FOX5 investigates why some D.C. special events—including D.C.'s traditional Halloween drag event, the Dupont "High Heel" race—aren't forced to pay the city fees for the D.C. police officers employed as security for the parades. Kristopher Baumann, Chairman of the Fraternal Order of Police's Labor Committee, suggests that the city money used to subsidize the parties might be better spent, like, address the murder rate. [Via Metro Weekly]

Yesterday, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier released a statement on the incident. "I take concerns about the appropriate use of police powers very seriously," Lanier said. "Members who are found to have abused their authority are subject to both criminal and disciplinary penalties up to and including termination." So, was Culp canned over the slur-happy arrest?

Lanier refused to comment on the disciplinary penalties applied to Culp. But according to Lanier, Culp was not, at least, subject to criminal penalties over the arrest. The D.C. police's Internal Affairs Bureau "immediately launched a criminal investigation into the matter and subsequently referred the arrest to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for further criminal investigation and prosecution, if appropriate," Lanier says—but the Attorney's Office declined to prosecute Culp.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents Tuma, is looking for more than just discipline—it wants to revise D.C.'s "disorderly conduct" statute to reduce the possibility for police abuse. The ACLU told Fox 5 that "disorderly conduct" is "a false charge used every time an officer thinks someone has spoken disrespectfully or harshly to them, so we want that changed." Lanier disagrees with the ACLU's characterization of the law—she says that "disorderly conduct" is a necessary charge to prevent people from "urinating in public" or "blocking the sidewalk or road and refusing to let others pass." But she adds that D.C. police are committed to working alongside the ACLU to review the statute.

Lanier will say that Culp's tactic isn't exactly the D.C. police's preferred method for dealing with citizens who mouth off to cops. That would be something called "Verbal Judo."

"[B]elieve me, police do not make an arrest every time an officer thinks someone 'has spoken disrespectfully or harshly to them,'" Lanier's statement continued. "That happens everyday, and we train officers in a widely used tactical communication strategy (Verbal Judo) to defuse these situations." Lanier added that "Verbal Judo" is "by no means a magic wand," but that "it would be a mistake to let this case in which an officer is alleged to have acted outside both the law and Department policy drive the current discussion about revisions to the law."

"This is an action for damages and other relief by Pepin A. Tuma, who was detained, arrested and humiliated by Defendant Officer James Culp without any lawful basis and with the sole and illegitimate purpose of harassing Mr. Tuma because of Mr. Tuma’s criticism of the police and Officer Culp’s perception that Mr. Tuma is gay," the complaint reads.

Tuma—accompanied by friends Luke Platzer and David Stetson on U Street that night—admits to engaging in some light taunting prior to his arrest. From his complaint:

Across the street, on the north side of U Street, several police cruisers were parked with their lights on and several police officers were engaging in what appeared to be a traffic stop of a single civilian. Mr. Tuma noticed the police cruisers and commented to his friends that this seemed to be another example of excessive policing. As Mr. Tuma passed the police cruisers, he said, in a sing-song voice, “I hate the police; I hate the police.” Neither Mr. Tuma nor his friends stopped or slowed down as they walked. They did not approach, address or gesture to any of the police officers.

Then, Tuma claims:

Within seconds . . . Officer Culp charged across U Street shouting, in substance, "Who do you think you are? Who do you think you’re talking to? You can’t talk to me that way!" . . . When Officer Culp reached Mr. Tuma, he forcefully pushed Mr. Tuma up against a utility box . . . handcuffed him, and dragged him across to the north side of U Street to the police cruisers where he was searched and placed under arrest. Mr. Tuma did not resist in any way. When Mr. Tuma asked why he was being arrested, Officer Culp replied, “Just shut up, faggot.” . . . Mr. Tuma later learned that he had been arrested for disorderly conduct.

According to the complaint, Tuma filed complaints against Culp with the Second District police station, the D.C. Office of Police Complaints, and D.C. police chief Cathy Lanier. Tuma's complaint says that Culp was disciplined over the arrest. Tuma, who is being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, is now suing Culp and D.C. for violating his constitutional rights, false arrest, assault and battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress—as evidenced by the slur.

