The Problem with Safety
Dear Problem Solvers:
The problem with the Fenty administration is that it still doesn’t
recognize that there is a problem. The administration had to cancel its
“Safe Homes Initiative,” under which police officers were going to
knock on doors and ask to be let in search the homes of District
residents. Vehement and widespread opposition by a broad coalition of
citizens, not just traditional civil liberties groups, made it too
embarrassing to implement the initiative. The city council hit back hard
at the administration’s “Video Interoperability for Public Safety”
program, which would tie together thousands of city-run spy cameras in a
single network without any guidelines or safeguards to protect citizens’
privacy. The administration’s “Neighborhood Safety Zone Initiative”
has been halted, at least temporarily, by the fact that the program to
blockade neighborhoods and deny citizens the right to travel on public
streets is clearly unconstitutional and by the refusal of the residents
of the Trinidad neighborhood to allow their constitutional rights to be
sacrificed for the illusion of greater safety.
The administration thinks that if it uses “safe” or “safety”
in the name of a program, that program must be good and in the interests
of the citizens. It thinks that it should end any discussion or
questioning of its initiatives if it claims — without any evidence or
logical arguments to prove it — that the initiatives will actually
increase public safety. It doesn’t value the civil liberties and civil
rights of Washingtonians, and it doesn’t think we do either. It thinks
that we will be glad to surrender our civil liberties if it merely tells
us that we’ll be safer without them. Acting Attorney General Peter
Nickles and Mayor Fenty look for loopholes in the Bill of Rights rather
than honoring, guarding, and protecting citizens’ rights. Nickles
taunts those who would protect our civil liberties by telling them to
take the city to court for violating them, and in the “Neighborhood
Safety Zone” case he bases his position on one outlier court decision
in New York, rather than on controlling decisions in the local circuit
and in the Supreme Court.
With regards to the “Neighborhood Safety Zone” Initiative, the
administration continues to claim that the Trinidad blockade worked. But
what evidence does it have that flooding the neighborhood with patrol
officers and community policing efforts would have been any less
effective than what it has done: cordon off the neighborhood, force
citizens to show identity documents to the police and explain to the
police why they want to travel on a public street, and deny entry to
honest citizens? The administration continues to claim that the
residents of Trinidad support the blockades, when it knows that with few
exceptions they don’t. And the administration continues to claim that
what it is doing is constitutional, when it knows that it doesn’t have
a case that will stand up in court.
The problem with the administration is that after three initiatives
in a row that pose serious civil liberties problems, it still doesn’t
recognize that there is any problem with any of them. I am sure that it
is even now looking for other ways, other initiatives, to push beyond
the limits and violate our civil liberties and civil rights. The problem
is that we have three people designing these programs — Mayor Fenty,
MPD Chief Lanier, and Acting Attorney General Nickles — who believe
that freedom and safety are antithetical, that restricting freedom is
the best way to increase safety. They are wrong, but these three
failures over the past few months have still not taught them that they
are wrong. Therefore, it is up to the city council to explain to them
exactly how and where they made their mistakes. Because if it does not,
Fenty, Lanier, and Nickles will continue to push more initiatives and
programs exactly like these, justifying them with a false appeal to “safety.”
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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How Prepared Are We Really?
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com
On Friday morning, during the height of the rush hour, a power outage
covering a large section of downtown Washington, from F Street to U
Street, 3rd Street to 17th, left more than twelve thousand PEPCO
customers without electrical power for nearly three hours. At the same
time, Metro service in downtown was disrupted until midday, both by the
power outage and by two fires on the Red Line rail tracks. As Saturday’s
Washington Post notes (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/13/AR2008061301257.html),
the electrical failure cut “power to the heart of the nation’s
capital, including the White House and downtown offices, . . . shut down
Metro stations, threw rush hour traffic into a state of bedlam and
highlighted how vulnerable the city can be.” Even the normally timid Post
editorial board opined that “authorities stumbled badly as they sought
to handle the challenges posed by a power outage and Metro track fires.
The shortcomings give rise, yet again, to questions of what would happen
in a far more serious emergency” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/13/AR2008061303427.html).
Like most citizens, when I awoke on Friday I heard the initial radio
and television reports about a delay on Metro’s Red Line. Soon
afterwards, press reports indicated that there was a power outage in
downtown DC, boundaries unknown, as well as at least two fires on Metro
rail tracks. Seeking more information, I searched the Internet. WMATA’s
web site provided some information. However, at no time did the District
government’s web site, either the DC government home page or the web
page for the DC Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency) post
any information at all.
