http://www.wa****ngtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/05/AR2008050502527.html
D.C. Slayings, Nerves Spike
Patterns and Suspects in Month of Violent Crimes Still Hazy
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
April was a deadly month in the District, with 18 homicides, nine of
them in Northeast Wa****ngton neighborhoods west of the Anacostia
River. On one Saturday, four people were fatally shot within four
hours. With motives including domestic issues, revenge and conflicts
over drugs, authorities have been struggling to develop clear patterns
and catch the criminals.
The spike in homicides led police to increase patrols to ease
residents' nerves and tamp down crime, a signature response by Mayor
Adrian M. Fenty (D), who puts a priority on immediate action over more
time-consuming approaches.
But that didn't stop Debra Seals-Craven from upbraiding the mayor at a
public meeting on the recent crimes. Her 30-year-old son, Melvin
Seals, was shot to death a little more than a week ago. People
gathered at New Bethel Baptist Church in Northwest Wa****ngton on
Friday for his funeral, wearing personalized T-****rts that read "RIP
Big Melvin."
D.C. Council member Harry Thomas Jr. (D-Ward 5), who has been meeting
almost daily with residents to get a handle on the issue, said gun
violence is ripping families and neighborhoods apart. "Our city is at
war with itself," he told hundreds of mourners at Seals's funeral
service.
Over the past two months, gun violence has jumped in the city. The
number of re****ted assaults with deadly weapons rose in six of the
city's seven police districts. Citywide, the number of homicides is
about the same as last year: 51 as of yesterday, compared with 55 at
the same point last year.
But it is the recent violence that has generated alarm. There were 338
assaults, robberies or homicides involving a gun from March through
April, up about 30 percent from that period last year.
The toll in Thomas's ward has been especially heavy: 12 killings and
38 robberies in March and April, compared with three slayings and 17
robberies in the same period last year.
Often, the perpetrators of violence and their victims have had brushes
with the law, as in the current string of killings. Although the city
has undergone an economic revival with new housing and shopping
centers, many residents of such places as Brentwood, Trinidad and Ivy
City have not shared in the benefits, and residents say that has an
impact on crime on their streets.
"The boom didn't touch many of the people who needed it most," said
Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner William Shelton, who works with
teenagers in the Brookland Manor Apartments in Northeast. "We're
dealing with the aftereffects of war."
Although Fenty often appears at crime scenes, decrying violence, the
District government has shown no urgency in solving the problem, said
David Bowers, who heads the all-volunteer No Murders DC. Despite 6,500
homicides since 1980, he said, the District has no comprehensive plan.
Bowers, the son of a former Superior Court judge, is a native
Wa****ngtonian. He is an ordained minister and, in his day job, directs
the Wa****ngton office of the Enterprise Foundation, a nonprofit
affordable-housing organization. After crime spikes like this one, he
said, leaders throw a little money at groups like Peaceoholics and the
Alliance for Concerned Men, which hire former street toughs and
ex-offenders to mentor troubled youths and help defuse beefs before
they turn violent.
"Those groups are part of the solution, but they are not all of it,"
said Bowers, who is heading a citywide task force meant to stamp out
homicide. "We wear a T-****rt, have a vigil, extend compassion to a
grieving mother, pour out some liquor and say we're going to put more
cops on the beat.
"It's easy to do that," Bowers said. "But it's harder to do the work
necessary to end violence, to work with people day in and day out to
keep our neighborhoods safe."
Fenty counters that neither the problems nor the solutions are new.
Still, he agrees that government must reach children earlier. At the
same time, he pushes police to respond quickly to crime.
Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said that many recent shootings in the
5th District stemmed from neighborhood rivalries over drugs or
domestic issues. She would not provide specifics because the cases
remain open.
Speaking after Friday's start of the department's most recent citywide
patrol and enforcement operation, dubbed All Hands on Deck, Lanier
said she already had focused more efforts on the 5th District as well
as the 1st District, which covers the Capitol Hill area. Both had
spikes in gun crimes in the past month. Probably the most visible
enforcement efforts are police checkpoints, in which officers use the
traffic stops to gather information on individuals that often ends up
in the department's intelligence banks.
"We pooled resources from all our districts aimed at specific
targets," Lanier said. "We've gone after the most violent predators
with warrant squads. . . . We focused on gun interdiction."
From late March through April, a newly strengthened police unit
targeting firearms recovered 312 guns from streets -- in a city with
one of the toughest gun laws in the country, now under review by the
Supreme Court.
"We're getting lots of guns off the streets," Lanier said. "We're
closing lots of homicides. And when we do, we're going back to the
communities to pass out fliers to let residents know we are closing
those cases."
Police said yesterday that officers made 480 arrests, recovered 12
firearms and seized more than $12,000 worth of drugs during All Hands
on Deck, which ran from Friday through Sunday morning.
But law enforcement alone is not the solution, Lanier said.
It is a point that residents make constantly: Government agencies,
churches and businesses must take a more direct role in bettering the
lives of residents, and people must stop writing children off as bad
apples without offering help.
"We always wait until the situation gets out of control and everybody
wants to talk about the surface of the problem," said Chanell Kelton,
24, who lives in Brentwood. "We say that it has to start in the home,
but for a lot of children, there is no home."
What's left are the familiar scenes that follow -- of grief, confusion
and anger.
Just before midnight April 16, Sharon Stewart crumpled onto a Trinidad
sidewalk, repeatedly sobbing, "My baby's going to be okay." Lanier was
on the scene, and the police chief bent down and rubbed her back,
offering emotional sup****t to a grieving mother whose son, Darvell,
18, would die of his shooting wounds.
Five days later, Stewart held her head in her hands, wondering where
she would get $2,870 for the funeral.
On April 24, George Douglas's father, who did not want his name
published for fear of retribution, told a packed crime forum that it
was all he could do not to seek revenge. His son, 18, was shot in
April.
"My son was shot in the head, and they dragged him on the train
tracks," the man said. "I don't want my son to be no John Doe . . . My
son was not no criminal . . . That man has blood on his hands . . . I
want to see him."
A week later, police arrested a 15-year-old in the slaying.
Seals-Craven also wants justice. On Friday, days after she chided the
mayor at the public forum, she saw Fenty again, this time at her son's
funeral. Fenty offered his personal condolences.
Fighting back tears, she spoke at the funeral about the need for
someone to come forward and tell police who killed her son.
"I have got to have peace to know who killed my son," she said.
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