Tuma seeks compensatory damages—and "an injunction directing the District of Columbia to expunge all records of his arrest . . . and authorizing him to deny that he was arrested on July 26, 2009." I have an e-mail out to MPD for comment.

* Alyssa Rosenberg articulates my annoyance with the glamorization of "housewife":

This is a show [Real Housewives] where the term that distinguishes the franchise, "housewife," is pretty much stripped of all meaning. You don't have to be married to be a Real Housewife. You don't even have to be dating anyone particularly seriously. And you're almost certainly not simply a stay-at-home wife or mom if you've been found interesting enough to be on the show. You're running a business, or a charity, or at the very least, stirring up a hell of a lot of trouble semi-professionally. Being an American wife doesn't mean anything in particular these days. That definitional void might be scary, but it's also an opportunity to fill it up with something valuable and interesting and varied.

Interesting. I've always seen the show's title as a shallow attempt to redefine successful women solely by their roles as wives and mothers. But perhaps it works the other way, too—housewives can have it all. Even jobs!

* Via the Washington Blade: D.C. police chief Cathy Lanier has launched an investigation into a satirical flier circulated around the force announcing "D.C.’s First Deaf Mute Gay Marriage."

* Not only will watching porn cause you to get raped, it may also kill you!

* Graph! Canada loves gay marriage. And "Kisses to the 3.5 percent of gay-affirming Jamaicans," Rick Rosendall writes at GLAA Forum.

* NOM tour hits Maryland, attempts to prevent all video evidence of the event:

[youtube:v=qe9QNdcRplw]

Photo via The U.S. National Archives

According to internal police documents, sexual assaults in the first half of 2010 are up as much as 325% in areas across the District. Baumann's letter breaks down the numbers:

Internal department documents show that as of June 8, 2010, serious sexual assaults were up 46% city-wide (from 56 during the same period in 2009 to 82 in 2010 . . .  The increases in serious sexual assaults were not uniform throughout the city. The Second Police District (Ward 3) had a 250% increase (from 2 in 2009 to 7 in 2010) and the Third Police District (Ward 1) had a 133% increase (from 6 in 2009 to 14 in 2010). Both of those increases are alwarming and certainly necessitated a proactive response from the police Department, both in enforcement activity and increasing public awareness of not only the problenm, but also resouces for victims and individuals in abusive relationships.

In the Seventh Police District (Ward 8), the increase in serious sexual assaults has been dramatic. Serious sexual assaults increased 325% from 2009 to 2010 (from 4 in 2009 to 17 in 2010). It is important to remember that the Seventh Police District covers an area of only 6.5 square miles and a population of some 60,000. The fact that 17 serious sexual assaults have taken place in an area that small with a population that size cannot be taken lightly. The fact that the Department has taken no steps to identify the problem, warn the public, create education and awareness programs, focus on registered sex offenders, and proactively address the crisis is indefensible.

It's impossible to say whether the increase is due to more assaults or better assault reporting. But Baumann's greater concern centers on discrepancies between the way sexual assaults are reported internally within the police department and externally to the public:

The Department's website contains crime statistics for the city and individual police districts. Rtaher than report serious "sexual assaults" as a category as it oes in internal documents, the Department on its website instead reports all sexual incidents as "sex abuse." This allows the Department to include all criominal sexual reports in one category.

As a result, criminal sexual misdemeanors (e.g. unwanted touching) are included in the numbers for sexual offenses. The number of misdemeanors is significantly higher than the serious felony sexual assaults, and their presence in the same category skews the numbers and serves to mask the increase in serious sexual assaults. For example, the Department's website reported that in 2010 for the Seventh Police District up to June 8, 2010, "sexual abuse" was actually down by 3% (from 33 in 2009 to 32 in 2010).