Mayor Fenty, rather than monitoring and managing the situation at
either the Wilson Building or the HSEMA offices, and rather than holding
a press conference on the situation, held a morning press conference at
Smothers Elementary School in northeast to tout his summer school repair
initiative and to show off the new Smart car that the city bought for
his use. Like many District residents, I hope there is a post mortem
evaluation of how the District government responded to Friday’s
emergencies, and a clear plan for how the District will respond to a
genuine terrorist attack that would cause similar, but worse,
disruptions.
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Just for Comparison
Ed T Barron,edtb1@macdotcom
There are three new stadiums/arenas being built in New York City. The
two new baseball stadiums, one for the Yankees and one for the Mets,
will open next season. The new Yankee Stadium will cost some $1.3
billion, with the city and state coughing up about two hundred million
dollars. The new basketball arena for the Nets will cost about six
hundred million dollars, with the city spending about eighty-five
million dollars to help. The new Mets Stadium will cost about eight
hundred million dollars, with the city and state helping to the tune of
about two hundred million dollars. So, New York City gets three new
major sports facilities for less than the taxpayers of DC spent to get
one new ball park.
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Maybe I’m out of the loop and missed this one, but why on earth did
the Comcast bill’s taxes, surcharges, and fees, specifically the gross
receipts tax and franchise fees, more than double this month? I went
from paying $19.51 to $40.50 per month.
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Mendelson Solving the Gun Problem
Steve Lanning, smcastro@gmail.com
Harry Jaffe’s opinion piece in the Washingtonian and Matt
Foreman’s subsequent post in themail [June 11] contain a number of
errors and oversimplifications regarding the District’s gun laws and
the efforts of council to reduce crime in the District. The council, and
specifically Phil Mendelson as Chair of the Council’s Judiciary
Committee, has moved a number of pieces of legislation to get tough on
crime. These included the Omnibus Public Safety Bill (DC Law 16-306),
which took components of seven different bills and rolled them into one
comprehensive bill that, among other things: criminalized the
recruitment for, membership in, and criminal activity of criminal street
gangs; increased penalties for convicted felons who illegally possess a
pistol; increased penalties for possession of illegal firearms
ammunition; and enhanced penalties for certain crimes targeted at
children or seniors because of their vulnerability. This complicated
legislation was moved within a year (not years), and over that year
Mendelson had three public hearings and required a very rare three
readings before the Council.
If, as Mr. Forman writes, that the problem is “the city’s lack of
enforcement” then why blame the council? It seems like it’s the MPD
and the prosecutors who might be held accountable for not enforcing the
law, not those who makes the laws to enforce. Many of these crimes are
prosecuted by the US Attorney’s Office — the District has no control
over that. As far as removing the law to prove operability of a gun,
Councilmember Mendelson has actually introduced legislation to do just
that. I believe a hearing was scheduled and canceled at the request of
the mayor and the US Attorney because of the impending Heller decision.
Councilmember Mendelson moved on B16-895, “Rebuttable Presumption
to Detain Robbery and Handgun Violation Suspects Amendment Act of 2007,”
which strengthened pretrial detention of adults and certain juveniles
when their alleged offenses involved robberies and guns. The
councilmember also recommended funding additional police officers in his
FY 2007 committee budget report; the council put in an more than two
hundred additional officers. People are entitled to their perception and
opinion, but the facts in this case are pretty clear.
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“To protect the health and safety of young people and our
communities,” (http://mpdc.dc.gov/mpdc/cwp/view,a,1237,Q,547375,mpdcNav_GID,1549,mpdcNav,%7C,.asp),
the District of Columbia government prohibits certain citizens from
leaving their homes at certain times of the day. Now, the District
government prohibits citizens from using public roads to travel into or
through certain sections of the city. Neither of these measures has any
real impact on public safety — especially in a city where law-abiding
residents are forbidden from arming themselves to defend themselves,
their families, and their homes against criminals.
The next logical step for those in government who want to protect
citizens by restricting their movement is simply to impose a
twenty-four-hour curfew on all residents. This will not prevent Chief
Lanier from doing her job, since she doesn’t live here anyway.
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Working Together and Handguns
Gregory Mize, fairness@mizeadr.com
Speaking about working together and about handguns, you may have
missed this piece published on June 1, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/30/AR2008053002374.html
[This link is to Judge Mize’s “Close to Home” article, “A
Blooming Arms Race in DC.”
