Category: Crime and Justice

Miss L Ainy: Friday 6/22/2018

View inside commerical spacePot Pop Up Po-po-ed

So 1712 3rd Street NW got busted by the MPD for hosting a “Marijuana Pop Party” yesterday. It was a problem, mainly because pot stinks. But it wasn’t the real stuff. When I was last sitting out on the ANXO patio with the Babyman, I could smell the fake pot which smells way worse than real pot. There were 11 arrests, fewer arrests than the other pot pop ups (you kids and your pop up whatevers) the DC Police busted around town.

Daycare Lawsuit Continues Forward

I don’t have anything to add to this in that I’m just keeping an eye on it. I have already expressed my concerns in an earlier post. The city is trying to throw the case out.

and yes I do see the humor that DC is requiring a college degree when

25% of DC Teachers Don’t Have Certifications

meh.

So the Washington Post reported as well on DC teacher certifications. My honest response is *shrug*.

Many moons ago when I had nearly finished up my economically useless History graduate degree, I interviewed for a teaching position at a traditional private New England girl’s boarding school. The expectation was that the new teacher would learn that school’s style of ‘teaching’ on the job. You don’t need teaching certifications to teach at expensive private schools. You do need to know your topic.

Because of the Babyman, we’ve been exploring education options. So we’ve been talking to co-workers and friends who have been to private schools. Apparently the key to a high quality education is scary nuns. I don’t think scary nuns have to be certified.

Can DC be sued for gentrification?

So the District of Columbia is getting sued for gentrification.

Because of Kelo v City of New London, this probably won’t go very far.

For those who don’t remember or know, Kelo v New London was an eminent domain case where the City of New London, CT took the private property, the homes, of residents of an area of town

This is an image from Little Pink House, a movie.

so a developer could build a headquarters for the Pfizer Corporation. Ms. Susette Kelo and others sued the city, sued to protect the homes they owned, from the city taking them away and displacing them. Long story short, Ms. Kelo lost and her home was torn down. There is a movie about it out now and it will be at the E Street Theater June 1-7, and tickets go on sale on May 30.

So just as a man can legally divorce his wife and remarry a younger model, a city can take away your home and give/sell the land to a richer, more economically attractive entity. If that is so, then the District of Columbia can take properties it owns or has an interest in, or doesn’t own at all through eminent domain and give/sell them to more economically attractive entities. Unless there is something on DC’s books actually saying it can’t, but the city can undo its own rules. So I don’t think this lawsuit has a chance.

I’ve noticed there is this mindset that the city has an obligation to care for its poor over that of other interests. In my book club, our next book How to Kill a City, has this same mindset. The author seems annoyed that Detroit or any other city would choose economic development over its poorest citizens.

City governments, like DC, have their own interests. Cities, do not like being broke.  They don’t like even looking broke. They like being gleaming shining examples of whatever is in fashion with local governments these days. However classics like low crime, lots of ‘good’ jobs, and great schools never go out of style and governments will aim for those goals over others.

OSSE please continue to investigate, but do it right

When I’m feeling particularly lazy and the Help is willing, he will drive me to work. On the way there we pass by a charter school where I play a game, reading license plates. In previous years there were more Maryland license plated cars dropping off kids at KIPP. But as there is more attention paid to suburban parents using DC taxpayer funded schools, there are slightly fewer MD cars dropping off kids at KIPP in the morning. But there are still enough to warrant a closer look.

I was happy when I saw that the city was looking into one premier DC public school. Good start, I thought, thinking it was only a matter of time before the city worked their way over to KIPP. The waitlist for KIPP on P Street is way too long for MD kids to be taking spots from DC kids.

Recently, some Duke Ellington School of the Arts parents and guardians who received letters from OSSE about residency requirements sued, as is their right. Apparently the city violated its own policy. I also sympathize with having to deal with bureaucratic stupidity. However, I have witnessed too many morning drop offs of kids from Maryland and Virginia cars in front of DC charter schools, so there are parents committing fraud.

