Yet, as Johnny Barnes of the American Civil Liberties Union points out, "the only homicide in Trinidad last year was at the hands of the police."

It's a year and one day since Trey Joyner, 25, was mowed down by police bullets, and family members of the slain Trinidad resident are still waiting for an update on the investigation. Relatives, along with some fuming local activists, gathered in front of the John A. Wilson building on Wednesday to point out as much.

Dressed in the coveralls of his workplace, Travis Joyner wanted to know why authorities had yet to reveal what they'd discovered about the circumstances surrounding his brother's death. The family only knows that on June 8, 2009, Trey Joyner was killed by plainclothes park police, allegedly after he pulled a gun.

Eyewitnesses have contradicted an assertion made by cops that after a struggle in an alley, Joyner turned a gun on a group of U.S. Park Police officers who were in Trinidad as part of an inter-agency task force led by the FBI. Witnesses' claim that Joyner was shot in the back would also seem to contradict the cops' account.

"I'm to the point that I'm very frustrated, that our family hasn't gotten any answers," Joyner tells City Desk. "To me it's very sad, because I feel as though if it had happened in another area of Washington, D.C. like Dupont Circle of Upper Northwest, I believe that the investigation would have been over."

Joyner says the local U.S. Attorney's office, which was investigating the tragedy, contacted the family a week after the shooting, but not one time after. The investigation has now been taken over by federal prosecutors in Philadelphia.

Joyner says his family has tried to contact Mayor Adrian Fenty to see if he could help get answers, but the mayor wasn't interested. Cousin Patrice Lancaster hounded the Mayor's office about her deceased relative, and says she was hung up on three times. Eventually, someone who identified herself as "an administrative assistant"  to the mayor told her "that Mayor Fenty didn't want to have anything to do with my cousin's case," she says. 

"Not true," mayoral spokesperson Mafara Hobson says of Lancaster's story via email.

Trey Joyner's father, Walter Joyner, his voice wavering, called for an end to the violence: "I would just like to say, put yourself in my place and all of our brothers and sisters need to ban together and stop this police brutality that is happening on our streets killing our youth. That's all I have to say right now."

Staff photo by Rend Smith

Look at it. Go ahead and stare. This is what a District group house looks like. This is the scene from the Jan. 26th police shooting death of Osman Abdullahi. He had been suffering from schizophrenia. He had been living at this group home, located at 830 7th St. NE, since Nov. 1.

The Department of Mental Health has repeatedly stressed that this was not technically a group home. It was not one of their own. It had not been licensed as one. It didn't get a handy acronym that I won't even bother explaining. It didn't have the proper paperwork. But it was a group home. Many of its tenants were mentally ill. [All five I talked to or researched had been in the system]. All were unsupervised. This house had a history, a backstory. Abdullahi had a story, too. We first wrote about the incident later that night. I get to expand on my reporting for this week's cover.

While DMH gets to breathe a sigh of relief that this wasn't one of their own homes, its people were still inside. Its people were living without food, without heat, without meds, without supervision. So take a look at where some D.C. residents were living. Who's going to prevent this from happening again? Who's going to make sure there's someone competent watching over our most vulnerable? While DMH is investigating the house, the big question is: Did any of their people ever do a site visit, ever actually come to the house?

More pictures after the jump.

The kitchen sink as of January 27.

The freezer.

The cupboards.

I will be posting more pictures of 830 7th St. NE throughout the week.

The incident happened shortly before 11 a.m. While there was some back and forth over whether the home was a group home, it is a rooming house that does include people who are mentally ill. One former resident I interviewed said that he had been referred to the house by a psych facility. "This is supposed to be a community residential facility," said the former resident of his one-time 7th Street home.

Tonight, the home was empty except for two residents. The former resident was on the scene as well. He talked about the man who had been shot and killed by police. He knew him as "Osmond." Police released his name a few hours ago. His name is Osman A. Abdullahi. He was 36. The former resident said that Osman could be delusional, that he talked often about people out to get him. Some of Osman's enemies were from Alaska. "I would say he was schizophrenic," said the resident. "He talked about people coming to get him."

A month ago, he says, he saw Osman laying on his bed. "He had a butcher knife under [the] covers," he recalled. "He was worried about his roommates. He said the roommates were talking in their sleep about him."

This morning, Osman, attacked one of his roommates, a senior citizen, someone the two current residents referred to only as "Lewis." Grant Osborne, 57, a resident at the 7th Street home, says he woke up this morning to Osman standing in the doorway with a knife. He was fuming about his same old problem: People were out to get him. They were coming for him. Osborne didn't understand. The shades were drawn.