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Don’t Make Me Come Over There
Star Lawrence, jkellaw@aol.com
When I read about those neighborhood checkpoints, I was shocked. I
used to live behind “police lines” that were set up during the demos
of the early 1970s on the mall. We had to show ID to get home. This is
not a pleasant memory, to say the least. Are you guys willing to give up
your freedoms or is what left of them for some illusion of safety? Say
the cops are sitting right there at their little checkpoint and someone
sticks you up — are they even allowed to help you? The police can tell
you to detour around an accident or something, but they can’t check
and see if you are entitled to get to your house. And don’t bring out
the argument that if you aren’t doing anything wrong, you have nothing
to fear. That way, you are giving away my rights as a citizen when I don’t
want them given away. I left DC a dozen years ago. We have intrusive
cops in Arizona, too. Don’t make me stop this car and come back there!
Cops need warrants and they can’t tell you where you can go.
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Police Working Together
Ron Linton, rmlch@rcn.com
The suggestions to coworkers for improved policing in Working
Together [themail, June 11] are certainly valid and would be helpful,
but they are nibbling at the edge. The crime problem in Washington is
not new to our city or to this generation. It is historical where you
have social and economic conditions that breed defiance born from
hopelessness and fed by easy money. Yes, police have a responsibility
for prevention and apprehension but under the current social and
economic conditions, without massive intervention by non-police
government agencies and non-government organizations, especially from
the religious and cultural sector of the community, it is a slippery
slope. Having said that, lets look at some things that can be done.
One of those most effective policing mechanisms is response time. The
faster police reach a crime scene the more likely it is that an
apprehension can be made. But there are three elements that come into
play here. First, citizens calling 911 have to know what to say but too
often from excitement give wrong addresses or bad information. Police
need to interact with the community with workshops and meetings to teach
people how to communicate in an emergency. It could be the difference
between life and death. Second, several decades ago police managers
decided that too many accidents were occurring when police responded
using lights and sirens. So, instead of improving driver training, they
ordered a cutback in the use of lights and sirens, thus slowing response
time. Third, patrol units need to have a plan on how they are going to
respond to a variety of emergencies, just as they need a plan for
patrolling.
Equally as important is recognizing that experience and maturity are
the most important elements of police effectiveness. The MPD needs to
provide incentives and rewards to keep top investigators in their
assignments for their entire career. This will improve case closure and
evidence preparation that allow prosecutors to win cases. (But then
what? Incarceration is but a limited answer to crime reduction.) The
same is true for street officers. They reach the height of their
proficiency after twenty years and retire. There should be incentives to
induce them to remain with the department another ten years. And to
really achieve community policing there should be incentives and rewards
to induce officers to move in and live in the neighborhoods they are
policing, not for two years or three but for a career. Police officers
need to become a part of their community and know their people, know
their problems, hopes, and aspirations. Police are not social workers
and can’t be. But that doesn’t mean that their education can’t
include learning how to read the demographics of their community and
understand the social psychology of the people living there.
Unfortunately there is no quick fix for stemming crime or improving a
department. But the sooner we start raising the average of officers on
the force, getting them to be residents in their neighborhoods and keep
them at the jobs they are good at, the sooner we may see some change.
That is, if the rest of the government and society does its job.
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Let’s Put Checkpoint Fenty Where It Belongs!
Peter Tucker, pete10506@yahoo.com
In my apartment there’s a big window overlooking Georgia Avenue.
When I come home late, I enjoy looking out it, blinds up, lights out,
watching the-normally-chaotic Georgia Ave in the calm and quiet.
Thursday, June 12, I arrived home a little before 1:00 a.m., and at the
very moment I looked out, I saw a cop car roll out of a parking lot onto
Georgia. It seemed like perfect timing, and I continued to watch the cop
car and the calm. All of the sudden it wasn’t calm any longer, as the
cop car was shining its strong spotlight directly on me, three stories
up and a half-block off the street. I froze and thought, “Maybe they
think I’m a robber.” Finally unfrozen, I turned on a light, the
blinds still up, and hoped the cop would realize I was just a person
acting normally (or trying to) in his own apartment. But the spotlight
remained. I couldn’t take it any longer and went to the bedroom, and
when I returned to the window the spotlight was off and the cop car was
heading south on Georgia Ave.
