Navy Yard compared to this time last year.