The Jamaicans of Forrester Street

While researching the history of the Dissed-Trict, I spent a lot of time focusing on Forrester Street SW in Bellevue. I had never really spent serious time in Bellevue unless recording the complaints of homeless women (at the infamous D.C. Village), attending to some ceremony at the police academy or attending a debate at the Washington Highlands Public Library (it’s actually located in Bellevue). I didn’t think Bellevue had much to offer beyond those three spots. So I was encouraged to find plenty to fill a reporter’s notebook: stable homes filled with people who knew their neighborhood’s history, sweet ornamental improvements (those flags!), and the notorious side of Forrester Street.

When I started my reporting, one of my first calls was to Assistant Chief Winston Robinson. He had been the 7th District commander for more than 10 years (1993-2004); he would know stuff. When it came time to talk about Bellevue, he jumped all over Forrester Street.

“The drug activity on Forrester Street—it was unbelievable, like unbelievable,” Robinson said. “The street was unreal. It was just so awesome.”

It was 1993. Robinson said that the quality of weed sold on that street was good enough to lure potheads from Annapolis, Richmond and Delaware. At any given time, he told me, there were roughly 25 dealers working the unit block of Forrester. Even on that street, their territory was small. They mainly sold their product out of the apartment complexes clustered at the bottom of the block.

Captain C.V. Morris policed that street back in the day. The dealers, he said, were a confident bunch. “They had their own website—Best Weed in D.C.,” he recalled. “I know they had a website.”

The dealers were mostly Jamaicans. He doesn’t know how they turned Forrester into their own special stateside island. “For whatever reason, they had all those buildings,” he said. “They were entrenched in those four-unit buildings.”

Search warrants would lead Morris inside those buildings. What he founded was something out of Scarface or New Jack City—an over-the-topness that tends to stand out in one’s memory. “This one guy had a bar. His whole living room and dining room was a bar, fully stocked. You could tell it was professionally done.”

And money. The police found it everywhere.

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