Washington, D.C

After violence, D.C. officials demand ‘accountability.’ Defining it is harder.

Published

2 years ago

January 13, 2023

After violence, D.C. officials demand ‘accountability.’ Defining it is harder.

D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Contee III stood behind crime-scene tape draped throughout 4 lanes of Georgia Avenue, the night rush hour dropped at an abrupt halt by a hail of gunfire that killed one man and injured three others, together with an 8-year-old youngster.

He recited the sparse particulars of the Jan. 3 taking pictures and expressed anger, a grim ritual he has repeated usually in his two years operating the power within the nation’s capital. He did so once more Wednesday after two youngsters and a person had been shot and wounded exiting a Metrobus in Northwest D.C.

At each taking pictures scenes, Contee mentioned he hoped the neighborhood calls for “accountability” for these concerned — turning to a phrase he and different metropolis leaders have used steadily as gunfire has generated headlines and claimed youngsters’s lives.

The phrase has change into a type of rallying cry for metropolis officers struggling to know and confront what drives crime. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) used it in her inaugural handle. Town’s new deputy mayor for public security mentioned it in her first interview with a reporter after being tapped for the brand new job. It’s an everyday a part of Contee’s crime scene lexicon.

However the accountability they confer with is commonly imprecise — that means various things to completely different folks, or meant to indicate another person, or another establishment, must do extra.

Judges too lenient. Police too robust. Not robust sufficient. Too many cops. Too few. Regulation enforcement not trusted. Defund the police. Fractured houses. Lack of metropolis assets. Substandard colleges. Nothing for youths to do. Catch and launch. Substandard arrests. Prosecutors drop instances. Judges set criminals free. Various justice. Restorative justice. No justice. No accountability.

Violent crime within the District dropped 7 % final yr in contrast with 2021, with reductions in shootings and homicides. However carjackings, gunfire heard in neighborhoods and violence impacting younger folks continues to be a problem. The brand new yr has introduced little reduction: six killings within the first week of 2023 alone.

On Saturday, police say, a person fatally shot a 13-year-old, Karon Blake, who he claimed to have seen breaking into automobiles in Northeast Washington. The taking pictures has fueled calls to carry the shooter to account, placing police and prosecutors on the defensive.

Residents, together with activists and Blake’s household, packed a neighborhood assembly Tuesday night to angrily demand police rapidly arrest the shooter. Simply earlier than the assembly, Contee had held a information convention concerning the incident, once more utilizing the phrase “accountability” and calling on residents to exhibit “the identical ardour when we have now different homicides that occur in our metropolis.”

D.C. officers insist they aren’t shifting blame by demanding accountability, however as an alternative stating that police are however one half of a bigger ecosystem that features a dozen or extra legal justice entities that every one deserve scrutiny.

Homicides drop in D.C., however mayor calls youth violence an emergency

Bowser, caught between a reformist Council looking for options to policing and residents wanting harsh penalties for offenders, has mentioned she is pursuing a multifaceted method. She helps resolving underlying points resembling poverty and dependancy, and has put cash into various justice applications resembling violence interrupters to mediate conflicts. However she can also be below strain to cease shootings which are taking place now, and has pushed for a bigger police power and more durable penalties for offenders.

Final week, Bowser vetoed laws revising the District’s legal code, saying it undermines public security by decreasing most sentences for some severe crimes. Council members vowed to override her veto, saying the revisions stiffen penalties for repeat violent offenders and produce sentences extra consistent with what judges are literally doling out.

The union representing D.C. law enforcement officials says lawmakers shirked accountability by enacting legal guidelines limiting police ways and shrinking the dimensions of the power, and are complicit in “a tragic lack of life and a horrific improve within the variety of victims experiencing violent crime.”

D.C. Council Member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who beforehand chaired the police oversight committee and have become a major goal of the police labor group, mentioned accountability for crime can solely be achieved when “there’s a truthful and trusted” judicial system.

With out it, the lawmaker mentioned in an interview, it “undermines every thing.”

To activists, metropolis officers’ use of the phrase “accountability” is code for mass incarceration, paying homage to the old-style, robust policing they’re making an attempt to alter.

Authorities “can’t police your manner out of crime. You possibly can’t cage your manner out of crime. And so if that’s what they really feel … accountability is, D.C.’s in hassle,” mentioned Nee Nee Taylor, co-conductor for Harriet’s Wildest Desires, a Black-led mutual support and neighborhood protection group.

Bowser and others in her administration dispute that. In her inaugural handle earlier this month, Bowser outlined the time period by saying, “We all know, particularly for our younger folks, that typically accountability shouldn’t be punishment, it’s a lifeline” to make sure folks on the margins “get assist and that they perceive the implications of their actions.”

As youth shootings soar, D.C. officers vow to bolster efforts

In an interview, Contee additionally denied accountability means locking folks up. He mentioned he makes use of the time period in its broadest sense — holding the legal justice system, together with judges, prosecutors and people supervising offenders, to account. He additionally contains colleges, social applications and another entity that impacts or influences life selections.

