Back in October, Ron Moten seemed to be sounding a warning: Après Moten, Le Déluge. After Moten, the flood.

That was when, after years of getting ample funding from the administrations of Mayor Anthony Williams and Mayor Adrian Fenty, it was apparent money would be drying up for Peaceoholics, the anti-gang group he founded, in a Vince Gray administration.

The Washington Post spoke to Moten about a tragic Columbia Heights shooting on Saturday. There were three victims. One of them, Lucki Nancy Pannell, an 18-year-old student at Cardozo High School, later died of her wounds. Moten had worked with Pannell, and told the Post she was a good kid who might have hung out with the wrong people. Moten also seemed to not so subtly suggest a thriving Peaceoholics organization might have helped avoid the bloodshed.

"Moten said he was concerned that a Peaceoholics program that had worked with the three victims is no longer active," wrote the Post."'As soon as the weather breaks and you start having warm days, people come out of the woodwork, and people who have beefs with people, they tend to start heating back up,' he said"

When City Desk contacted Moten via phone, he was more explicit: "There's a few homicides that have happened that they [Peaceoholics] could have prevented."

As one of many D.C. journalists who looked very closely at Moten's organization, I've had a few animated discussions with him about the Peaceoholics. Each time, I've brought up the fact that I admire the dedication he and his colleagues have shown. But there seems to be little data on what happened to the money the group previously received, or on how effective their programs were.

Moten says the data is there: "They never want to print it."

Moten seems to be convinced the flood he predicted will crest when the streets are hottest. "I think after this summer people will appreciate our work more," he says. I suggest to Moten that if that crisis hits, it'd be helpful to have the data he says no one would print, so we can look back on it and figure out what the Peaceoholics did right. He claims to be willing: "We got it somewhere."

Whether Moten has the data or not, he does make one salient point over and over: Someone needs to be out there, talking to the youth who are beefing. He says not many others know what goes on in D.C.'s streets, and that the proof of this lies in the fact that after a homicide, reporters still call him for information.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Clark Ray, who is challenging Mendelson for his at-large council seat, and his campaign team greeted all of the meeting's attendees with a targeted flier: "Another election year meeting in Ward 8. We Deserve Better: Communities need to be involved every day to solve the issue of crime, not just during an election."

The crowd inside was scarcely more welcoming toward Mendelson, who chairs the Council’s committee on public safety and the judiciary, or the other panel members he brought with him, including representatives from the Office of the D.C. Attorney General, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), the Office of the U.S. Attorney General for D.C., and the D.C. Superior Court. 

Gathered just a block away from site of the March 30 shooting that left four dead, the group of roughly 70 victims' relatives, concerned community members, and anti-violence activists voiced tremendous frustration with how they've seen the D.C. government deal with violent crime.

Patricia Jefferies, the grandmother of 16-year-old shooting victim Brishell Jones, asked why Attorney General Peter Nickles had the time to look into Councilmember and mayoral hopeful Vincent Gray’s controversial fence but was too busy to meet with family members of those killed on March 30. Another Congress Heights resident wanted to know why another murder she witnessed firsthand was still an open case.

Naturally, the most vocal audience member was Peaceoholics co-founder Ronald Moten, who railed against Mendelson’s harsh policies regarding PCP and his lenient stance on curfews. But what he seemed most peeved about was Councilmember Gray and Harry Thomas Jr. doling out money for anti-violence initiatives in what he described as an unethical manner.

When Moten called for him to launch an investigation into the nonprofit allocations, Mendelson attempted to diffuse the issue by telling him the U.S. Attorney’s Office would be in charge of investigating such claims. That prompted Moten to remind him the Council had no problem investigating the Dominican firetruck donation on its own.

“When are you going to stop these dog and pony show hearings?" Moten asked. “All y'all doing is playing political games. And because we speak out about it, we get punished.”

Much of the meeting focused on how the D.C. government treats youth offenders. There was one agency conspicuously absent from the panel: the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS). Mendelson was quick to announce that representatives from DYRS were slated to attend, but sent an “interesting” email that afternoon that “suggested they were told not to come,” he said.

