The D.C. Police Department announced late yesterday that an arrest has been made in the November 16 homicide of an infant.

“The suspect, identified as 33-year-old Jonathan Austin, of Northwest, DC, was arrested on the afternoon of Wednesday, November 19, 2008 while in the 500 block of Indiana Avenue,” the police department stated in a release.

Wow. Austin was already really close to D.C. Superior Court when he got nabbed.

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At about 10:38 p.m., last Thursday, 7D police responded to a report of a shooting at the 4300 block of 4th Street SE. They found two male victims suffering from gunshot wounds. One of the victims was dead at the scene. He was 15 years old Cinquan Tinker. Tinker lived on that block.

Colbert King, this past weekend, stressed an uptick in juvenile crime. The previous week, another 15 year old was killed.

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Just in time for Halloween, the third installment of “Five Minutes You’ll Never Get Back” is live over at The Sexist. Listeners can look forward to Bobby “The Intern” Allyn’s savvy street reporting, Hess’ name-calling, and more un-PC references to the Goddess/Whore archetype than ever before!

I remember when thumb wrestling was taken seriously. It was something you played on long car rides, as you waited for a movie to start, etc. It was something you did when you were bored. It was something the slight, the skinny, the uncoordinated could do and still have a legit shot at winning. As I got older, the “game” got more complicated, we’d throw in new moves/new weapons like “The Snake” and “The Turtle.” (the Turtle was totally unfair and a game killer; if you played the Turtle move you automatically had to apologize and start the game over–this did not stop us from playing the Turtle at all).

Thumb wrestling isn’t a sport. But that doesn’t mean it’s not sacred. Now, Prince of Petworth is reporting that the Big Hunt is hosting a thumb-wresting tournament for a worthy cause. It’s tonight.

I only worry that thumb-wrestling will become the latest game to be played ironically. First kickball. Then ping pong. Is thumb wrestling next?

Normally I don’t get too riled up about CNN errors, but the headline “‘Power Ranger’ faces death penalty in yacht killings” taints the entire series. The subject of the article, Skylar Deon, who is charged with the 2005 murder of Jackie and Tommy Hawks, was not a Power Ranger. He had a non-speaking, non-recurring bit part in one episode of the show (which was never renewed because the poor sap was incapable of memorizing lines).

Why does this clarification warrant a blog post at City Desk? Because the Power Rangers were the only friends I had between 1993 and 1995, and their untarnished legacy of fighting big-ass aliens while succeeding as high school students is the only thing I hold sacred.

Columbia Heights is the midst of a boom. At the Target, a lot of shelves are empty. This can only mean that people are buying stuff. New restaurants have opened up in recent months (a gastropub, a pretty great pizza place, the now ubiquitous Five Guys). Foot traffic has increased, etc. Its main drag may still be ugly as hell but it has more activity.

This is all to say that I expected much more from Columbia Heights Day. This is why I must respectfully disagree with Prince of Petworth’s assessment (”Columbia Heights Day — Good Times“). I hate to go negative on an event that’s just two years old. But C’mon! This did not feel like a celebration. It felt like a wake inside a Peckinpah film.

Full disclosure No. 1: I did not get to see the cupcake eating contest. Full Disclosure No. 2: I half expected rides. If you thought I was not exactly the CHD’s demo, you would be wrong (the cupcakes were vegan). The big disappointment is that the boring i.e. political outnumbered the fun. There was allegedly face painting (didn’t see it). There was a petting zoo (pretty cool, admittedly, but inferior to any county fair). And there was a moon bounce (smaller or same size of moon bounces found at any block party). The rest of the attractions for your CHD: Jim Graham and Patrick Mara (at least when I was there in the afternoon).

Kids of all ages do not find Jim Graham or Patrick Mara (I’m guessing here since he’s a newbie) entertaining. They attend these events because that’s where voters are–they shake hands, look “real” or “casual,” and pass out pamphlets that will promptly get deposited in the nearest trash can (not nearly enough at CHD).