Above me on my bookshelf are the ashes of a woman who committed a similar fraud 30 odd years ago with the Help. My late mother and father in laws used a friend’s address to get the Help in better school because the high school for their address was supposedly drug infested. And recently on a message board I read about a Maryland school system calling area landlords to confirm addresses. It seems people are using fake leases. I understand the reason why. But no kid who actually lives in the District of Columbia should lose out to kids who have representation in Congress.

Don’t leave stuff in your car

Street diamondsDon’t leave stuff in your car, lest you be rewarded with street diamonds. Glistening blue or black diamonds that shine in the sun on the sidewalk and on the street. The thief who steals the $2.00 charging cord and the $1.85 from the console does not think about the hundreds you shell out to replace the window they broke. Worse is when you do keep everything out of sight but somehow they knew you had something worth taking hidden. Or when the chemically altered brain mistakenly thinks he can sell that radio he pulled from your car, later to find out he wasted his time, and your peace.

Incompetents with guns

This is not about the second amendment.

This is not about gun control laws.

This is about drug dealers on the corner.

The problem, and it comes with every wave of new neighbors, particularly white neighbors, is the idea that the guys on the corner are harmless and have some imagined right to hang about. They are not harmless.

Where there is the business of drug dealing, there is a gun somewhere nearby. A loaded gun, ready to shoot. More than likely an illegal gun where those in possession never bothered to go through the gun safety training class or registration.

Incompetents with guns have have bad aim hitting cars, houses, bystanders, and sometimes their intended target. I remember a daytime shooting many years ago on my street, in front of my house, so this is not theoretical. The shooters shot at a bunch of guys hanging out on the corner (suspected drug dealers) in a drive by from an SUV- Suburban Ussault Vehicle. The shooters managed to hit one guy in the butt and as they traveled down my street they felt the need to shoot several rounds of bullets towards the ground. They managed to damage some cars. I didn’t have a car so, I didn’t care that much. But I do care about an errant bullet wandering into the insides of one of my neighbors or myself (and now as a mom, my family members).

The bad old days of the drug dealers are slowly creeping back into Shaw. The only difference is there are fewer baby mommas’, girlfriends’ and grandmas’ houses to hang out in front of, the plus side of gentrification. So yes, some of the guys may have lived in the neighborhood at one time (as a kid, as a boyfriend, etc) but they don’t live here now. They do not respect the neighborhood, and never did. Don’t feel obligated to make excuses for them.

Visitors Stink After a While – In Shaw – Mari in the Citi

Let me start of with a story about my mom, who I think is a wonderful person. She lives way over in Florida in the same town as my sister. My sister loves my mom as much as I do, but doesn’t think mom is as wonderful for reasons that I will explain.
On the rare occasions my mom comes up to DC I love having her visit. Mom would visit my sister almost every other day, because she could do that because they live in the same town, the grandkids want rides (to the mall/ the movies/ etc) and she has a key to the house. So it wasn’t too hard to imagine sis being annoyed after coming home from work to find mom in her house. The occasional visit is nice, the constant dropping by and hanging out (not always at the request of the grandkids) became intolerable, even though it is mom, who’s wonderful.

Corner guys
Now if someone as lovely and nice as my mother can make a nuisance of herself, the same can be said of the old guys on the corner.

The old guys claim to the area is they used to live around here. Fine, but still not a valid reason to hang behind a shuttered store under the “No Trespassing” signs almost every day. They may have friends and family in the area. Cool, they should visit them. Let those friends feel the same thing I feel coming home to see a gaggle of 5-6 or more hanging out on the corner.

They also don’t help that commercial strip. Right now there is only 1 business operating there. The corner store is closed and having a bunch of men hanging out back probably didn’t help and may have hurt. I worry about the prospects of that strip with that crowd constantly there.

I could bring up the drug dealing, and the public drinking but I will leave that for now.

The problem with mom has been semi-resolved. She comes over less often, but now finds herself with little to do, so she’s thinking of going back to work as a nurses aid. Part-time.

This page contains a single entry by Mari published on May 14, 2016 3:29 PM.

