Falls Church blogger Blueweeds reports that Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Ray Morrogh will not overturn his office’s decision to not prosecute Brandon Paul Gotwalt for the 2005 killing of Steve Cornejo. 

Cornejo was unarmed when he was beaten and shot in the back by Gotwalt, who was never arrested. In a civil trial, a Fairfax County jury found Gotwalt liable for the wrongful death of Cornejo, and ordered Gotwalt to pay Cornejo’s family $1.96 million plus $15,588 for funeral expenses.

Gotwalt declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy and didn’t pay the dead man’s family a dime.

Blueweeds reports that in a letter to Mayor Robin Gardner of Falls Church, Morrogh said the eyewitness and other testimony of Gotwalt’s actions during and after the killing of Cornejo — who grew up in Falls Church — didn’t change his original opinion that no prosecution was warranted. Morrogh’s office had initially told the public that Gotwalt was acting as a “good Samaritan” and shot Cornejo while preventing Cornejo from assaulting a woman.

At the civil trial, evidence showed there was no woman on the scene when Cornejo was shot, and Gotwalt admitted being the aggressor in the altercation that ended with an unarmed man being shot in the back. Two witnesses testified that they heard Cornejo plead for his life just before being shot in the back.

The jury was told Gotwalt flushed his bloody clothes and the spent shells down the toilet and initially lied to police about being on the scene.

I’ve followed the case from the start, and it has long seemed plain to me, as plain as it apparently did to that civil jury, that Fairfax County coddled a killer. 

But why?

That’s the actual subhead in a press release from Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans‘ office. Luckily, the statement redeems itself by presenting some real news (as opposed to the recent “[Kwame] BROWN BAGS IT FOR PROSTATE CANCER AWARENESS“.)

Residents in Shaw have been begging for ShotSpotter since the dawn of the police listervs, or at least it feels that way. Here’s a little sample:

“What bothers me almost as much as the repeated gunfire is that residents (myself included) seem to have gotten so accustomed to hearing it that it may not even get reported. One more reason that we need to get ShotSpotter deployed so that the police aren’t dependent on sometimes not-very-precise reports from residents.”

Now, apparently, the wait is over.

Read the rest of this entry »

ANC Commissioner Robert L. Whiddon wrote in to the MPD-4D Listserv this morning to complain about the problem of “idle cops”:

Every so often I’ll run home, running along Park Place along the reservoir.

I’ve noticed a squad car, officer inside talking on a cell phone, idling at I think Park Place and maybe Monroe on several afternoons between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. …

With the recent murders in my SMD I’m even more concerned than usual about idle cops. There is much to do to help improve public safety in our community and chatting on a cell phone, in an idling squad car, far from the action, doesn’t seem like it’s very helpful.

Assistant Chief of Police Diane Groomes‘ response:

Sir - I would like to advise you that the car on Park Pl is the PHOTO RADAR car that is stationary and used to enforce the speeding issue on Park Pl - usually they are on Park Pl two times a week and are not on routine patrol..

I was making my way to the Whole Foods on P Street last night when a row of cops waved me into a real live checkpoint. (They should really stop people after they leave Whole Foods.) A nice officer held the brake on my scooter as I fished through my purse for my registration. I asked him what was up. He said he had no idea. He called the stops a “traffic checkpoint” and said police were just checking that people had their licenses and registrations. I asked if this was supposed to make the earlier checkpoints legal and he grinned and said he’d heard something like that. Then he sent me on my way. It’s interesting that the MPD is doing general checkpoints now, after Cathy Lanier stood up at a recent hearing and claimed the Trinidad operation was inspired by a specific criminal threat, she just couldn’t tell us the details.

Local gun enthusiasts, note these words: “reasonably perceived threat of immediate harm.”

That there, laid out in a law likely to be passed tomorrow by the D.C. Council, lays out exactly when you’ll be allowed to actually load a gun in the District of Columbia for self-defense purposes.