Two things lacking to CHD that would have made CHD endurable: a well-kept field and festival food. By the time we got there, food consisted of dueling snowball makers and small samples of chips and runny guac. All this no food/no fun was held on a dirt field on the grounds of Harriet Tubman Elementary School at 11th and Kenyon Streets NW. The bands–not worth mentioning. I’m sorry but a guy noodling on a guitar like he’s opening for Merzbow doesn’t count.

Next time, organizers should block off some streets, take over a real field, and get some meat on a stick.

*photo courtesy of Prince of Petworth.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas F. Hogan did what no one else in the city seemed to be able to do: He ordered CFSA to come up with a plan to fix itself. He gave the troubled child welfare agency a two-week deadline.

Hogan’s directive spells certain trouble for the already troubled agency! CFSA has definitely heard the words “plan” and “deadline” before Wednesday. It’s understanding those words that’s given the agency fits, according to Marcia Robinson Lowry, the executive director of Children’s Rights, the national advocacy group that has watchdogged the agency for decades. Children’s Rights spurred this latest round in U.S. District Court after filing a contempt order in late July.

It is the concept of deadlines and plans that caused Children’s Rights to take action in U.S. District Court.

“We had certainly been concerned for at least the last four or five months,” Lowry told me in early August. “CFSA was supposed to have agreed to an acceptable 12-month plan in January. It became clear they were not going to be able to do that…They couldn’t come up with a satisfactory plan. Finally, we withdraw our objections to [a] six month [stabilization] plan. It was March already and they did not have a plan that we thought was adequate. Since the period was half over, we decided to do a 12-month plan starting on July 1. We expected to have an adequate plan by the end of June. We did not get an acceptable plan by the end of June.”

Lowry’s group met CFSA officials several times to express its dissatisfaction. Those meetings, Lowry says, were disappointing and failed to address the agency’s lack of progress on righting the agency. The meetings sometimes included D.C.’s top lawyer Peter Nickles.

Nickles did confirm to City Desk that Children’s Rights’ main beef with CFSA concerned the agency’s failure to address its issues in a systematic way. The agency just never could get specific enough to satisfy Children’s Rights, Nickles says.

[Nickles told the Post in July: "I had looked to Marcia and the plaintiffs as partners to improve the agency," Nickles said. "This has sort of taken my invitation and said we'll hold you in contempt."]

Lowry says that given the agency’s bad marks in a November ‘07 review and the handling of the Banita Jacks case, the agency should have been more aggressive.

In an e-mail dated August 25, Interim Director Roque Gerald confessed some bad news to Child and Family Services Agency employees: there were 1,442 cases still in the backlog.

In mid-July, the backlog stood at 1,708 cases, according to agency documents. It has been more than a month since Sharlynn Bobo resigned. Since July 14, the backlog has shrunk by 266 cases—and this is with the full throttle support of the Fenty Administration. Gerald wrote in his e-mail:

“Today’s message is with a heavy heart but also with no less passion and commitment to support you in every way I can. We remain burdened by our valiant attempts to address the current backlog crisis.”

Gerald goes on to state that the backlog had become enough of an issue (again) that he had to reach out to the mayor’s office. On August 22, he e-mailed City Administrator Dan Tangherlini. Gerald’s communique “led to a face-to-face meeting with the CA and some others on the EOM staff” on the evening of August 22.

“It was a good, productive meeting. Loren Ganoe, Camelia Pierre, Jim Toscano, and I all came away with a better understanding of EOM concerns—and with a sense that they gained a deeper understanding of the challenges CFSA is facing and strategies we’re using to meet them. You must continue to press to safely close backlogged investigations. Meanwhile, I’ll keep oversight authorities informed about our efforts, barriers, and successes,” Gerald wrote.

Gerald noted that “results” from his sit-down at the mayor’s office were “immediate.”