The bad old days of Shaw is why I don’t believe in ghosts – In Shaw – Mari in the Citi

Over a decade ago when I was looking for a place to buy a home that was affordable and close to enough stuff to maintain my car-less lifestyle, I was doing some serious research on Shaw. In December of 2000 the Washington Post had a series called “Fatal Flaws: The District’s Homicide Crisis” and along with it was a map showing a big gigantic splotch of unsolved murders along Rhode Island and Florida Avenues. And when I moved to the neighborhood, I would hear gunfire almost nightly. Sad, and eventually ugly, memorials of rain sodden stuffed animals and empty liquor bottles littering the sidewalk were a common sight. The crack years were winding down and people were still getting killed over turf battles.

So with all these people dying violent deaths in the streets and parks of Shaw & nearby Sursum Corda, the area should be littered with spirits of the dead if you go by ghost rules. The Help and I, enjoy a good ghost story of the mild horror genre. The usual story is such and such a place is haunted because X number of years ago so-in-so died a tragic and violent death. By this logic 7th and O should be paved with the poltergeists.

We have friends who had to shoo people away from the Seminary up in Forest Glen when it was vacant and before it went condo. It was said to be haunted. People love haunted large buildings. People also like “interesting” haunting by interesting, middle class or wealthy persons or people associated with the wealthy. Haunted castles, yes. Haunted public housing, not so much.

 

I do relate to the supernatural, but in the regular practice of my religion. I am a skeptic regarding ghosts. That scratching in the walls? Rats. Maybe, squirrels. Lights flickering? Possibly crappy wiring by a crappy contractor or blame Pepco. Ghostly figures walking across the room? Obviously, your eyes are engaging in time travel.

I’m all about time travel.

Five Reasons to Keep My Security Bars

NOTE: This was an unpublished draft that for one reason or another I did not publish on the date given. In order to clear out my draft folder on 12-16-2013 I chose to publish it. However, I won’t vouch for the completeness or accuracy of it, and it most likely does not reflect my opinion anymore.
1. Zombie Attack.. unless they get up to the 2nd floor then I’m screwed.
2. Gardening. I hang window boxes and trellis from them.
3. Flier holders. An alternative to placing them in my mailbox or fence.
4. Target for the Newspaper Guy. Aim for the door, not the plants.
5. The Henry Louis Gates, Jr. incident. You can’t arrest me if you can’t get in…. without a warrant of course.

Just Call the Cops

This weekend I was awoken at 3 in the morning by loud obnoxious drunks who were on the alley side of whichever house they were partying at. Now I went into my back yard to try to tell where exactly the noise was coming from so I could call 911 and tell them which house they need to go to. I like to be accurate and since it is a small alley and a tree blocks my line of sight, so I couldn’t tell if it was from the house with the tiny deck or the roof deck house.

On other blogs in comments people suggest going to the neighbor causing the noise and respectfully asking them to turn it down. Reflecting on my actions that night, calling 911 and not engaging with the noisemakers would have been the least risky (to my health and safety) option. Mainly because the phrase, ‘I walked alone down a dark alley at 3am, in a bathrobe armed with only an umbrella to talk to an unknown number of drunks yelling profanities and ethnic slurs’, seems to be a really bad idea. I would have been armed with a pick-ax if the one I had was near the umbrellas. It was 3am, I don’t think straight at that hour. And to give most of that crowd credit they acknowledged that they were loud and needed to be quiet and one guy apologized. However, another guy screamed he was going to “kill your neighbor.” Twice. And this boys and girls is the reason why you just call the cops. Even if it was in jest, it was still a death threat.

There are situations where I do talk to (or text or call) some of my neighbors when any of their gatherings get a little loud and interferes with my desire to go to sleep. It’s when I know the neighbors already, desire to maintain good relations and know that they are reasonable people. There are neighbors who have exhibited bad behavior in the past and confronting them is just asking to make a bad situation worse. Another thing is if I’m already dressed for bed and don’t feel like putting on a robe, shoes, and depending on the weather, a coat I’m more likely to use the phone to resolve my problem. If I have the neighbor’s number, I call or text them. If I don’t, I’ll call the cops.