This policy was announced this afternoon at a Wilson Building press conference featuring Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, Interim Attorney General Peter Nickles, police chief Cathy Lanier, council Chair Vincent C. Gray, and various councilmembers. Much of the presser was devoted to the nuts and bolts of actually registering a handgun—you’ll be able to apply for a handgun permit likely later this week, Nickles said, and the whole process should take “weeks or months.” That includes taking a written firearms safety test and getting fingerprinted, plus a ballistics sample for every registered gun. Getting your hands on a gun is a trickier process; you can buy a gun in another state then have it transferred to a dealer in the District (for a fee)—last week, WTOP’s Mark Segraves found the one guy in town who’s willing to do that for you: one Charles Sykes, Jr.

As to where you can load that gun, given a “reasonably perceived threat of immediate harm,” it’s only in your home. Not your yard. Not your car, which might be parked in front of your home, but in your home. Now, as for the use of the gun once it’s loaded, the statute will say nothing about that; use of a weapon in self-defense is governed by reams of case law, Nickles says.

The District’s proposed standard is likely to attract additional legal scrutiny from folks who feel that the policy in not in full compliance with the Heller decision, but Nickles says it was drafted to comply fully with the holding. “When you do almost anything in this city, you get a lawsuit,” he said.

Lots more info in the press release after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this month, the New York Times Magazine ran a lengthy article on the clandestine doings of London guerrilla gardener Richard Reynolds.

If you’re not familiar with this rogue tilling movement, Reynolds supplies a neat explanation of the practice to writer Jon Mooallem. Guerrilla gardening, he says, is ” the cultivation of someone else’s land without permission.”

Gardeners like Reynolds home in on forgotten properties, whether public or private, in order to work horticultural wizardry over them, transforming formerly crappy parcels into botanical wonderlands or small farms. The movement, for which Reynolds has become the default spokesperson, has attracted its share of devotees. Reynolds’ Web site boasts impressive before-and-after guerrillla garden pics sent to the flora guru from such places as Toronto, Portland, Ore., and Brisbane, Australia. “There are hundreds of us around the world discreetly digging at night. Some like me improve their cities, some make the countryside that little bit more colorful, and some live off the vegetables they illicitly grow in roadside verges,” writes Reynolds on his site.

Scanning the site’s photos and extensive guerrilla garden map (evidently there’s a “dig” in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba) and finding no mention of the District might lead one to conclude that insurgent gardening is just one more vintage-clothed hipster phenomenon a decidedly Brooks Brothers D.C. is missing out on.

Not so. In what was a vacant lot across from Marcus Popetz’s two-story house in east Columbia Heights, a lot that was, as the 32-year-old computer engineer puts it, “attracting drug users, trash, etc…everything a normal nuisance property does” now grow tomato, squash, and cucumber plants.

According to Popetz, two years ago he and some other residents who’d been working on beautification projects around the neighborhood began thinking about what to do with the large, eyesore of a plot just adjacent to the playground of Bruce Monroe Elementary school. “We looked into who owned it,” Popetz writes in an email “and the city did a lien to clean it once they found that the owner was a corporation [that] hadn’t paid back taxes in 20 years. We cleaned it a couple of times and then started to think about planting flowers and then the idea sorta ballooned into a garden from there.”

Unlike celebrity guerrilla gardener Reynolds, who, in his recently published book– as the Times mag reports– makes “references to horticultural ’sleeper cells’ and ’shock and awe’ plantings,’” Popetz doesn’t act as if he’s involved in environmentally responsible espionage. There’s been no night-time gardening or “seed bombs” at the plot on Columbia Road. Popetz and crew (made up of the garden’s co-leader Sara Eigenberg and at any given time six to eight other gardeners) have never really tried to hide their work.

Though technically, the community-oriented green thumbers are trespassing, no one seems to mind, especially not the neighborhood kids who help weed or the senior citizens who get handed surplus veggies. And the city, which is still trying to locate the owner’s of the abandoned lot the guerrillas commandeered, has not only failed to give the gardeners any grief but erected a gate to help protect the project.