So by grouping all sexual offenses together—from groping to violent rape—the D.C. police department has obscured (intentionally or not) the increase in reports of the more serious offenses. Beyond the numbers, Baumann's also concerned with the department's tone—he took Lanier to task for downplaying acquaintance rape in her appearance on WTOP earlier this month. Baumann has called for D.C.'s Office of the Inspector General and the D.C. Council's Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary to investigate the police department's reporting practices.

In an e-mail to WTOP, Police Chief Cathy Lanier wrote, "I have absolutely no problem with the OIG conducting an investigation into my crime statistics." Lanier chalked the controversy up to "confusion" over the department's comprehensive reporting practices: "I am committed to providing full and complete information on crime in the District. Indeed, if anything, more confusion arises because we do provide data in a variety of formats that allow people to analyze the data themselves."

Given the huge percentage of sexual assaults that are never reported to the police—and the added concern that D.C. police don't always investigate reports they do get—this could actually be a good sign for the District. Lanier didn't go that far: "You can't just look at numbers and not do any analysis and use that as something to warn or scare people with, you gotta kinda look at what the facts are," she told WTOP. She agreed to come back with more information on the problem in her next appearance on the program.

On Tuesday, June 8, the Rev. Patrick Mahoney arrived at Planned Parenthood with the intention of going to jail over a fence.

Two months earlier, the District had granted the organization a permit to build a 42-inch-high “wrought iron steel fence” around the front lawn of its clinic at 1108 16th St. NW. When Mahoney learned of the construction, he notified police, press, and fellow activists; marched onto the lawn; and knelt to pray in hopes of getting handcuffed.

Landscaping changes rarely prompt civil disobedience. Mahoney, a Presbyterian minister and longtime anti-abortion activist, is more concerned with what lies beyond the fence: a grassy, 40-foot-long entryway with a paved center walk that leads to the clinic, where the services include abortions. The turf has historical significance for Mahoney: For years, he and his allies have come to the yard to pray, confront patients, and attempt to convince pregnant women not to abort.

The new barrier, equipped with signs reading, “Private Property. No Trespassing. Violators Will be Prosecuted,” is meant to keep the anti-choicers at a distance. But it also provides an opportunity for Mahoney to pursue his second-favorite activity involving the property in front of the clinic: litigation.

Before Mahoney staged his public prayer, he brought in his go-to attorney, James Henderson of the American Center for Law & Justice. Henderson investigated the issue with city officials and uncovered city maps indicating that the 40 feet between Planned Parenthood’s doorway and the 16th Street sidewalk is zoned as “public space.”
Clinic reps maintain that the property is theirs to police. “The fence serves to protect the health center and our patients from violations of D.C. trespassing laws while still allowing those who are opposed to legal abortion to exercise their First Amendment rights and express their views along the sidewalk,” Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington CEO Laura Meyers said in a statement.

D.C. police concurred, enabling Mahoney his photogenic arrest. “At this point, our attorneys have advised us that they do consider it private property inside the fence line, so if you go inside the fence line, you will be encroaching upon private property,” Cmdr. Hilton Burton informed Mahoney shortly before his planned prayer. Mahoney prayed anyway, Burton arrested him, and the reverend promised to pursue the issue in court.

Indeed, Mahoney rarely misses the opportunity for a court appearance. In 2000, he sued the Supreme Court over a decision banning large picket signs from sidewalks on the high court’s grounds, thus preventing his entourage from toting what the Washington Post described as a gigantic “full-color depiction of a decapitated fetus.” In 2005, he sued the U.S. Marshals Service for the right to picket in favor of the Ten Commandments in a restricted area opposite St. Matthew’s Cathedral. In 2009, he sued the District for refusing to allow a “chalk art demonstration” in front of the White House that was meant to slam President Obama’s “radical support of abortion.”

But Mahoney’s preferred battleground is Planned Parenthood’s walkway. Over the past 20 years, Mahoney and his colleagues have launched several protracted court cases asserting their religious freedom to “counsel” those on their way into the facility.

To local anti-abortion activists, the 40 feet are worth the decades-long battle. “It’s better access,” explains Erik Whittington of Rock for Life, an anti-abortion initiative targeted at teens. Whittington says he’s prayed outside the clinic “at least once a year” since 1995. “I’ve been up there next to the door; I’ve been up on the grass leading prayer circles,” he says. “For women who are coming here to have an abortion, they’re walking up on that public property for about 15 seconds...Forty feet is a long way.”