“The police get held accountable for any and every thing,” Contee mentioned. “The place else does that occur?” He added, although, that he contains his personal division in demanding accountability.

“All I’m saying is that it’s all of us,” he mentioned.

Contee mentioned he doesn’t consider residents are glad with the outcomes of legal instances, and that it’s as much as the neighborhood to determine what is appropriate. He questioned whether or not suspected offenders, significantly juveniles, are adequately supervised and given the assistance they want. Ought to an arrested youth, he requested, be launched “again right into a household the place there’s no construction, the place a few of the issues that exist in that surroundings maybe contributed to this child being on the street robbing folks?”

At a neighborhood stroll on Thursday with Bowser and different officers in Southeast Washington’s Anacostia neighborhood, following a deadly taking pictures outdoors a restaurant, contributors supplied their very own opinions on what accountability means:

Council member Trayon White Sr. (D) of Ward 8, the place gun violence is prevalent, mentioned, “Accountability is a common precept. Everybody. Grandma. Auntie. Nephew. Instructor. Principal. Upkeep man. Put up workplace employee. Bus driver. Council member. Mayor. All of us need to be accountable. We’ve to pay attention and do every thing in our energy to deal with the wants regardless of the political variations.”

D.C. Director of Gun Violence Prevention Linda Harllee Harper mentioned, “I believe it’s to verify we’re all being good stewards of public values. … I believe folks really feel just like the pendulum has swung too far-off from accountability.”

Ron Moten, Peaceoholics founder and activist, mentioned, “Lots of people in our neighborhood had been outraged by mass incarceration … however we weren’t preventing for folks murdering folks in our neighborhood to be let again out the day after they commit the crime and not using a technique.”

Makhia McCollough, an 18-year-old who lives in Ward 8 and is enrolled in a mentorship program, mentioned, “Accountability means to me when it’s good to take cost of your neighborhood and never simply to your self.”

The District’s newly elected legal professional common, Brian Schwalb, whose workplace prosecutes juvenile offenders, mentioned “actual accountability leads to folks on the finish of the day altering their conduct. Accountability for younger folks is oftentimes an appreciation they’ve performed one thing they shouldn’t have performed, and a dedication to not doing it once more.”

On the taking pictures scene on Georgia Avenue on Jan. 3, Contee famous the incident occurred not solely throughout rush hour, however close to a police station. Police haven’t made an arrest.

“We do not know why somebody would do such a reckless act at 6 p.m. on Georgia Avenue,” Contee mentioned. “However we goal to search out out and maintain these people accountable.”

Extra protection on D.C. gun violence

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Washington, D.C

Welcome to Washington: On the Eve of the Inauguration, Monumental Advice

Published

3 hours ago

January 16, 2025

Press Room

Welcome to Washington: On the Eve of the Inauguration, Monumental Advice

Image by William Rudolph.

I love watching the brides pose for photos by the Lincoln Memorial and the teenagers wriggle through TikTok choreography near the Washington Monument. Their modern hopes breathe life into the centuries-old wisdom of our capital city.

I have lived in Washington DC for years and still can’t get enough of it. On sunny Saturday morning walks, my pace is casual, but the insights are profound. DC is a living lesson about what George Washington described as “the last great experiment for promoting human happiness.” The Inauguration brings new people to Washington DC and I hope they will love and learn from the city as much as I do.

One of my favorite monuments is near the Capitol. Two iron cranes stand together. Their wings thrust upward, and barbed wire falls from their beaks. Around them is a complicated mix of names: Japanese Americans who died fighting for us in World War II, and the internment camps to which their families and friends had been forced. Yet I am fiercely proud to be an American when, amidst these names, I read President Reagan’s words: “Here we admit a wrong. Here we affirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under the law.” Few countries I’ve lived in have the strength to admit such a grave national error.

That urge for improvement is in our national genes. As the Constitution states, we’re constantly trying to “form a more perfect union.”

Sure enough, a few miles away under a white marble dome stands a statue of Thomas Jefferson. He, too, speaks to us of striving for perfection: “…Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened … institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.”

While I respect the somber challenge of those words, I love his next, more whimsical, sentence: “We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”

From a breezy hill in northeast Washington DC, President Lincoln also challenges us. It’s the cottage where he and his family escaped the city’s summer heat, though Lincoln daily commuted to the White House. His dusty horseback ride revealed the stakes of the Civil War: wounded soldiers bumping along in ambulances and former slaves surviving in hastily built camps after escaping behind Union lines.

Lincoln welcomed allies and adversaries alike to the cottage for advice, sometimes looking out from the veranda over the not-yet-completed Capitol and Washington Monument. As a modern visitor 150 years later, I can stand in the same place. The buildings are completed. But which of Lincoln’s hopes and fears are still in progress?

At a newer memorial, Martin Luther King, Jr offers optimism about the timescale of our national effort: “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

At an even newer memorial closer to the Capitol, President Eisenhower puts a worldwide spin on our work of becoming a more perfect union: “We look upon this shaken earth, and we declare our firm and fixed purpose – the building of a peace with justice in a world where moral law prevails.”