Osborne remembers the police breaking down the door. He heard the police ask Osman multiple times to drop his weapon. He says he heard one shot.

Osborne is speaking from his stoop. He is dressed in sweat pants, a sweat shirt and jacket. He is wearing a knitcap. It is 6:15 p.m. Soon two members of the Department of Mental Health's mobile crisis unit show up at the stoop. They offer to talk to Osborne and another resident. They want to talk inside where it is supposedly warm.

When they open the door to 730 8th Street, it is immediately apparent that inside will not work. There is blood in the foyer. It has pooled and congealed in spots. In one area, there is a small squiggle of bloody flesh.

Blood splatter or blood smears are on the lower right corner of the wall. Mobile Crisis calls it in. They want to see about getting this cleaned up. "There's still blood on the floor," one tells the authorities. "Nobody's here except for the people that live here."

"There is blood in the hallway," she tells the police during a second call. "This is a biohazard." It is 6:45 p.m. Police say they are done with the crime scene. It isn't their job to clean up the blood. A police cruiser soon passes by. And then another.

The carpet is drenched with blood and fluids. It's not quite a carpet. It looks like the foam layer that comes with the carpet. The foam is duct taped to the floor and stairs. In the kitchen, the sink is stopped up. The garbage disposal switch does nothing. Also, Osborne says one of the bathrooms is "messed up."

The former resident says he had to move because his bedroom had a mold problem. The former resident eventually leaves. He says he is headed for a niece's house in Maryland. He carries with him a loaded down garbage bag. If anyone needs him, he says, he will be at a local psych facility in the morning.

It is freezing inside 830 7th Street. Osborne says sometimes the heat comes on. Sometimes it's just cold. Upstairs there is a blood stain in the hall.

There is no one there to supervise the men. There is no one there to make sure the heat works, to clean up all the blood on the floor. Mobile Crisis makes a call to the proprietor–Mark Spence of an organization called "Hope Finders." Mobile Crisis has to leave a message.The men say they haven't seen him in a while.

I later reach Spence. He says that he has yet to visit his property since the shooting death of Osmond. "I wasn't down there," he says. "I know all about it. I really don't have any comment."

Osborne says he has been living at 830 7th Street for no more than a year. When he first arrived, he says, "everything was brand new." He doesn't know how many group homes or rooming houses he's lived in. There was one in Baltimore. There was a stay at the Psychiatric Institute of Washington. Now, there is uncertainty.

The two employees from Mobile Crisis do not think it is a good idea for Osborne to stay at 830 7th Street. They bring up the blood.

Osborne is prepared to leave, he says. He agrees to get in their van and find other shelter options. He tells one of the employees that he left all of his clothes and belongings in his first-floor room. But that he doesn't care. The employee assures him that he can get more clothes. All he carries with him to the van is a small, half-filled plastic bag. His nose is running. His sweat pants have seen better days. But his tan work boots look new. Osborne takes a seat in the far back corner of the van.

Osborne just stares out the window and takes in the car's heat.

There is one resident left at 830 7th Street NE. He tells mobile crisis that he doesn't want to go with them in their van. There is not much else mobile crisis can do. The resident quietly closes the door, walks back across the blood, and on inside.

David Kerstetter, the man who police shot and killed, was familiar to officers who worked on 13th Street and officers who worked in the Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit.

"He had some issues in his life," says Brett Parson, who oversees all of the D.C. Police Department's liaison units. "Whether it was mental health or stress in his life, I can't tell you that....It's a sad case."

The incident may eventually be ruled as justified. But it calls into serious question the D.C. Police Department's continued refusal to adequately deal with mentally-distressed residents.

Just a few days ago, the Department of Mental Health (DMH) launched a new outreach program aimed at preventing such incidents. On November 1, the department started up its mobile crises response teams. The teams have a staff of 20 working 16 hours per day, seven days a week.

Stephen T. Baron, DMH’s director, says that mobile crises response team may not have been called over a technicality. His agency is still waiting for the police department to sign a memorandum of understanding.

“I don’t know all the details," Baron says of the Kerstetter incident. "I spoke to Chief (Diane) Groomes briefly about it. It’s a tragedy for everybody all around."

Would his new crises team have responded to such a case? “I’m sure it would have," Baron says. "I’m sure they would have shown up. But who knows where they were in the process? The police are handling it. They can’t stop.”

Baron goes on to say: "We don’t have our mou with the police in place. I think everything happened so quickly. We’re doing training of cadets. We’re doing training. We deliberately rolled out the mobile crisis slowly. They need some training. I don’t know all the details about this case to even comment on it.”