Montgomery County police were called to Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda midday Wednesday, December 17, 2025, after an assault was reported there. The assault was reported at 12:26 PM Wednesday. This was the tenth assault reported at the mall this year. Eleven assaults were tallied at the popular retail, dining, and entertainment center in 2024.
12 comments:
11 assaults reported nowhere else but here. How many assaults occurred at the mall in the 70's and 80's when hanging out at the mall was a national pass time almost for teens? I don't think we saw that. The other thing that's ever-present and beyond disgusting is the pot smell you get hit with coming into the mall especially from the movie theater level parking. Can we please establish a pot smoking area away from the doors? We did that for cigarettes why not pot?
Robert, it's estimated somewhere in the neighborhood of one million people a month visit the mall, according to this overview of the facility, from retail property website Occupi.com -- https://getoccupi.com/malls/montgomery-mall
The county's publication of crime data for 2025, where every reported crime is logged, can be found here -- https://data.montgomerycountymd.gov/browse?category=public+safety&limitTo=datasets&utf8=%E2%9C%93&sortBy=relevance&page=1&pageSize=20 (To see the actual data, click the 'export' button, in upper right area of screen.) The police data actually list *11* calls this year at the mall that have been classified as "ASSAULT - 2ND DEGREE". 11 assaults out of 6,000,000 visitors equates to 000166666667 percent, which may actually be a figure double the actual rate, since I intentionally halved the number of people the retail-space website calculates actually go to Mont Mall.) In the Bethesda police district, there have been 414 2nd-degree assault calls in 2025. The mall's share represents 2.657 of those, which seems negligible, considering the vast numbers of people who visit. Still not consoling if you're the victim of one of those incidents, but, in the big scheme of things, we're talking shot glasses vs Great Lakes.
The reason for the pot tolerance is to keep a segment of the population under control. Hypocrisy is the best description for those who banned cigarettes from public spaces yet accept pot without any worry about lung cancer. Not really a problem as these pot smoking slackers tend to be a reliable voting block for entitlement handouts that democrats buy votes with.
7:09 - That's an interesting perspective. But yeah, shouldn't we strive for zero? Again, I don't recall, decades ago, the frequency of incidents at the mall. This seems a newer phenomenon but not sure.
5:16 - The real reason for the tolerance, let's be honest, is hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue. Don't be fooled. At least Rehoboth and Bethany and maybe Dewey Beach as well, have established a smoking perimeter. No pot in town, on boardwalk, etc. That would be the end of those places that's for sure. It's beyond disgusting. Lastly, I wouldn't be surprised if the tide turned on pot eventually. As you point out, there are some serious health concerns with it and the pot of 2025, as I understand it, is much stronger than its cousins of decades ago.
Come on- it was definitely a problem years ago- how are we pretending that crime is a newer phenomenon. The reporting is just so much easier to hear or read about these days- especially when bloggers want to focus on almost exclusively in Montgomery Mall or Westbard incidents in a vacuum.
JAC, it seems that there are some teen delinquencies who bring these types of issue to this mall. Robbing someone over a North Face Coat or even Canadian Goose. Even at a high end mall like this crime still remains the same.
To yer' point, this whole county is basically a Hamsterdam. (Referencing HBO's The Wire). IYKYK
Can't we ALL get along? Zero is mo' betta'! #NoTolerance
8:07 - Sure but zero tolerance would help. We don't have that.
@8:07, we are talking about the charge of 2nd-degree assault, examples of which can include such ridiculousness as two customers argue and one threatens or shoves the other, or someone spitting on or at another. (You laugh, but it has happened and been charged.) The frequency or number of incidents of robbery, taking someone’s North Face coat, is a different matter from what Robert has been tracking here, although those stats are also in the county-published data.
I had an Orange Julius taken from me at switch blade knife point in 1971 at the mall by the middle school bully. Not really, but it could have happened…
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