You're Under Arrest: Turns out the people nabbed by police for driving around upper Northwest with expired license plates weren't the only ones caught in the District's law that allowed the practice. More than 3,400 drivers were arrested in the last two years for the same thing, with 256 people actually locked up; they just don't appear to have been able to get in touch with Virginia Sen. James Webb to get him to complain about it, like the folks in the recent cases. -2

Occupy The Highway: Camping in Zuccotti Park apparently isn't hardcore enough for some Occupy Wall Street protesters—so they've decided to walk from New York to D.C. to join the Occupy encampment in McPherson Square, in time for the end of the deliberations of the congressional debt supercommittee. They'll stop along the way in places like Elizabeth, N.J., and Laurel, Md. With Thanksgiving traffic soon approaching, walking may actually be a faster way to get between the two cities than taking Megabus. +2

You Don't Have Mail: Get those holiday packages mailed early this year if you want to send them from the post office at 14th and T streets NW. That location will close on Dec. 31, according to D.C. Councilmember Jim Graham. The good news: There's another at 19th and Florida, not too far away, and there's also email. -1

Stop Or I'll Shoot: The night shift can be boring for uniformed Secret Service agents assigned to protect diplomatic missions; except when Iranian agents are allegedly plotting to blow up Saudi officials at Cafe Milano, after all, there's not much intrigue. One agent, apparently, decided to alleviate the dreariness early this morning with a little gunfire. The agent's weapon discharged while he was sitting in his cruiser in the 2600 block of Tunlaw Road NW, near the Russian consulate. 22 years ago, that would have caused a major Cold War incident. Today, it's just a brief in a snarky news roundup. What a country! -1

Yesterday's Needle rating: 33 Today's score: -2 Today's Needle rating: 31

The founder of Vietnam Veterans of America has had his Ritz-Carlton dwelling tossed by cops looking for evidence of pot distribution after he allegedly sought to mail a package of marijuana at FedEx, according to recently filed police documents.

In papers filed this month in D.C. Superior Court, police say their search of the 23rd Street NW penthouse of wheelchair-bound anti-war activist Bobby Muller turned up plastic bags and a mason jar filled with "green weed," scales, packaging material and "bank documents."

Muller, whose veterans group went on to co-found the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines, has apparently not been arrested.  He did not respond to phone calls or email messages requesting comment. Metropolitan Police Department officials also did not return calls.

The warrant's description of how cops came to focus on an activist who has shared a stage with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and blogged for the Huffington Post would seem a lesson in drug handling 101. First pointer? If you're going to ship 1.03 pounds of cheeba through the mail, don't use your real name and address.

According to the warrant, which was obtained by a member of the Metropolitan Police Department's Intelligence Branch, that's exactly what Muller did, though the officer wrote that he scrawled "R. Muller," rather then his full name, on the alleged contraband.

On September 2, workers at the FedEx store located at 2020 K Street smelled what "they believed to be the odor of marijuana" coming from the package, which was headed to an address in Brattleboro, Vermont, says the document. The warrant says that the sniffing workers turned it over to police, who seized the mail and found the smoke.

Someone could theoretically have stolen the vet's info, of course. But the warrant says there's evidence the package was his: Muller allegedly used a credit card to pay for shipping. "Mr. Muller also returned to the Fed Ex location on Tuesday Sept. 6, 2011, to find out why his package wasn't delivered on Saturday, and to file a claim with Fed Ex," say the papers. "Both this incident and the delivery of the package were documented on the Fed Ex surveillance cameras."

Interestingly, Muller hasn't shown up in court records yet, indicating he hasn't been arrested. MPD didn't respond to inquiries about the case this morning.

Around the web, and even in a book, Muller is referred to as a Nobel Peace Prize winner—a distinction that might make him the only Nobel laureate to have his home searched for refer. As it happens, the description isn't quite accurate. "Bobby Muller was the co-founder of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, which in turn was one of six organizations that founded the International Campaign to Ban Landmines in 1992," says Kate Wiggans of ICBL. But according to Allegra Grevelius of the Nobel Foundation, the ICBL's 1997 Nobel was awarded only to the organization and its leader at the time, Jody Williams. Muller is "not a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate," says Grevelius.