Despite being stood up by DYRS, the group discussed youth issues at length, particularly the problem of truancy and how it contributes to high levels of violent crime.  According to Second Seventh District Commander Joel Maupin, MPD picked up 7,000 truants last year, including over 1,000 in Ward 8.

“If the kids aren’t in school, they’re not going to get employment,” said Lee Satterfield, the chief judge of the D.C. Superior Court. “It’s not rocket science in terms of where you need to start.”

When Mendelson asked why youngsters who went on to be involved in shootings were let out of juvenile supervision, however, he found the heat turned back on himself and his Council colleagues. Because of the District’s strict juvenile confidentiality laws, Deputy D.C. Attorney General for Public Safety Robert Hildum said government officials cannot share that kind of information with the public.

“In my experience, [the confidentially laws] don’t protect the child as much as the agencies in charge of that child,” Hildum said. “It’s within the Council’s power to change that.”

Hey! It's Thursday! Pick up our paper. It has another typo on the cover. Erika, please come back here soon! Otherwise this is an excellent issue, with a great story by Jeffrey Anderson about Peaceoholics' Ronald Moten, as well as all the usual bozos. Please don't forget to patronize our advertisers, especially anyone who can drop a giant cube on your enemies.

ITEMS:
• Hippies and punks—IN ONE PLACE! Wait, there's still hippies and punks?
• Riggo, the world's greatest man.
• Cheap parking spurned. Who pays? [sadtrombone.wav]
• Jawbox to reunite, on Fallon! "I think we’re all a bit taken aback that anyone is paying attention," Jawbox's J. Robbins told us yesterday.
• I will adhere to these new Michael Pollan rules and talk loudly about them, because it makes Riggs go coconuts.
• A friend IM'd me about the Chuck Brown feature Godfrey and I wrote for this week's paper; it bounces off the terrible Chuck Brown feature in last Sunday's Washington Post Magazine. In the intro, I mentioned that twice, author Robin Rose Parker mentioned that Brown's audience was "30- and 40-something African Americans" and took her to task for some sloppy math (Brown is speaking at a high school when her piece opens she says his 1979 hit “Bustin’ Loose” was released “decades before his high school audience was born.") Short decades, right? Says my pal: What about the 30- and 40-something African Americans? How old were they in 1979? Boom!

BIKE COMMUTING CORNER: If your ride is longer than a mile, you might want to have different clothes for biking and working. However! Now you have to get your nice clothes to work and keep them dry. Solution: a bag! However! What bag? Backpacks are great for short rides but get kinda hot on your back, especially in the summer. Messenger bags, sure why not? On my usual bike, I have a set of Ortlieb panniers. They have a nice Tron-ish look to them and are superwatertight. They cost a lot. That part I can't endorse. Many companies make panniers, but some of them require you to put covers on them when it rains, which seems like way too much trouble to me. Also, make sure you don't pronounce it "pann-i-AY." Pronounce the "r" or people in bike shops will laugh at you. I learned this firsthand!

I gotta bounce! Obey the Cube! Follow me on Twitter!

The fishy fire truck testimony delivered last Thursday by Peaceoholics co-founder Ronald Moten before the D.C. Council was plenty dramatic, but the drama apparently did not end with the pound of the gavel.

Since then, a classic council-executive scuffle has broken out over broadcasts of the proceeding on city cable, with allegations flying that Mayor Adrian M. Fenty himself has become personally involved.

Because Thursday's proceeding was considered a "public deposition" rather than a council hearing (it was supposed to be behind closed doors until Moten demanded otherwise), the councilmembers heading up the fire truck investigation—Mary Cheh and Phil Mendelson—determined that its contents should not be disseminated. That's in keeping with the usual council practice on depositions, which are kept under wraps, so other witnesses won't change their testimony to make their stories consistent (Never mind that LL and other reporters already did plenty of disseminating.)