Strolling through the city, I love listening to leaders from different periods of our great experiment. I hope our elected representatives will as well.

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Washington, D.C

DC gets ready to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary – WTOP News

Published

11 hours ago

January 15, 2025

Press Room

DC gets ready to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary – WTOP News

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and America250 Chair Rosie Rios joined students at a bilingual elementary school to kickoff D.C.’s chapter of the commission preparing to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary.

Students at Powell Bilingual Elementary School in Petworth greeted Bowser with a rousing introduction, as she introduced them to a new vocabulary word: “Semiquincentennial.” The word describes the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Bowser told the students D.C.’s 250th celebration should be the biggest and the best, and said, “Throwing a big party for thousands of people is a big task. But in Washington, D.C., we welcome visitors for big events all the time.”

D.C.’s festivities, though, will be part of a nationwide effort to throw a celebration of America like none other.

America250 is a nonpartisan initiative working to involve Americans from every state and U.S. territory in the Semiquincentennial, which will be in 2026.

Rios told the students about “America’s Field Trip,” explaining it’s a contest for those in “grades 3-12 who get to answer the question, ‘What does America mean to me?’ The beauty of this program is that the award recipients get to choose from a series of backstage experiences with our federal agencies, most of which have never been offered to the public before.”

Those field trip sites include a variety of historic and cultural landmarks across the country.

Rios recalled the nation’s bicentennial in 1976, when she was just 10 years old. Her parents had come to the U.S. from Mexico in 1958, and she said the evening of July 4, 1976, “was a cloudy night in Heyward, California, but those fireworks were never brighter.”

“On that night, I felt I had the whole world in front of me. I did feel that anything was possible,” Rios said.

She said she’s eager to hear from others about their family histories and their hopes and dreams for the future.

Another feature of the America250 celebration is “Our American Story,” which includes a chance for residents to nominate someone they know to share their histories, which, if selected, will be preserved at the Library of Congress.

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Washington, D.C

Inauguration Day: Timeline of key inaugural events

Published

19 hours ago

January 15, 2025

Press Room

Inauguration Day: Timeline of key inaugural events

WASHINGTON – Nearly a quarter million ticketed guests are expected to attend Donald Trump’s second inauguration on Monday, January 20, 2025, in the nation’s capital. The festivities begin over the weekend and continue until the Tuesday following Inauguration Day.

On Monday, the ceremony will take place on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol. Security screening gates are expected to open at 5 a.m. Ticketed guests should arrive by 11:30 a.m.

Here are some key events on the schedule if you are planning to attend:

Timeline:

Saturday, January 18

Trump will attend a reception and fireworks display at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia.

Vice President-elect JD Vance will participate in a reception for incoming Cabinet members and host a dinner.

READ MORE: Inauguration Day: Security tightens in DC one week before Trump takes office

Sunday, January 19

Trump will take part in a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.

Trump will hold a MAGA Victory rally at Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., at 3 p.m., with a performance by the Village People.

Trump will host a candlelight dinner with campaign donors.

Monday, January 20 (Inauguration Day)

Trump will attend a worship service at St. John’s Episcopal Church in downtown D.C.

Trump and incoming first lady Melania Trump will join the Bidens for tea at the White House.

Inauguration Day Forecast: Slight chance for snow showers early Monday

What we know:

Inaugural Ceremonies at the U.S. Capitol

The ceremonies will take place on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol.

Security screening gates open at 5 a.m., music begins at 9:30 a.m. Ticketed guests should arrive by 11:30 a.m.

The theme, “Our Enduring Democracy: A Constitutional Promise,” recognizes the Founders’ commitment to preserving democracy.

Carrie Underwood will perform “America the Beautiful” before Trump takes the oath of office at 12 p.m. Former Presidents Obama, Bush, and Clinton are expected to attend.

A farewell to former President Biden and Vice President Harris will occur around noon.

Trump will gather with aides and lawmakers for the President’s Signing Room Ceremony at the U.S. Capitol to sign executive orders or memorandums.

The JCCIC Congressional Luncheon will follow, attended by the new president, vice president, Senate leaders, and JCCIC members.

Trump will review military troops at the East Front steps of the U.S. Capitol, followed by a presidential parade down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.

READ MORE: Inauguration Day 2025: Road closures, routes and timing

At the White House, Trump will participate in the traditional Oval Office signing ceremony for executive orders or nominations.

Trump will attend three Inaugural balls: Commander in Chief Ball, Liberty Inaugural Ball, and the Starlight Ball. He is scheduled to speak at all three balls.

Commander in Chief Ball focused on military service members
Liberty Inaugural Ball geared toward Trump supporters
Starlight Ball will focus on high-dollar donors

What’s next:

Tuesday, January 21

Trump will attend the National Prayer Service, an interfaith event at the Washington National Cathedral.

The Source: Information in this article comes from The Trump Vance Inaugural Committee, the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, and the Associated Press.

NewsInauguration DayDonald J. TrumpMelania TrumpWashington, D.C.

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