Photo by Eric Caballero via Flickr/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

700 Block H Street, NW.  © 2011 Matt Dunn

Don't Get Mad, Get Even: YouTube is already good for bringing fame and fortune to people, whether they deserve it or not. Now an Arlington man is hoping it's good for bringing justice, too. After someone took a TV he'd ordered online off his porch, Rob Richards posted surveillance video of the delivery and the heist on the Internet. Police say they're not sure how helpful it'll be, but at least the score—"The Blue Danube"—makes for relaxing viewing. +1

Rush Hour Baby: Study after study brings dismal news about D.C. traffic. It's bad; we get it. Just how bad, though, is really only fully realized when some unfortunate woman can't even get through the logjams to deliver a baby. It happened again this morning, around 6:30 a.m., near the intersection of Florida and New York avenues. A 911 dispatcher coached the new mother through birth. No word on whether the baby is to be named Dave Thomas, in honor of the Wendy's that dominates the intersection. +2

Oh Chompie, Why Have You Forsaken Us?: When Discovery executives announced there would not, in fact, be an inflatable shark gracing downtown Silver Spring this year for Shark Week, there was much gnashing of teeth in the area. (Happily, those teeth were mostly of the human, not giant shark, variety.) But only now is there an explanation for the absence of Chompie: The weather got to him. Which means there's really not much difference between giant inflatable sharks and the rest of us in the D.C. area, is there? -1

Don't Throw That Out!: Don't be surprised if retail employees start watching to see what you bring into a store, not just to make sure you haven't taken anything out. Several stores are complaining that they've been hit with fines of up to $200 for stuff customers threw out—from recycling in a trash can, to a couch by the dumpster, to other violations of the trash rules. Remember: You throw it out, you bought it. -1

Yesterday's Needle rating: 51 Today's score: +1 Today's Needle rating: 52

On Saturday, gunfire rang out near the corner of Georgia Avenue and Gresham Place NW, according to police, leaving four shot, and one man, Robert Foster, dead. The three other victims are hospitalized. The violence erupted at approximately 5:03 p.m., sometime after the nearby D.C. Caribbean Festival parade ended.

The day saw fisticuffs as well. Video on YouTube shows at least one brawl erupted in the area.

Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham has indicated that the shooting happened as a result of a neighborhood dispute, as has the anti-gang group Peaceoholics. According to Graham and the Peaceoholics, the shootings are connected to a gang rivalry that led to the February murder of Lucki Pannell.The 19-year-old Pannell was sitting outside her home when a gunman fired at friends of hers, but hit her instead.

Graham has told WAMU that a man who was an intended target in the Pannell shooting was also an intended target during Saturday's shooting, and that Foster wasn't involved with any violence: "For the second time in how many weeks or months, you know you have an intended target and you have innocent bystander dead."

A man who was only willing to identify himself as an organizer for the Caribbean Carnival emphasizes that the violence wasn't connected to the parade or the carnival event that happened at Howard University afterward. That doesn't mean the events went off without a hitch, though.

The organizer says the Metropolitan Police Department created tensions by rushing the parade, which had already had its usual route shortened by 1.5 miles by the city. That, he says, meant that a costume competition that's part of the parade couldn't happen. Members of the parade couldn't slow down for judges. MPD's hurry-up approach, he says, didn't stop when the procession ended: "They rushed everyone off the street. We didn't know that the plan was to rush everyone off the street." The organizer says participants were pushed. "The Caribbean community, in general, is in an uproar," he says.

It's not clear why MPD might have been prodding the parade toward its end. It could have been for security reasons. We've reached out to them and will update with an answer.

A bad day in Mt. Pleasant left Jean E. Louis dead. Louis was fatally shot Tuesday after a Metropolitan Police Department "Emergency Response Team" broke an hours-long standoff, and Louis lunged at an officer with a sharpened object, according to reports.

The episode raises, not for the first time, some questions about whether MPD is properly prepared to deal with the mentally ill when or if they become violent. In this particular instance, according to the department, they were—a cop on the scene was part of a special team trained to deal with such deadly situations.