“It’s completely illegal, we don’t have any ownership, but morality is on our side,” says Popetz. In a neighborhood where dark, empty lots create the perfect hideaway for gunmen (which happened once in the lot, Popetz remembers), who could argue with him? Asked whether the Columbia Heights gardeners have–like many other guerrilla gardeners–a political agenda, Popetz snorts, “The grandest political aspiration we have,” he says, “is to keep the garden going.”–Rend Smith

Any time you have the opportunity to use the word “imponderable,” you should use it.

It’s a great word. It has a great sound. (Test it out, let it roll off your tongue.) And best of all, it conjures up images of bespectacled old professors, ranting U.S. senators on the floor, and 1940s sleuths hot on the trail–basically people that take themselves seriously for somewhat good reason.

You don’t hear the word a lot. And when you do, you remember.

Last time I heard it, I was interviewing Robert Levy, a lawyer (and so much more) for the pro-gun side of the DC handgun ban case. We were discussing the future of handgun ownership in the District should the ban end. What sort of laws and restrictions would be put in place? Who would write them? When would they be enacted?

“It’s imponderable,” responded Levy. “Even if the handgun ban is overturned, the court could write a narrow opinion, or it could write a very broad opinion.”

The ruling may dictate how long the D.C. Council has to pass handgun legislation. There may be some language permitting certain safety requirements. Maybe the Supreme Court will direct a lower court to issue guidelines for D.C. The point: Speculating about the court’s decision now is just one big maybe on top of another.

At the time, I also spoke to someone in interim attorney general’s Peter Nickles’ office, who said the office was “ready” for whatever action the court took. But, beyond that, the man wouldn’t comment. Well, Police Chief Cathy Lanier, let ‘er rip last night around 6:35 p.m., sending out this e-mail to various police listservs:

Read the rest of this entry »

A brief perusal of Roget’s suggests a galaxy of promising adjectives for describing one’s reaction to a troubling Supreme Court decision.

For one, there is “troubled.” “Shocked,” “outraged,” and “concerned” come to mind. Further options include “chagrined,” “mortified,” “aggrieved,” “offended,” “incensed,” “riled up,” and “scared shitless.”

In their press releases, however, District politicos have been sticking to one word with alarming regularity:

Disappointed.

First, there is Ward 5 Councilmember Harry “Tommy” Thomas, Jr., who “expressed his extreme disappointment with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the District gun ban, and indicated that the Council must now establish strict standards to regulate the sale of handguns in the District of Columbia.”

Then we have Fenty, Nickles, and Lanier, who weigh in as follows:

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, Interim Attorney General Peter Nickles, and Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier announced their disappointment in today’s ruling of the United States Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller…. “I’m disappointed in the Court’s ruling and believe introducing more handguns into the District will mean more handgun violence,” said Mayor Fenty.*

Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray includes the following in his statement:

Although I am disappointed by the court’s decision, working collectively with the Mayor, the Metropolitan Police, legal authorities, and residents, the Council will do all it can to prevent violence from escalating further as a result of today’s un-welcome weakening of our gun laws.

Ward 4 Councilmember Muriel Bowser:

I am disappointed in today’s Supreme Court action which ruled that the DC law banning private handgun possession at home violates the Second Amendment.

At-Large Councilmember Kwame Brown:

My disappointment in the Supreme Courts ruling cannot be merely expressed by words. Every time I hear of another youth, another mother or child gunned down in our communities is yet another reminder of why we need these protective measures in place.

[Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton issued a statement in which the d-word was conspicuously absent, as did Adam Clampitt, Independent Candidate for DC Council At-Large.]

Come on, folks! Disappointed is when your team loses in spring training. Disappointed is when your kid doesn’t crack a B in algebra. Disappointed is when your dog relieves himself under the dining room table.

Whatever happened to “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!”

*The Post imputes “dismay” to Fenty. Over-editorialize much lately?

A few months ago, I wrote a story about a man who believed the D.C. handgun ban would be determined unconstitutional once and for all by the Supreme Court.

Well, he was right!

The man, James Wiggins Jr., had long been licensed as a handgun instructor teaching security officers and others. But, he was so confident in his thinking that he was already marketing gun safety classes to D.C. residents. (That’s him up there, by the way, peeking out behind the target.)