The spotlight was on me for no more than two minutes. It took only
one more minute after the event before I questioned whether this was a
message from the MPD. This event took place just two days after I was
the guest-host for Spirit in Action (for Faye Williams of Sisterspace
and Books, who continues to recover from a stroke) on WPFW 89.3FM. The
second-half of the hour-long show was a heated debate over the police
checkpoints in the Trinidad community. The guests included Johnny Barnes
of the ACLU, Gary Imhoff of dcwatch.com, and Ward 5 Councilmember Harry
Thomas (whose ward includes Trinidad). (You can listen to the show at http://www.dc.indymedia.org).
I’m a believer in the power of independent media, but sometimes I
wonder how much of a difference it really makes. Judging by the police
tactics, it makes quite a difference. We spent a mere half-hour openly
and honestly discussing the pros and cons of the police actions. The
result has been the police finding out where I live, having a cop car
wait for me to get home, and then lighting up my world. (It may also be
worth noting that WPFW consistently and courageously covered the police
checkpoints and then went off the air for several days beginning
Wednesday, June 11).
The MPD used a strong spotlight to shine into my apartment, and now
the spotlight needs to be turned on them. Without this spotlight there
will continue to be no accountability. No one has been held accountable
for the killing of DeOnte Rawlings (a fourteen-year-old boy shot in the
back of the head when two off-duty police officers went joy riding to
find a stolen mini-bike). No one has been held accountable for the
police going after City Paper reporter Jason Cherkis (a cop
posted the following on the Internet about the reporter, “target the
individual for law enforcement”). No one has been held accountable for
other offenses such as (from the Washington Post): “lying about
when they were on the clock, falsifying documents, and looking the other
way when another off-duty officer got into fistfights.” This is but a
small sampling of the police crimes that have resulted in the loss of
not a single career, nor even the loss of a single paycheck. Instead we
see the MPD rewarded with five hundred assault rifles straight from Iraq
to better “protect (what?) and serve (whom?).”
And now we have the recently (and only temporarily, it seems) halted
Checkpoint Fenty, where the police stop and harass citizens without a
“legitimate reason” for being in Trinidad (and, before long, other
neighborhoods-soon-to-be-gentrified). Under the “legitimate reason”
criteria can we expect the police to arrest themselves at the next
checkpoint (what a welcomed development this would be), or the Police
Chief (who doesn’t even live in the District, as her job requires), or
the mayor (who has stolen hundreds of millions of valuable taxpayer
dollars to build a lavish stadium — with another one on the way —
while starving public schools, libraries, hospitals, the water system
and everything else that would benefit the people he’s getting rid
of).
If the police are serious about rounding up murderers, how about
setting up a checkpoint in front of 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue? This is
where the mayor and the city council do their (not our) thing. And the
policies they put in place are responsible for the destruction of lives
all over this city. If the police won’t set up a checkpoint at 1350
Pennsylvania Ave, we the people should do it. Does Monday, June 23, at
9:00 a.m., work for folks? This is the same morning the incredible
grassroots group Empower DC will have a hearing on legislation that
would make it oh-so-difficult for the mayor and city council to give
away our public property to their elite backers. June 23, let’s put
Checkpoint Fenty where it belongs.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
The Alternative Housing Pilot Program, June 19
Jazmine Zick, jzick@nbm.org
Thursday, June 19, 6:30-8:00 p.m., Community in The Aftermath: The
Alternative Housing Pilot Program: a Framework for Future Disaster
Recovery. The Alternative Housing Pilot Program (AHPP), funded by the
Federal Emergency Management Agency, is a grant competition to develop
more useful, readily available, and culturally appropriate post-disaster
housing for Hurricane Katrina-ravaged areas. The inaugural program of
this new, three-year lecture series explores the AHPP’s critical
issues and objectives. Free. Registration required. At the National
Building Museum, 401 F Street, NW, Judiciary Square stop, Metro Red
Line. Register for events at http://www.nbm.org.
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Quilting Circle at the Historical Society,
June 21
Ed Bruske, euclidarms@yahoo.com
Saturday, June 21, 1-3:30 p.m. Family series. Quilting Circle at the
Historical Society of Washington, DC, 801 K Street, NW. Bring the entire
family and learn to quilt. Beginners and returning quilters welcome.
Washington’s Daughters of Dorcas (quilting guild) will teach
participants the history and art of quilting. Each participant will
learn basic quilting techniques and receive a startup quilting kit to
take home. Participants will also learn how to start a quilting circle.
(Ages 8 to adults) Limit thirty. RSVP@historydc.org
or 383-1828. Registration is required: 383-1828.
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