On Thursday, Cheh tells LL, the order went out to the Office of Cable Television, and its director, Eric Richardson, not to air the Moten footage. In spite of this, the deposition was aired at 7 p.m. that night, leading Cheh to send her chief of staff, David Zvenyach, and D.C. Council general counsel Brian Flowers down to OCT headquarters to retrieve the tape.

They got a tape, Cheh says—but apparently, it wasn't the only tape. At 7 p.m. Friday, the deposition was aired again.

"Apparently it was a ruse," Cheh says of the tape handover.

Meanwhile, Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray had called Richardson to further impress on him that the council did not want the proceeding aired.

Here's what Cheh says took place, according to various conversations with OCT last week: "We were told that the mayor had called and said that the tape should be shown at 7 p.m. this evening....We learned by a circuitous route...that Mr. Richardson was told that he was to air it and that not only that, if he gets any inquiries from the council, or the chairman, that he's supposed to direct them to the attorney general's office."

Why Fenty would insist on the broadcast of a proceeding implicating two top deputies and a controversial friend in a questionable giveaway of city property is completely beyond LL and other observers. But, in any case, the move has rekindled the council-mayor wars, and has raised real questions about how the separation of powers extends to the District's cable TV system. The system is run by OCT, a executive branch agency, but longstanding practice holds that Channel 16 belongs to the mayor and that Channel 13 belongs to the council.

The mayoral power move "bespeaks a view of the executive that he controls what of our hearings and our meetings goes up," Cheh says. "He's making a claim here that I think is beyond executive authority."

Today, Gray informed his colleagues that he'll be moving emergency legislation tomorrow that would ensure that Channel 13 "shall be under the exclusive control of the Council."

From a memo issued by Gray: "The failure to follow the direction of the Council in whether to broadcast or rebroadcast a deposition in an investigation constitutes a serious imposition on the authority to control Channel 13 and on the oversight and investigation function of the Council and would, therefore, be a serious intrusion on separation of powers. Executive branch control of the Council’s cable channel programming in this and other instances threatens the independence and autonomy of the Council to deliver it’s message to the public without the filter of the Executive branch."

LL is waiting for calls back from Fenty's office, Richardson, Gray, and Attorney General Peter Nickles. More to come.

UPDATE, 2:30 P.M.: Richardson called back, directing inquiries to Nickles.

UPDATE, 2:50 P.M.: Gray, in an interview, confirms he called Richardson on Thursday night, and that Richardson had indicated that he had been "directed to play" the tape. But Gray says that by conversation's end, he "thought we had an agreement" to keep the proceeding off air. He hasn't had any communications with Richardson or anyone else from the executive since.

Says Gray of the mayoral interference into Channel 13 affairs: "I've never seen anything like this before....It really is controlling information in a very unhealthy way."

UPDATE, 3:30 P.M.: BTW, watch it while you can [WMV video].

UPDATE, 8:10 P.M.: Nickles speaks! "I don't know on what basis after a public session, you can direct someone to keep it off the air," he says. "It is so absurd."

Nickles says he's not aware of Fenty directly ordering Richardson to play the recording.

As for the larger separation-of-powers issues: "It's an executive agency; it's staffed by members of the executive branch."

The council action gave Nickles, not exactly Mr. Transparency, a chance to lecture councilmembers on the subject: "Here's all this talk of transparency, and here, out of the blue, comes this legislation...to give the council the right to effectively seal its proceedings form the public," he says. "I don't understand why you would even suggest that."

As for the legislation Gray plans to introduce, Nickles says, that might raise an issue with contracts the District has signed with its cable providers. Any council action would be prohibited from affecting the terms of those agreements.

"I think this is sort of the problem with this fire truck—that they're looking for this needle in a haystack, and they're not really being consistent or abiding by the law," Nickles says. "This is the latest unusual move."

Nickles, of course, in his own investigation, did not prove himself the most apt haystack-comber—he missed two big needles, named Sinclair Skinner and David Jannarone.