Well, today, not surprisingly, Wiggins is in an awfully cheerful mood. He first called me around noon to say hello and discuss the news. Then, we talked again in the early afternoon.

Not only is Wiggins having his 15 minutes of fame after being featured on WUSA9 recently, he’s also ready to unveil new business plans. When Wiggins and I first chatted in late April, he mentioned that he was hoping to open up a gun range when the ban was officially overturned. At that point, he was pretty tight-lipped about the entire thing and unwilling to say too much. But not now!

“I’m going to be at the licensing place [DCRA] in the morning and start posing questions. Then, I’m going to have to hire a lobbyist,” he says.

Wiggins says he’s pulled together $30 million in financial backing, from private investors–”people I’ve trained,” he says, vaguely–for his new project. “I will try to put [this facility] on the MD/DC line. I’m definitely going for it. I’m going to call it the DC safety center. I can also teach you first aid, CPR.”

Salim Bhabhrawala is used to the occasional neighborhood crime. There was a homicide around the corner a few weeks ago, and an arson nearby just last week. Lately, cops have swarmed his area of NoMa, where he’s resided for four years. But despite their increased, roaming presence, they could not protect Bhabhrawala from becoming the victim of a crime so unexpected and brazen, he felt the need to share his story with the city.

“Over the weekend on Friday/Saturday night between approximately 11:30p and 8:30am, about 3 or 4 gallons of gas were stolen from my vehicle,” he wrote this morning to the Metropolitan Police Department First District listserv.

Around 8:40 a.m. on Saturday, Bhabhrawala left his home, near the corner of 3^rd and M Streets, Northeast. He got into his car, turned the key in the ignition, and noticed that his fuel level was low.

“I knew immediately that something was wrong because I had about a half tank the night before. I got out of the car and noticed that my gas tank was open and my garden hose was gone,” he wrote.

He quickly found “about 90 percent of my garden hose,” a cut section, by an abandoned liquor store around the corner, Bhabhrawala said in an interview this morning. Putting two and two together, he figured out that his own hose had been utilized to siphon out his gas. He didn’t call the police, but he mentioned the incident to his neighbors and decided to post a note on the listserv just “to see if it happened to anyone else.” (So far, no responses.) He also promptly visited a nearby AutoZone to buy a locking fuel cap.

So, is this karmic retribution for his gas-guzzling ways?

For his part, Bhabhrawala wanted to clarify that he doesn’t commute to work, and probably drives no more than 6,000 to 7,000 miles annually.

Later, he adds: “It’s not a huge deal. It’s not like I feel like I’m the victim of some massive crime. I just think it’s funny for $15 bucks of gas for someone to go through all this energy and effort. I can’t imagine if they got caught.”

The scoop award goes to DCWatch for staying till the end of Monday’s hearing on police checkpoints. Turns out Chief Cathy Lanier had a specific crime-fighting reason for firing up the old gantlet — which would diminish the murkiness of the Constitutionality of general crime-fighting reasons for checkpoints. DCWatch summarizes:

There was another, more important, reason, she told the committee, but she could not reveal what that reason was. If the committee members knew what she knew, she was confident that they would agree with her actions, but she couldn’t tell them what she knew. She had, she said, specific information that there were specific individuals who were going to enter that neighborhood to commit a particular crime. Preventing that crime was the real reason for quarantining Trinidad. No lesser measures — tracking those specific individuals, warning the intended victims of the crime, etc. — would have sufficed to prevent the crime. Only a full-scale lock down of the neighborhood and lockout of other citizens was enough. But council members would have to take her word for it, because she couldn’t tell them anything more.

Up till now, the reason for the cordon has been explained as a general need to stem gun crime. In fact, Lanier has suggested that if crime returns to Trinidad, the checkpoints will come back too. Still no word from the ACLU on whether a lawsuit is coming.

The Post published a editorial in favor of the checkpoints today. The author includes a quote from neighborhood activist Kathy Henderson who testified at the hearing that debates about civil liberties were “academic.” She said the crime itself was a violation of her civil rights–which to me seems like a conflation of the freedoms we expect from our government and the natural rights (life, liberty, etc.) we expect from fellow members of humanity.

