The MPD established a drug free zone for the duration of July in Brightwood Park. A heavy MPD presence followed the red fliers (re: lots of white guys in flak jackets making more trouble for the neighborhood than the dealers they replaced), and now the dealers have gone back to work in front of the corner take-out at 5th and Kennedy.

Evidence that things in the neighborhood are back to normal and that the drug free zone was a waste of (non-recycled?) paper: I walked off the bus yesterday and into a heated public dispute over the price of joints. The seller wanted $15 each, the buyer only wanted to pay $10. There was some yelling, some good dealer/bad dealer, some bravado-fueled hustling, but then they settled on $12 a joint, and everybody walked away with what he wanted. And, I might add, no one gave a shit that I saw it all go down.

I realized after watching yesterday’s exchange that the atmosphere of danger–at least in Brightwood Park–is as much a  product of the MPD’s presence as it is the viral hopelessness that they established generations ago with their crackdowns. In the few months that my girlfriend and I have lived in the neighborhood, we’ve only been scared a handful of times. The first was when red fliers showed up–overnight it seemed–on every light pole in the neighborhood. The second time was when we watched eight cops in five cars bust a teenager for selling pot outside a convenience store.

In other words, we didn’t feel threatened until the cops showed up and told us to feel threatened.

The idea that cops are the problem contradicts theories that a heavy police presence discourages crime, but truth be told, I’ve almost always felt safer in the company of drug dealers than cops. Supra-citizenship lends itself to abuse, but drug dealers–at least the small-timers in our neighborhood–are live-and-let-live capitalists who have a stake in maintaining some sort of neighborhood equilibrium; while cops have every reason to stir shit up.

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 the market for a cut-rate home ownership opportunity in the Brightwood Park area?

Check out this 1,500-square-foot row house at 714 Madison Street NW. According to Jenny Lynch—a spokesperson for bid4assets.com, the company auctioning off the house—the home was forfeited to the federal government as “a result of a conspiracy to distribute cocaine.”

Features include “hardwood floors, a fireplace on the ground level, three bedrooms, two and one-half bathrooms and an additional recreation room. There is a finished basement with a common area/recreation room, kitchenette and full bathroom. There is a parking area for two or more cars in rear of property.”

Interested? Bids start at $230,000. You need to deposit 10 percent of that in order to participate when bidding starts on March 17.

More info after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »