There’s been a drug house on this block going on a few decades now.

Not to dismiss DC’s ongoing crime issues; however, it is really important to look at things in context. Right now most violent crime in DC is DOWN over last year (and other recent years). Most importantly, homicides in DC are down almost 26% year over year from 2008 (as of 5/15) according to mpdc.dc.gov. All I am saying is that while any crime — particularly violent crime — is upsetting and frustrating it is important to keep perspective. As someone who lived four blocks from Rayful Edmonds’ home in the late 80s (his base was 4th and M Streets NE) I can tell you first hand that our seemingly annual summer uptick in crime PALES in comparison to the endless crime waves of the ’86 -’94 era (remember that DC used to have nearly 500 homicides annually during that period compared to about 170 today). I do certainly hope that MPD (and others) step up and nip this minor crime wave in the bud though.

I am so happy that Councilmember Graham is taking the owners of the house to task because no one was willing to just point the finger at them and say that their house really has become a crack house.

Knowing what’s going does not mean anything is going to happen. 17th and Euclid has been a known “problem” area for, what, 25 years? As long as people like Phil Mendelson and Jim Graham make the rules, nothing will change. Abolishing DC Council term limits has been a disaster.

DC_Chica, read this: http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=29761

and this: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AdamsMorgan/message/3359

WTF, where are all these children getting guns and ammo. When I was 14 I could hardly get laid. These guys must have been trained in Somalia or the Congo, holy moly batman, it’s time to get outta dodge….

The DC City Council needs urgently to pass some new tougher more stringent youth offender laws, and gang laws, and firearms laws, and homicide laws too. The kids running around with guns somehow must get the sense that it’s the cool thing to do to have guns and shoot kids from the neighboring blocks.

I suspect there is some new legislation being considered as we write, anyone care to comment about what the City Council has planned for this summer’s new slate of anti-crime bills. Is it possible they can act in a timely manner to make a difference? Unfortunately even if the new laws are enacted, the kids will still have the guns and ammo and will still think it’s cool to do the kind of $%^# they are doing, selling drugs, carrying guns, shooting people, robbing stores en masse, beating up lone white women, shooting at police officers, robbing people.

If the kids in DC like guns so much, perhaps it’s time to open a firing/target range, so we can have some accredited professionals teach them some lessons about safety and firearms, and proper civility, yeah right……..

Anon @1:00AM:

The Drug War is perhaps the biggest reason for the increase in incarcerations. A huge number of prisoners are in prison due to non-violent drug-related offenses.

Lots of other countries have much more lax policies on soft drugs – cannabis is either decriminalized, or laws restricting sale/use are not enforced.

There is also an economic element to crime. Most other countries don’t have the disparity in wealth that is present in the U.S., and the poorest segment of society in most European countries lives fairly well by American standards. For example, other developed nations don’t have 20-25% of their populations with health coverage, because health care is universal.

I don’t even know if this can even be considered a drug war anymore. This is more like an organic growth engine of the economy. Crime spawns tougher laws which causes more prisoners. Companies like Corrections Corrections of America and GEO Group have billions in debt to service. That can only be paid by higher and higher occupancy rates. For fun one day, read their financial statements, specifically the management discussion. Take away the context of the business and you would think they were running a hotel.

I just took my last drug test for probation. Let’s see, I just pissed 25+ times over the course of a year for the gov’t. Someone has to pay for the lab tests. Someone has to pay the guy to WATCH me piss. Yes, someone gets up every day to subject himself to watching another guy/gal piss. Someone has to be paid to clean the bathroom after I piss on the floor. Someone has to pay to keep the building at a certain temperature. The security guards. The piss test receptionist. Lights, gas, water, maintenance.

It got to a point where it was almost a case of civil disobedience for me. Hey if people have so much of a problem with me smoking weed, then I’ll oblige by gladly pissing away their money. Literally and figuratively.

All for less than $5 of weed seized by the gov’t from inside the confines of my own home. If this ain’t insane then I don’t know what is.

What I’ve never really understood is why 18th and Monroe is a good place to sell drugs. I mean you have a lot more potential customers around Adams Morgan, U Street, or Columbia Heights. Why do customers choose that particular location, in a high end, residential street a ways off the main drag, and somewhere that the drug dealing really stands out — it’s like going to Woodley Park to get your fix.

Uh, why is a 13-year-old child out riding a bicycle at 11:00 p.m.?

Brian, your misrepresent the facts of 17th and Euclid dramatically. You are basically wrong. You have your facts wrong.

17th and Euclid WAS a drug dealing house- anyone suggesting it wasn’t is a naive little schoolboy from Iowa- but it wasn’t always the situation that the homeOWNERS were doing the selling as much as the guests who stayed on their stoop but lived elsewhere. Which is by definition, a drug dealing house, whether MPD found drugs there or not. Believe me, I saw drugs being sold in direct view of the residents of that house.

# Anonymous Says:
May 18th, 2009 at 10:45 am

I also thought of vigilante justice. Get a gun, put on an ipod and walk around CH or Petworth at night acting drunk. As soon as someone tries to rob you shoot a pair between his eyes. I bet after a couple of incidents like that crime will go way down.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You don’t want to go to DC Jail that badly. Believe ME! You’d spend a few months locked up before your case is heard. If you are posting on here, I assume prison food is quite different from your current diet.

