Trinidad: the one neighborhood that could crash ShotSpotter was at it again this past weekend. Every other month, Trinidad picks a weekend to go bonkers and just kick the crap out of families and loved ones. Trinidad is nothing but a tragedy machine. This weekend brought about some particularly awful stuff–a teenager visiting his sick great-grandmother was killed.

And the checkpoints are back–during daylight hours.

Can the city admit that they don’t have an answer for the violence in Trinidad? Can they just say “We don’t know how to stop it?” The checkpoints are a dubious idea–a somewhat effective gimmick at best, at worst a distraction and hinderance for detectives trying to sleuth out murder suspects. At least that’s what this pro says.

No one has a good solution.

Lots of terrible stuff happened in the Trinidad neighborhood Friday night. A 13-year-old boy was killed and six others were shot, according to reports. NBC4 and WTOP are on top of the story today. Police tell NBC4 they might reinstall those controversial checkpoints because of the violence. (Never mind that the checkpoints were for some secret, specific reason.)

UPDATE: The checkpoints are back.

Former ANC 5B-10 commissioner Kathy Henderson tends to draw strong reactions from the people she encounters. She’s a scrapper, known for throwing all her energy into filing complaints, writing letters and putting politicians on the spot. When she relinquished her seat last year to run for city council, she had her teenage daughter, India, run in her place (Henderson told me she “told” her daughter to run). And ever since India won the seat, her mom has exhibited masterful control over the young comish, marching her out of one meeting so a quorum wouldn’t be met. Henderson has also been a vocal supporter of those controversial police checkpoints and a vocal opponent of bars and loitering kids.

Like her or not, you can’t deny Henderson has had particularly bad luck with her car, a 1991 blue Mercury Capri. First someone torched it, then, last November Henderson got a ticket for parking it in the median of Pennsylvania Avenue to attend a police oversight hearing–even though she’d put her “official business” placard on the dashboard. Now her well-known car is the object of what Henderson sees as vengeful slander. When a poster on the Fifth police district listserv ranted about the reckless driver behind the wheel of vehicle that fit the description of Henderson’s car (“blue capri with howard univ stickers in back window and dents on the back left…dc license of ‘anc 5b__ __’.”), Henderson fired right back: “I find your timing suspect and wonder why you did not immediately call the police? I suspect that your true motive is some ridiculous attempt to embarrass me in a public forum.”

Henderson hasn’t responded to my email so far.

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.”

Today, the city assembled inspectors, police officers, and reporters for “Operation Pitbull,” a crackdown on shady operations along Bladensburg Road NE. The Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs wanted to catch used-car dealers who were screwing their customers. What happened was less spectacular.

At one used-car lot, inspectors learned that a federal task force had arrived on a previous day and seized a number of autos. Most of the cars on the premises didn’t have license plates, and some were stored illegally in the public alley. “This ain’t no chop shop up in here,” said employee Jerry Robertson. “It’s legit. Everything’s straight.” After inspectors wrote infractions and asked pointed questions, Operation Pitbull moved on.

At a second dealership, auto-unit officers examined a Frankenstein job in which the back end of one car was being welded to the front end of another. All the officials in the garage agreed that this salvage was illegal. But the owner wasn’t around, and the mechanics sat in the shade, pleading ignorance. This shop stayed open, too.

DCRA did close one business that day: an AAMCO Transmissions outlet, a clean-looking garage that happened to be storing a D.C. government truck and two Water and Sewer Authority vehicles. The AAMCO’s owner, Eung Chung, didn’t have a certificate of occupancy that allowed him to store cars or perform some of his other services. He said he didn’t know that he was doing anything wrong. At least one official believed him.

“They’re gonna shut him down,” DCRA spokeswoman Karen-Siobhan Robinson Karyn-Siobhan Robinson told reporters.

“Oh, cool!” said one TV photographer. “What does that mean? They’re gonna lock the gate and walk him out in handcuffs?”

Chung drove off to apply for a new certificate of occupancy. The garage doors came down, and an employee grinned as he closed the gates.

CORRECTION, 5/24: The original post misspelled DCRA spokesperson Karyn-Siobhan Robinson’s name.

Every Tuesday and Thursday, we run down what’s going on in local Internet discussion groups.

MPD-1D
Though Andrew Solberg, who apologized for “inartful” race-based remarks earlier this month, is back at 2D after a stint in school security, reviews of his mea culpa are mixed. “I truly appreciate the sincerity of Inspector Solberg’s apology,” Melissa writes. “It did not ‘feel’ like the PR department of the MPD crafted the message—it came from the heart.” D was more cynical: “[W]hile Solberg may have ‘contributed’ to his ‘apology’ [MPD spokesperson] Joe Gentile and company assisted with the ‘fine tuning.’ That’s their job……..the good, bad and ugly of it all.” Mikeindc rose in Solberg’s defense: “Well, unless you know that for a fact, to offer such conjecture, in an attempt to impune the character of a good officer, is irresponsible.”

TrinidadDC
Prospective school board candidate Marc Borbely has experience teaching in D.C. public schools, a Yale biochemistry degree, and has served as an ANC commissioner since 2004. What he doesn’t have is a campaign HQ. “I’m looking for a medium-size space that I could rent and use as a campaign office until November 7,” Borbely writes. “If anyone has or knows of a possible space in Northeast, north of Florida Avenue/Benning (a basement, a storefront, an industrial space, a company/nonprofit with extra space, or anything else), please let me know!” As of posting time, no one had posted a reply to his offer.

TakomaDC
Responding to complaints about DCRA bureaucracy, nss_dc is “struck by the similarities between the bureaucratic behaviour in DC and that of pre-Gorbachev Moscow” and recounts an allegedly true story from the capital: “The Moscow bus sat idling at the stop with its doors open, waiting for passengers and the appropriate time to start its course. The driver noticed in his mirror a heavy-set, somewhat older, stereotypically peasant woman, running to catch the bus. He waited. She reached the open doorway. He closed the door and the bus pulled away. Because he could. He alone controlled that one process.” For those who prefer Czech metaphors, awabrams likens dealing with the DCRA to “being a protagonist in a Kafka story”—perhaps if Joseph K. was “processing a permit application for a new house…designed for a site in Shepherd Park.”