I think it’s a distinction people don’t think about as much these days. And I can see why the difference is hard to articulate. Here’s one way to look at it: I want my government to protect me from crime, but I can’t hold them responsible if I become a victim. For that I have to blame whichever human jerk does something to me. They’ve violated my natural rights. But if the police decide to arrest me without cause — say, throwing all suspicious-looking women on scooters in jail for a day — I may very well have a reason to complain that my civil rights have been violated. Ok. Sorry for the lesson-time.

I’ve still got my gay pride beads on from today’s rain-soaked parade. But here’s a question for the rest of the folks who lined 17th and P streets today: is it just me, or has Capitol Pride gone a little corporate?

The parade started with the Chief of Police and the Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit, followed by Mayor Adrian Fenty, Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton and a smattering of Councilmembers. But then it seemed like one business after another.

Citibank, Verizon, Bloom Grocery Stores all participated in the parade. Southwest Airlines had one of the coolest and biggest floats all day (they even gave out inflatable airplane toys). You should have seen the woman on the Maid to Clean float gyrate.

The D.C. Cowboys were great, and PFLAG’s “I Love My Gay Son” signs always make me a little teary. And far be it from me to judge how a marginalized community celebrates itself. But it made me a little sad that the guys in leather were so far behind SunTrust Bank’s ATM puppet.

On Saturday night, D.C. police converged on a small, one-way street in Trinidad to man the first of their newly-approved Neighborhood Safety Zone checkpoints. Officers stopped cars driving south down Montello Avenue NE, which is hardly a major entrance point to the area, with Florida Avenue and its tributaries just to the south. (In fact, I tried for a while to enter via the checkpoint but kept ending up on the other side of it without passing through the gauntlet.) Officers stood in the middle of the intersection and asked drivers for I.D. and an explanation of their business in the neighborhood. Sometimes, an officer would use a flashlight to peer into the vehicles (does that constitute plain view if they find something?) If drivers didn’t have a good enough reason to be in the hood, the officers waved them to the left. According to legal observers from the ACLU, about 90 percent of the cars were rejected, often because the drivers didn’t live in that immediate block. Most people parked around the corner and walked back.

The whole scene felt a bit surreal. Everyone was sort of slow and sleepy after a day of 96-degere heat. Storm clouds darkened the sky but held their rain, just sparking up with intermittent lightening. Despite the impending storm, this normally sleepy intersection attracted a crowd of many dozens. There were people from the neighborhood, police officers and white-shirted brass, and lots of white people in t-shirts with clip boards (representatives of various do-good organizations). I watched assistant chief Diane Groomes field questions, or rather, commentary, from a group of frustrated young people, some of whom kept calling her Cathy. There were lots of comparisons to Iraq and Afghanistan. One young man asked Groomes why the city hadn’t held a neighborhood meeting to discuss the checkpoint. She said it was a fast, strategic decision in response to the murders, and that she was here now, ready to listen. The guy said back, “You want to listen to us now, after you’ve made your decision.” She said, “People make decisions all the time.” In addition to questioning the legality and civil rights implications of the action, many people wondered aloud about the effectiveness. One little boy remarked, “people do killings when they’re walking, too.”

While the city has repeatedly stressed the legality of the plan, the courts have not whole-heartedly endorsed checkpoints. In Indianapolis v. Edmunds, the Supreme Court ruled that checkpoints that serve general law enforcement purposes (rather than narrow dragnets for specific violations) contravene the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches. It seems plausible that Lanier’s checkpoints are pretty damn broad and general, even if they target just one neighborhood. If I were the ACLU (and knew more than one CrimPro class worth of law), it might seem like a reasonable gamble on which to wage a potentially precedent-setting lawsuit. Which makes me wonder what kind of payoff Lanier sees in this plan. The crime-fighting benefits are vague at best, and she hasn’t exactly won over the community. Is all that worth a potentially costly legal battle?