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Last Spring we tracked Positive Nature’s struggle to keep its doors open. The non-profit, which provides tons of services for at-risk kids, was renting a building just blocks from the new Nationals Park. Within the last few years, it had become clear that Positive Nature was being priced out of the neighborhood. The area used to include a housing project. Now it has a Courtyard Marriott. You can read our previous reportage here, here, here, here, and here. If you feel like skipping all those links, here’s a quick summary: the non-profit owed thousands of dollars in property taxes, they held a rally and reached out for support, legislation was introduced before the D.C. Council, nothing much happened with the legislation, the non-profit sought out a new location.

Now comes the news that Positive Nature has found a new space through the Department of Parks And Recreation in what looks like a new partnership.

“We are so appreciative of all of the outpouring of care and support that so many people have extended to us in recent months, and we are privileged to have the opportunity to continue to provide services to the District’s children and families,” wrote Jennifer Murphy, the non-profit’s co-founder and co-executive director.

The new location: The TR Center at 3030 G Street SE.

We will of course be following up with a visit to the TR Center. Stay tuned.

The News & Observer reported last week on a study from the Journal of Marriage and Family, which found that stepdads and stand-in pappies often make better parents than married biological dads:

Mothers reported that stepfathers were more engaged, more cooperative and shared more responsibility than their biological counterparts did, according to the study, published in this month’s issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.

Lawrence Berger, the study’s lead author, cautioned that the findings applied only to “fragile families,” defined as low-income urban families prone to nonmarital births.

Could this be good news for DC kids? (I’m thinking of the middle school misfits who lollygag around Jefferson and 7th, and occasionally interrupt my stoop reveries to ask if they can “get some peanut butter on that cracker.”) The numbers say it should be great news. In 2006, the most recent year for which the Census Bureau has data, 4,093 unmarried DC women gave birth to screaming new DC residents. Even if we dismiss half of those births as intentional (i.e., the offspring of well-off domestic partners)–and I suspect those numbers are laughably optimistic–that still leaves quite a few unwed moms and daddy-less kids, many of whom I’d place in the category of “low-income urban families prone to nonmarital births.”

Unless one wants to contend that unwed, low-income dads have a tendency to stick around and act as good role models, here’s to the possibility that at least a few of DC’s single moms will cease to fret over the significance of a flesh and blood connection between their kids and the men who raise them. And why were at it, let’s hope that biological dads have enough pride to compete with the Prince Charmings who might usurp their roles at home.

In April, lawyers for both sides of WAKA LLC v. DC Kickball filed
paperwork with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia asking for the case to be dismissed.

The motion was granted.

And so ends the Greatest Kickball Lawsuit of All Time™.

The federal case was originally filed in February 2006 and involved the folks responsible for turning DC into the adult kickball epicenter.

WAKA, also known as the World Adult Kickball Association, alleged that Carter Rabasa, founder of DC Kickball, had violated copyright laws because his league used the same kickball rules as WAKA.

Those are also pretty much the same rules used by third graders everywhere. No third graders were named as defendants.

The complaint also alleged that Rabasa, a former WAKA volunteer, defamed WAKA by calling the group “the Microsoft of kickball” in a 2005 City Paper story.

Rabasa countersued, alleging in his filings that WAKA used monopolistic tactics on the way to becoming, um, the Microsoft of Kickball™.

No terms of the settlement are included in the court filings.

However, the DC Kickball website holds clues that Rabasa, who lacked the deep pockets of the, um, Microsoft of Kickball™, hit his knees.

First, there’s a disclaimer from Rabasa saying that no “defamatory and/or disparaging remarks regarding WAKA” will be allowed on the DC Kickball site.

Then there’s this syntax-challenged announcement labeled as “Apology to WAKA“: “Carter Rabasa, DCKickball and DCK Sports LLC regret and retract the defamatory and/or disparaging statements made regarding WAKA Kickball. Those statement were in error.”

(“Those statement,” huh? Is that a typo, or some sort of juvenile,
kickball-age appropriate “I had my fingers crossed when I said I’m
sorry!” trick?)

Even with Rabasa’s apparent fold, it’s hard to declare any winner here.

But the losers are legion: Anybody hoping that this case would reach a trial stage, so grownups would argue in a public courtroom over kickball—or Kickball™—is diminished by its early denouement.