In two separate altercations in 2009, police fatally shot and killed mentally ill District residents. David Kerstetter and Osman Abdullahi were both shot dead after each man allegedly rushed at officers with weapons. The tragedies prompted the department to succumb to a suggestion the Office of Police Complaints had been making since 2006: MPD needed a Crisis Intervention Team like the one in Memphis, Tenn.

CIT units are trained to bring a "humane and calm approach" to a crisis involving a mentally ill suspect. That's important, as confrontations between police officers and someone who's had a psychological break can easily turn bloody.

MPD says it's not releasing details about this week's shooting due to an ongoing investigation, so we don't know what methods the CIT member might have employed to try to subdue and save Louis. In a statement, MPD does say "responders" attempted to negotiate with Louis.

Though cops are justified in using lethal force when their lives are in danger, the mission of the CIT would seem to be to prevent that kind of life-or-death scenario from emerging. One question left unanswered for now: How much influence did the CIT member have over the developing crisis? And a second: Why did a distressed man with a screwdriver require a SWAT team to lock down Mt. Pleasant?

Photo by Stefanie Gans

Addressing McCormick's woes after Graham reached out to D.C. police, Captain Aubrey P. Mongal wrote back that there were certainly some bad elements seeping into the neighborhood.

"The predators appear to be identifying individuals or couples that have left the main 18th street area and [are] walking in areas not known as high traffic areas." McCormick tells City Desk the crime spike is changing the character of Adams Morgan. "It's losing its friendliness," he says.

There's evidence he's right. Police Chief Cathy Lanier recently said the 3rd police district, where Adams Morgan is located, "has the highest volume of crime in the city, and the third highest volume of calls for service." That's one of the reasons why, as part of citywide police district realignments, the Metropolitan Police Department will be changing its boundaries so that a neighboring police district takes on Mt. Pleasant, helping shoulder the problem.

In Adams Morgan itself, so far this year when compared to statistics from last year, total crime is up 13 percent, according to the MPD crime map. That increase might or might not qualify as a spike. We're dealing with small numbers here, so even a slight change amounts to a dramatic difference in the percentage.

There's been an 8 percent increase in violent crime, but that just means there were 64 instances of violent crime in 2010 as compared to 69 in 2011. Cars in the neighborhood have definitely seen better days. 97 cars were broken into in 2010, and 127 in 2011, a 31 percent increase. There's been no change in the number of armed robberies. But in the same period in 2009, total  crime was down 9 percent.

It's well known that Adams Morgan goes through a crime wave every once in awhile. It usually passes with increased police patrols. In that case, trimming down the police district that responds to the area is a good idea, as it should free up some manpower and just might bring back the the neighborhood McCormick remembers.

Photo by Matt Dunn

Heavily armed Metropolitan Police Department officers surrounded a building near Mt. Pleasant and Irving streets NW Tuesday afternoon, responding to what officials said was a "possible barricade situation." A man was reportedly barricaded in his apartment with a screwdriver or screwdrivers.

Washington City Paper contributor Stefanie Gans was nearby and took pictures of the standoff. View a slideshow of the scene here.

UPDATE: The man is reportedly dead, after witnesses heard two gunshots.

It's been griped about on District neighborhood message boards for years now: Packages left out front by delivery drivers will sometimes vanish. Since moving to D.C. in April, that's been Stevenson's experience. She has yet to find even one package addressed to her safely waiting on her doorstep.

Hailing from Charlottesville, Va., Stevenson moved to a two-bedroom apartment off Logan Circle for a new job. After she settled into the ground floor apartment with big windows, she decided to upgrade her wardrobe.

At the beginning of May, she scoured the Web looking for bargains. Eventually, she scored a pair of Prada shoes, a dress and skirt by the Italian fashion company Missoni, and shirts by Banana Republic and Ralph Lauren. Anxious to receive her orders, she paid for priority shipping.

A month later, Stevenson hadn't received a thing. She pestered the sellers and asked her mail carrier if something was wrong. He said he'd left her items outside her door, and didn't know anything more. It wasn't just the clothes, though.

