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       A U.S. Park Police officer was wounded Wednesday afternoon and a person being chased by officers was fatally shot in an exchange of gunfire in the District near 12th and M streets NW, a few blocks south of Logan Circle, authorities said.

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       The officer, who was hit multiple times in the torso and a leg, was alert at a hospital Wednesday evening, said a Park Police spokesman, Sgt. Thomas Twiname. He declined to identify the officer or the person who was killed.

       The incident began about 2:30 p.m. when several Park Police officers saw a “suspected drug violation” near 12th Street and Massachusetts Avenue NW, Twiname said. He said the officers pursued a suspect on foot for at least a block before an “exchange of gunshots.”

       The officer who was wounded fired shots at the suspect, who was pronounced dead at a hospital, Twiname said. He said authorities later found the suspect’s gun at the shooting scene.

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       “As far as how the gunfire was exchanged, that will come out with the investigation,” Twiname said. He did not provide the officer’s age or years of experience as a police officer. Twiname said that the wounded officer had activated their body camera before the shooting and that the department intends to release video from the camera within 30 days.

       Park Police officers in D.C. were recently equipped with body cameras. The department adopted the cameras in late 2022, about five years after two Park Police officers pursued and fatally shot an unarmed motorist in Northern Virginia. The incident brought into focus the department’s lack of cameras.

       After Wednesday’s incident, a resident of the area, Will Schonenberg, 35, who lives near 11th and M streets, said he heard about six to 10 rapid-fire shots. As onlookers gathered, they could see a Park Police officer on the ground with a tourniquet around his right thigh and a man with blood seeping through his jeans sprawled over a curb nearby.

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       Ella Cleveland, 74, said she was sitting in the living room of her apartment on nearby Massachusetts Avenue NW when she heard “cars driving fast and sirens.” She has lived in the neighborhood for 35 years and described it as safe. “It’s upsetting when something like this happens,” she said.

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       The neighborhood, with its tree-lined streets, restaurants and rowhouses, about five blocks north of the White House, has been spared from the spike in homicides that has racked parts of the District this year. Police reported no killings so far in 2023 in the area where Wednesday’s shooting occurred. But there have been 15 robberies there since January, up from five in the same period last year, according to D.C. police data.

       The shooting was the second time this fall that a police officer has been struck by gunfire in the District. In October, officials said a D.C. police officer was wounded in an exchange of gunfire with a 33-year-old man, Arthur Porter, outside an apartment building in Southeast.

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       Porter was killed in that incident. Police have launched an investigation to determine if the officer was hit by friendly fire.

       The Wednesday incident comes as D.C. grapples with rising violent crime, which is up 40 percent compared with the same period last year. The latest police data shows 249 homicides so far this year. The city has not had this many homicides since 2002, when 262 people were killed.

       D.C. Police Chief Pamela A. Smith, who was confirmed by the D.C. Council this month, came to the department last year after more than two decades with the U.S. Park Police, the final 14 months as chief.

       Tom Jackman contributed to this report.

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