Instead of empathizing with her critics, Chief Cathy Lanier has cast them as jaded curmudgeons who don’t really care about public safety. In an open letter to 5th District residents, she wrote, “It is unfortunate that some want to criticize the use of this tool when we are simply trying to reduce the opportunity for violent offenders to enter a neighborhood for the sole purpose of taking someone’s life… I want to thank the officers, residents and other supporters of this district for what residents agree was a successful weekend. No matter what the critics say, this collaboration was a way of working together to confront potential violent crime at the door to say, “the crime and the killings are not welcomed in the Fifth District or any part of our city.”

On the list serve, one resident responded: “It is unfortunate that if someone expresses concern about this tool, you see it as negative… It is easy to set up a road block and soothe your mind that you are fighting crime in our neighborhood, but many of us feel that you have not done enough of the good old fashioned policing to justify setting up road blocks and it makes us all feel as though we are criminals.”

Every day lots of people cross the Duke Ellington Bridge between Adams Morgan and Woodley Park. My husband, for example, has done so basically every day of his life for the past 11 years. It wasn’t until Saturday, though, that he saw someone try to jump off.

While walking to the Marriott Wardman Park to Twitter, blog, and otherwise write about all of Saturday’s excitement, he watched someone yank his car to a stop right in the middle of the bridge. That’s odd, he said (paraphrasing here. I was in bed), and then he watched the driver sprint to the opposite side of the bridge and forcibly grab hold of another man’s leg. Shortly thereafter another man grabbed his other leg and the first man yelled: “Someone call 911.” Which my husband did. The dispatcher (paraphrasing again) said, “Well, do you have him?” They did; the samaritans said they needed no more samaritans, just the cops.

The incident reminded me of “Jumpers,” a story that ran a few years back in the New Yorker and describes what happens when a jumper jumps, in this case off the Golden Gate Bridge:

In the four-second fall from the bridge, survivors say, time does seem to slow. On her way down in 1979, Ann McGuire said to herself, “I must be about to hit,” three times. But the impact is not clean: the coroner’s usual verdict, suicide caused by “multiple blunt-force injuries,” euphemizes the devastation. Many people don’t look down first, and so those who jump from the north end of the bridge hit the land instead of the water they saw farther out. Jumpers who hit the water do so at about seventy-five miles an hour and with a force of fifteen thousand pounds per square inch. Eighty-five per cent of them suffer broken ribs, which rip inward and tear through the spleen, the lungs, and the heart. Vertebrae snap, and the liver often ruptures. “It’s as if someone took an eggbeater to the organs of the body and ground everything up,” Ron Wilton, a Coast Guard officer, once observed.

The Ellington bridge is one of the few “suicide bridges” in the country that has barriers designed specifically to prevent the eggbeater treatment of a person’s organs. In this case, I think it worked.

When news broke last week that 17 officers who had been terminated for various acts of misconduct were rehired because of administrative foul-ups, the D.C. Police Department called on a familiar face to take the brunt of reporters’ questions: Assistant Chief Peter Newsham.

Newsham has become the department’s expert in crisis management. In 2002, he took the heat from the Pershing Park debacle, when scores of people—some of them anti-globalization types and some of them onlookers and tourists—were rounded up, arrested, and hogtied. He was the officer in charge who ordered the arrests that day.

Now, Newsham, by virtue of his leadership in Internal Affairs, was being asked to explain how the department blew deadlines in issuing its terminations.

By the end of the week, Police Chief Cathy Lanier had moved to re-fire the 17 officers. On Monday, the number officers reinstated over administrative mistakes had climbed to 24, according to police spokesperson Traci Hughes. The additional seven officers were also being considered for re-firing. All 24 have been placed on desk duty.

The police union argues that police officials need to be held accountable—including Newsham. “I can’t wait for them to have hearings,” says the FOP’s Kristopher Baumann. And of Newsham: “If anyone is going to be responsible management-wise, that would be one individual.”

“Am I worried about being disciplined?” Newsham says. “We’ll obviously get to the bottom of that. If I were in some way responsible for this, I would expect to be disciplined.”