And by the way, one of the more popular Dems (Jim Webb) bragged about openly flouting DC’s gun laws by saying he brings a gun into DC. Is he a criminal also? Or how about his aide? The one he had bring a GUN and TWO clips into the Senate bldg? Criminal also? DC dropped the charges against him. Or how about the aide caught bringing a gun into the house bldg? Criminal also? Or are you selective about who you term a criminal?

It’s not guns. Only someone with an incredibly small brain would simplify the argument down to an inanimate object.

Nate,

who said anything about going to prison. These thugs that kill people every week don’t go to prison. Why a vigilante will go to prison?

Ha ha! I just saw the “marijuana paranoia” comment. I have to say, I’ve never seen anyone who is just on marijuana become violent, so put me down as the second person in the world along with Nate.

Maybe if its mixed with other harder stuff. But not by itself. That’s laughable.

You are all in denial or new to this.

I don’t know how many late night calls I got from people who were sure their stuff was laced/dipped or people were following them or they needed a ride home RIGHT NOW. I had one roommate from college who this happened to almost every time he smoked to the point where he signed up for NarcAnon and AA by age 27 or so. He was the first person I ever met who went to AA.

“Did you just hear that sound? Did you hear that sound? I think it’s the cops.”

Wow, the fists do get flying in here. Can I return to topic for a second. Cynics can trash me, but I called Graham’s office this morning to express my concern. Of course, “he’s in the City Council this very moment introducing a bill to take care of incidents like this.” But a mark was put on a pad of paper next to “Calls About Monroe Shooting.” How many marks are there? Call me naive but what happens if there are 50 marks? 100? 500?

Could we pause from throwing fists about our favorite causes just long enough to make them want our damn calls to stop?

“what happens if there are 50 marks? 100? 500? ”

Nothing, nothing, and….nothing. (except for lots of claptrap about breezeways, recreation centers, etc, etc).

Nate wrote: “by the way, one of the more popular Dems (Jim Webb) bragged about openly flouting DC’s gun laws by saying he brings a gun into DC. Is he a criminal also? Or how about his aide? The one he had bring a GUN and TWO clips into the Senate bldg? Criminal also? DC dropped the charges against him. Or how about the aide caught bringing a gun into the house bldg? Criminal also? Or are you selective about who you term a criminal?”

yes, to all of those questions. whether the local US Attorney’s office or the DC AG chose to prosecute them is a matter of enforcement discretion, but if they did what they have said they did (or it is alleged they did) it was a crime.

if you looked behind the gun death statistics in this country, you’d know that a majority of the gun deaths in this country are perpetrated by “non-violent people” with guns who end up killing someone–someone who was not robbing, raping or assaulting them– or themselves. someone gets pissed off, loses their temper, or gets depressed, and the availability of guns, the inherent distance a gun provides, and the irreversible consequences result in someone taking a life when, absent the gun, the worst result would have likely been a black eye or bloody nose. if you’ve ever hit another person, you know that the punch sends a message back to the puncher–it’s visceral, you feel what you are doing. the same is even true of a knife or a baseball bat–you have to physically touch your victim, and it hurts you as well as your victim. with a gun, you can stand 5, 10, 20 feet away, point it, and pull the trigger. it’s done, and you don’t have to physically feel anything at all.

so in the rest of the civilized world, when people fly off out of anger or hate, immediate, detached deadly force isn’t available in most cases, and the senses intervene to minimize the actions of otherwise rational, normally non-violent people. in the US, where there’s a gun in every other house, we see the results in violent death statistics.

Yeah, Switzerland (universal machine-gun posession by all military-age males) and Canada (higher gun possession rate than USA) are such hotspots of gun violence.

If we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit that there are qualitative differences between the average Swiss guy and the average American, and it’s those qualitative differences that account for the difference in crime rates between the two countries, not the mere availability of guns.

Let’s address those root causes of our criminal class (e.g. dysfunctional parents, terrible education, abysmal nutrition, counterproductive role models, Prohibition-era drug laws, etc, etc, etc) rather than asking honest citizens to unilaterally disarm.

To mphs,
You have a point with your statement pertaining to why they do their dirt at 18th and Monroe and the the following streets, but you fail to realize that Mt. Pleasant was not always like it is now and it is in no way, shape, or form to be compared to Woodly Park still. Mt. Pleasant had a serious crime problem in the 80′s and 90′s and that element is still in the neighborhood. I am a true Washingtonian born and raised and I’ve noticed that people fail to realize that the people that do dirt in adams morgan are the same people or are kinfolk in one way or another to the people that do dirt in Mt. Pleasant, CH, Petworth, and Shaw. D.C. is funny like that…..Just because most of the criminals were displaced does not mean that they do not comeback to their own neighborhood either (including released prisoners)…There are many reasons as to why that problem persists in Mt. Pleasant.

So news flash, there’s a U-Haul in front of the house and it’s being loaded up.

you are at it again Anonymous, keep up the good work