The D.C. Council saw one of the livelier proceedings in recent memory this morning, when Peaceoholics co-founder Ronald Moten appeared before councilmembers Mary Cheh and Phil Mendelson in connection with their investigation into the donation of used city emergency equipment to the Dominican Republic.

The proceeding wasn't hearing, exactly, but an open deposition. Moten had originally been scheduled to give his deposition behind closed doors on Friday, but he declined to testify, citing the council's political motivations. Council staff agreed to let him say his piece in public today, in what Mendelson called a "very unusual" proceeding.

Moten set the tone early, with a combative opening statement decrying a "political smear campaign" targeting his organization. He accused councilmembers and media of "attacking the mayor at my organization's expense" and engaging in a "political charade" that has affected his business and his family. "We hold the council directly responsible for creating an atmosphere where such stories could flourish," he said of media accounts questioning his organization's role in the shadowy transfer. The questions will remain, he says, until the "thirst for political blood is quenched."

Cheh and Mendelson reacted not at all to Moten's grandstanding. Once their questioning began, some vital facts quickly emerged: It became clear that Peaceoholics, far from being at the center of the giveaway, was something of a bit player. Moten, in his testimony, made it clear that this was a production of David Jannarone, the mayoral director of development, and Sinclair Skinner, an longtime Fenty crony now a businessman and consultant.

It was they, Skinner in particular, who first approached Moten about the donating the fire truck, earlier this year. And it was a company associated with Skinner—Liberty Industries LLC—who provided the funds to transport the fire truck and ambulance down to the Caribbean. Moten described Jannarone an acquaintance, while he said he'd known Skinner "for years" through their activist work.

"We agreed that I would join them on a good deed," he said.

Moten said he'd never been to Sosua, the town that was to get the equipment. He'd only been to the Dominican Republic in 1989, as a teenager, and he confirmed that he doesn't currently hold a passport.

Then Cheh tried to get Moten to describe his relationship with the District government, in particular the nature of his contracts. That set Moten off again: 'Cheh...what you're trying to do is tear down my organization," he cried. "What I think you're doing is criminal."

Moten went on to describe brief contacts regarding procedural matters with Robin Booth, an official in the Office of Contracting and Procurement, and Ronald Gill, a deputy fire chief. (Both were deposed Friday.) Moten went on to describe how the shipping on the ambulance and fire truck—an $11,000 proposition—was paid for. He received a check, drawn on Liberty Industries, from Skinner; Peaceoholics turned around and used those funds to pay a shipping company.

Then Cheh turned to the aftermath, in particular Attorney General Peter Nickles' (non-)investigation which declared the whole enterprise legal and proper without mentioning the involvement of prime movers Jannarone and Skinner. When Cheh started asking Moten about that investigation, he took the opportunity to embark on more speechifying: 'The whole thing was to make the mayor look bad; that's how the whole thing was set up," he said. "You were on TV 20 times talking about the situation, making it bigger than it is....I know everybody's running [for office] and they have to do what they have to do."

That speech won him cheers from about 40 allies in the audience, before Cheh admonished them to be quiet.

Moten continued protesting his alleged victimization: "You all let that happen!" he told Cheh. "You and Phil let that happen!" (As an aside, he referred to Cheh as "Cheh" for most of the hearing.)

Then Cheh turned to the subject of William Walker III, the man who birthed the idea of donating a fire truck to Sosua. Moten gave an account of his involvement that matches the account given by Walker himself, as printed in LL's column this week—that he randomly encountered Walker outside an Anacostia restaurant in March, and let slip that he was donating equipment to the DR. That flabbergasted Walker, who had earlier tried to consummate such a deal.

Moten said that he and Walker talked after that about getting Walker's organization, and kids he mentored, into the deal—in what would culminate in a big trip down to Sosua with all the interested parties. (Walker was scheduled to testify on the matter in a hearing today, but begged off due to sickness.)

Then the shit hit the fan. The story turned up in the paper, Nickles ordered the firetrucks turned around, and the whole thing has turned into a mess.