Stevenson says she later learned that two "care packages" were also missing. One of them was a welcome to the neighborhood snack made by a neighbor that hadn't even gone through the mail; the neighbor simply left the box of cashew nuts with rosemary on Stevenson's stoop. Stevenson has since figured out that she's dealing with a package absconder and gone to the police.

"The police were really responsive," says the upbeat Stevenson. But they told her that there wasn't much they could do. If she "set up some fake packages they would try to watch the house." They also encouraged her to set up a video camera to catch the mail thief like "that one guy," says Stevenson. She’ll likely do both, she says.

Stevenson says she isn't worried about revealing her future ruse on City Desk; it's unlikely the prowler will see it. She's hoping to get her stuff back once the thief is caught, but isn't counting on it. Stevenson says she understands police have more important things to do than track down mail thieves. Still, she wouldn't mind getting some justice. "I just think it's wrong," she says.

Photo by Perfecto Insecto via Flickr/Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0 (Stevenson not pictured)

Federal authorities say a man from Virginia was attempting to help al-Qaeda operatives in a plot to bomb Metro stations. But from early indications, it doesn't look like the alleged bomber got very far into his plans before law enforcement tracked him down, and the only plotting he did was in response to instructions from federal agents he thought were accomplices.

Farooque Ahmed, 34, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Pakistan, was arrested Wednesday. On Tuesday, a federal grand jury in Alexandria had indicted the Ashburn man, charging him with attempting to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization, collecting information to assist in planning a terrorist attack on a transit facility, and attempting to provide material support to help carry out multiple bombings to cause mass casualties at D.C.-area Metrorail stations.

Authorities say the public was never in danger because their agents had been monitoring the man's activities throughout the conception and planning of the attacks.

Ahmed was discovered by agents to be seeking to obtain unspecified materials (presumably bomb-related). As a part of a sting operation that lasted from April through early this week, federal authorities posing as al-Qaeda operatives asked Ahmed to collect video and photographic surveillance footage  and draw diagrams of Metrorail stations. According to the indictment, Ahmed carried out all of those tasks and handed over the information to people he thought were affiliated with al-Qaeda. They were, in fact, undercover agents.

If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 50 years in prison.

Read the indictment here:

Photo by AgnosticPreachersKid via WikiMedia Commons/Creative Commons license

Scott Fike, a 25-year veteran of the department, shot the dog, named Parrot, after intervening in an altercation between two dogs on 18th Street. Aaron Block, the 25-year old caretaker of the dog and a Dupont Circle resident, said Parrot was "a full 12 to 15 steps away," and was "making no aggressive overtures," according to the Washington Post.

Police, festival attendees, and store owners shared conflicting perspectives on the use of force during the incident. MPD justified the shooting by saying the dog acted aggressively even after being subdued, but some witnesses want more evidence to justify the officer's actions. Even the breed of the dog has been the subject of great debate: police say the dog was a pit bull, and others say it was a mixed-breed shar pei—a dog that looks like a pit bull to the untrained eye, but which doesn't have the violent reputation of the other breed.

Block was walking the 2-year old dog on 18th Street NW when Parrot turned around and bit a poodle going in the opposite direction. Block said he helped separate the dogs and was restraining Parrot when the police arrived.

Fike took over from that point and originally subdued Parrot by putting his knee in the dog's back and pulling his hind legs behind him. Fike then took the dog by his nape and threw him over the banister of the Brass Knob antique shop, according to the Post, but was "led down the stairwell of the Brass Knob," according to a report from DCist. According to Block, Fike fired the lone shot right after the dog became upright again.

Witnesses had various perspectives of the incident, some of which said the officer acted hastily and outside of protocol. Other said the officer's actions were justified. Jacob Kishter, commander of the 3rd Police District, told the Post "that once the officer pushed the dog down the stairwell, 'the dog immediately turns and runs at the officer aggressively.'" Kishter said the officer, owners of both dogs, and other officers were interviewed about the incident and that Fike's actions were justified based on information MPD gathered.

