Tag: crime

What’s going on?
In the wee hours Eastern Market catches fire.
Then this afternoon the Georgetown library catches on fire.
See more at DCFD, and scroll down to the working incidents stories. Also the April 18th shows the fire at the sign shop on New York Ave, and the apartment fire on 6th St.
Eastern Market people, don’t let the city sit on this for years on end. Start planning the rebuild….now! Lest ye have an O Market situation, lotsa planning and pretty architectural drawings, building in stasis.

Some of you who live in the TC knew Dr. Justin Barone and his wife Lindy who moved away several months to take a job at Virginia Tech. Yesterday, a gunman went on a shooting spree on the VT campus and killed about 32 people. If you didn’t get his mass email, Justin’s fine, writing:

We are ok. It is an eerie day here. The wind is blowing at 60 mph+. The university was on lockdown and I was just able to get home.

Argh! This weekend I had a mini flood in the basement. It started on Friday with the sump pump going off. I did bother to notice it really until the sump pump kept going off a lot. That is Sunday morning. Anyway long story short, the house next to mine has been unoccupied for weeks and their pipes broke, sending water into my basement. WASA was really great in all this. They came by in two trips. The first came to see if it was stinky water. Nope, clear non-stinky stuff. The second crew came, listened to me about how this happened last time with the house 3 doors down having busted pipes. So they checked my meter, the houses next door and 3 hours after I made my first call, the water for the vacant house was turned off. Yay, WASA!
Also I noticed on the street and on the listservs there was a slew of car break ins. I saw one gal chatting with the cops over her busted window. Then a SUV with a shiny pile of blue green glass near it, and a duct taped driver’s side. I don’t have a car but still, a little reminder, don’t leave crap in your car. Thieves will bust in if they “think” you have something. Besides the crap, stuff, you constantly drive around with and don’t use, unnecessarily uses up gas. Lighten your load and improve your gas mileage.

…when there is a hit and run.
We JUST had a hit and run on the block. When relaying what kind of car it was the best I could say was dark blue (remember it is night) or black car, covered in salt. I couldn’t say what the tag number was because, according to one of the neighbors the bastard ripped off his temporary tags. A car, is a car, is a car to me. I can make out Volvos, beamers, Minis, Priuses and bugs. I guess since I don’t own a car, and haven’t for 10 years, most sedans look alike.
Here’s how it went down. I’m websurfing and then I hear a crash. I look out the window a dark colored sedan has plowed into a parked car. I run downstairs and call 911. I figure an ambulance is needed and I barely hear what the dispatcher is saying. I see the driver moving around and figure then maybe it isn’t that bad and maybe just the police. Then the car takes off and heads east.
Luckily I wasn’t the only witness. A car loving neighbor identified the type of car, make, and model(and year?) and also some other little details my car-hating self would have never noticed. There were several witnesses and at least three people who called the police. Another witness noticed that one of the passengers was a young woman with a head wound, who with a male passenger jumped out the car and headed north. Howard U Hospital? Another neighbor hopped in his vehicle and chased after the hit and run car and lost him when the driver got on NY Avenue. Yeah, we are a crazy bunch of mofos ’cause it ain’t the first time one of us has run after a suspect.

I haven’t been reporting on the shootings over in Ward 2, as other bloggers and the listservs have covered it and I would just be repeating the same thing. In other words I have nothing constructive to add.
Constructive.
You know that ‘Plan’, the one drawn up by ‘The Man’ that is supposed to put Black folk down? Well there must be a paragraph or two in it for black eradication program where we are supposed to go around killing each other. It’s black on black violence and it’s the stuff that makes subrubanites feel better about living way out, far from the big bad city. As plans go it is brilliant. Get blacks to sell poison to other black people so it destroys family life and makes them unable to be a strong people. Then encourage them to constantly refer to each other as n*g**rs to sow seeds to worthlessness. Then shoot at each other, whereby you can get other black people shot in the crossfire because they were in the “wrong place at the wrong time”.
Face it the city isn’t going to stop it until a certain type of human sacrifice is made. And you’d hope that the city reacts correctly, as banning under aged people from music venues doesn’t address the problem of gun violence. I’d rather not have the city wait till an anglo citizen is shot to crack down because that just comes across as black lives not being as worthy.
As the title suggests I know this isn’t making sense, so allow and forgive this rant. All I need right now is a good cuppa tea and I’ll be my calm, non-pyscho theory spouting self.

Cept for the comment left on this blog about the home invasion, I have nothing really to add. Daddy5-O and Life in Mt. Vernon Sq have reported the crime situation over on the other side of New Jersey Ave, here and here.

It was weird because I got the same message in about 10 minutes of the other. I was in Mt. Vernon one night and went to buy from one of the liquor stores that has worked with the community (y’all need a sticker “neighborhood approved liquor store”) and as I leaving the proprietor said “Be safe.” I wished him the same and left. My fear in the city isn’t getting shot or mugged (and those things could happen) but rather getting hit with a car. I walk, I ride my bike and there are too many idiots running around with SUVs who can’t stay in their lane, dismiss traffic rules, and essentially can’t drive. That was running through my head when heading down 5th Street, by a notorious corner and one fellow standing on the street said hello and then “be safe.” Weird.
But things haven’t been that safe. On the Eckington listserv, this weekend, there is the story of the XM employee robbed. This week there have been a few shootings in Shaw. Just as I was hoping that things were starting to look up….