Then, an hour into the deposition, Mendelson started his questioning, and that's when things got especially combative. Moten, under the advice of his attorney, Rodney Mitchell, refused to answer questions that had been previously been asked. "You're acting like you're a prosecutor, I'm a criminal," he said at one point. "We're not gonna answer the same questions over and over again." He used that excuse repeatedly over the course of the next 45 minutes, under questioning from Mendelson and Cheh's chief of staff. Repeatedly Moten tried to invoke his constitutional right against criminal self-incrimination: "Fifth! Fifth!" he'd shout, despite his protestations about not being involved in criminal activity. (At one point, Cheh said after the hearing, she heard Mitchell instructing Moten to say he "didn't recall" answers to certain questions.)

At another point, Moten referred to a "political assassination at my expense" and told Mendelson, as he tried to confirm a timeline, "Right now my mind is not listening to you...because you're asking the same question....I think I deserve more respect than that, Phil."

But for the most part, the questions got answered.

And the picture those answers paint looks a lot like the one painted by Walker: That this production was hijacked from Walker by Skinner and Jannarone, and that those two used Moten and Peaceoholics simply as a nonprofit pass-through to comply with city surplussing regulations. If Moten was indeed a "pawn," as Walker describes him, nothing in Moten's testimony today disputes that characterization.

As to why Skinner and Jannarone would pursue such a giveaway, answers will have to come from them. After the hearing, Cheh says she expects to issue subpoenas for their testimony shortly.

Like Walker, Moten says he still wants to donate that equipment: "In hindsight, if we would have had to do it all over again, we would have slowed it down and had a press conference."

Today, three players in the fishy fire truck scandal—Deputy Fire Chief Ronald Gill, Robin Booth of the Office of Property Management Contracting and Procurement, and Peaceoholics chief Ronald Moten—are scheduled to give private testimony in a D.C. Council probe being jointly led by Councilmembers Mary Cheh and Phil Mendelson. Leading up to today's depositions, there had been much posturing in both side over whether the city would allow the witnesses to testify; pro bono counsel from top law firm was found to represent Booth and Gill.

This morning, other lawyers showed up, too—two from the Office of the Attorney General. Cheh and Mendelson were not happy to see them, and an hour-and-a-half long standoff ensued. At one point, the councilmembers threatened to call security to have the city lawyers removed.

This account comes from D.C. Watch doyenne Dorothy Brizill, who has been standing outside the first-floor meeting room since the drama began this morning.

The lawyers eventually left, says Attorney General Peter Nickles, in order to avoid "some unnecessary conflagration." That was for Gill's interview; now, with Booth's turn coming, the lawyers are back.

Cheh and Mendelson's position is that the District government was not subpoenaed and is not involved in the deposition, and thus has no reason to attend. Cheh also tells LL that OAG participation could have a "chilling effect" on the answers.

Says Nickles of Gill, "This is a government employee, not a private employee," and thus the District has an interest in being present for questioning.

"If we can't get it straightened up, then we will go to court," he says.

UPDATE, 5:25 P.M.: The plot thickens. Moten showed up for his deposition shortly after 4 p.m., as scheduled. Apparently under the impression that it was an open hearing, he brought with him an entourage of dozens and dozens—at leats 75, he estimates.

Told that he'd have to wait because things were running overtime due to the legal wrangling detailed above, Moten refused to be deposed and left the building.

LL reached Moten this evening: "First of all, I'm offended that I was called down there on Friday on a 4, and then you tell me its 4:30 then it's 5...and then 5:30. Who does that?"

Secondly: "Why is it closed to the public?...When you take me into a closed hearing, the public thinks that I did something wrong. We've done nothing wrong. I want everything I say out there for the public to hear."

Thirdly, Moten points out that both the inspector general and the council are engaged in separate investigations. "Where do they do that at? Show me where that's been done in D.C.!...To me, it's turned into a political circus."

Still, Moten says, "I have a lot of respect for Councilmember Rhee [sic]. We'll reschedule."