Soleiman Askarinam, owner of Spaghetti Garden on 18th Street, spoke with both the Post and DCist, and said an overall peaceful day was "sadly punctuated" by dogs barking, a shot, and screams.

But it all seriousness, keep your pot plots on your own land, please. Apparently these growing operations often involve booby traps with fish hooks and explosives. Think of the children. We can already see little Jimmy skipping into the woods to grab his baseball only to be blown up in a cloud of marijuana leaves.

So what are the pot-cops looking for? Straight lines and fencing marks the spot. Growers often use snow fencing and branches for camouflage. When police find the sites, they are usually equipped with systems to tip off the growers on their discovery.

From NBC Washington:

“A lot of these grow sites are booby trapped because they want to tell if they’ve been discovered. They also want to give themselves warning and they want to keep other people away from them,” Smith said. "So this could be potentially dangerous to park patrons and their pets.”

Police said the fields are usually planted in groups of threes — one for the planters to keep for their personal use, another that they want police to find and a third for street sale.

What happens when they find the plants? These hard-working cops run stakeouts for days until the public planters are dumb enough to show up.

Photo by jasonawhite, Flickr.

Fioriti says he was having a get-together in his yard , when "suddenly a 'boom' as loud as a cannon went off in front of the alley five doors down from us. It shook the windows and set off car alarms! People actually ducked and hit the dirt!" After the detonation, all hell broke loose: "[T]here were teenagers setting off fireworks, M80's and roman candles that they were aiming at the windows and roof tops of the houses and at the cars driving by. People walking down the sidewalks arriving from the fireworks displays and "get togethers" would walk just past Faircliff East and duck, cover their head with their hands and run down the block... drivers would floor their vehicles to get down the block from Faircliff East..."

Fioriti says though the cops eventually showed, they didn't do much to curb the explosions.

Which, really, wasn't much of a surprise; fireworks were going off all over the city Sunday (and, for that matter, all weekend). Did anyone actually get in trouble this year for possessing contraband that goes boom? Contacting MPD, City Desk learned police issued only 14 citations for illegal fireworks during the whole weekend. In addition, one person, Danielle Adams, was arrested on the 4th for possession of an illegal firework.

But Adams was also charged with possession of cocaine. Local prosecutors have decided not to pursue the possession of illegal firework charge.

So the moral of the story, for next year, appears to be: Blow up whatever you want. Just make sure you ditch your drugs first.

Georgia Ave.

The violence erupted when one male club-goer bumped into another. There was some shoving, a head butt and two punches before one of the men, the smaller of the two, pulled out a box cutter.

According to an investigative report by the District's Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration (ABRA), the blade wielder twice slashed the left side of his victim's face, leaving behind deep gashes. The man with the box cutter was arrested by police. The victim was taken to the hospital. In a letter to the ABRA, Lanier called Muse's security the night of the slicing "inadequate," and asked for a revocation of the club's license.

Reviewing the incident at a fact-finding hearing on Wednesday, the city's Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) Board wanted to know why the assailant wasn't searched for weapons as he entered the club. They figured Muse regularly frisked its patrons. Steven O'Brien, a lawyer for the nightspot explained that club security didn't pat down the crowd that evening because it was Sunday. He says security staffers only frisk patrons on Thursdays. O'Brien says the reason why is that on Sundays, the club attracts a mature, "well-dressed"crowd for a Latin-themed night while "On Thursday, it's a younger crowd...I'm trying to think of a way to say it, a less sophisticated crowd."

Speaking at the hearing on behalf of concerned community members, Terry Carter, who lives in a condo located next door to the hang-out, had a number of complaints about Muse, one was that, in informing the board that its Thursday night clientele was being inspected for weapons because it's a "younger" crowd, Muse was using "code speak": "Thursday night is hip-hop night," he said. "They are patting down the hip-hoppers."

Carter says that neighbors were particularly not amused about the slashing. "We even had to clean the blood up in front of our building that morning," he says.

O'Brien says the club knows it made a mistake not searching the "mature" crowd for weapons: "We now know that it can happen, because it has happened." He says that when the club reopens, all its customers will be searched.