With the fence, D.C.’s anti-abortion activists are forced to set up shop on the 16th Street sidewalk, where it’s difficult even to identify women seeking clinic services until they’re already out of earshot. “You don’t really have enough time to talk to them that way,” says Dick Retta, an activist who is familiar with the disputed terrain. “Outside the fence, you’ve only got maybe three to four seconds.”

Back in the ’80s, Mahoney would commandeer local clinic entrances for days at a time. The dispute over the Planned Parenthood entryway originated in 1989, when Mahoney and Christian activist organization Operation Rescue staged a series of “rescue” missions “involving physical blockades” that prevented access to several local health centers. In response, District Court judges laid down an injunction barring the protesters from “trespassing on, blockading, impeding or obstructing access to” D.C. abortion clinics.

Since then, Mahoney has fought a series of injunctions designed to keep him at a distance from local abortion providers. In 1994, Congress made the courts’ job easier with the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. The measure forced Mahoney to reconsider his tactics. He began, of course, by challenging the act in court. Later, he settled for talks—on-site prayer demonstrations and targeted “sidewalk counseling”—instead of blockades. The idea was to provoke a reaction that Mahoney could then take to court. After all, what’s a few days in front of a clinic when you can tie up an abortion provider in litigation for years?

On Jan. 23, 1998, the day after the 25th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Mahoney planned one of his arrest-baiting protests at now-defunct abortion provider the Capitol Women’s Center. When Mahoney arrived, “volunteers had already created a human chain in front of the clinic” to assist those entering, according to court documents. Five of Mahoney’s cohorts took a knee on the center’s sidewalk, at which point police officers “cordoned off the front of the clinic with police tape.” Mahoney crossed the line anyway and was arrested for violating FACE. A court issued a permanent injunction forbidding the minister and his allies from “coming within a twenty-foot-radius of any reproductive health facility” located inside the bounds of the Capital Beltway—including Planned Parenthood.

More recently, Mahoney’s litigious strategy has been embraced by younger activists. In 2005, Christendom College student Daniel Heenan sued Planned Parenthood after a tussle with a security guard. In those pre-fence days, the protesters’ no-fly zone was delimited by a spray-painted line on the pavement 20 feet from the clinic. According to court documents, it marked “the boundaries of an injunction issued by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia” against—whom else?—a “discrete group of individuals affiliated with Rev. Patrick Mahoney, who had been found by that court to have violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994.”

Inspired by Mahoney, Heenan had turned up the previous May intending to cross the boundary. Police were summoned. Pro-choice volunteers linked arms. Heenan crossed the line. Then, according to court documents, Harry James, a former Metropolitan Police Department officer working as a clinic security guard, “placed one hand on Heenan’s collar and another on his belt” and “attempted to turn Heenan around and walk him away from the building.” At some point in the commotion, “Heenan fell to the ground, and James tumbled over him.”

Heenan, also represented by Henderson, asked for $35,000. He lost in court. But, just like Mahoney’s suit, the ruckus took up a little bit of Planned Parenthood’s time and energy and money, which was kind of the point.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Five years ago, Emily May started up Holla Back New York City as a "little blog" for friends to share their experiences with sexual harassment on the streets of New York. Back then, May was hard-pressed to find who agreed that those "hey babies" and "nice asses" constituted a legitimate form of harassment. "I was getting street harassed three or four times a day and I felt like I didn’t have an adequate response," May says. But within six months of the blog's launch, victims of street harassment from around the world had joined May in hollering back online. "I never expected to strike such a nerve," says May.

"Hollering back" implies a verbal response to street harassment, but May and co. have always considered the blog a visual medium: Part of the therapeutic effect comes from actually photographing the creep. "We encourage it. It's kind of our model," May says. "It feels a lot more fierce and bad-ass and validating to take a picture." The blog is regularly peppered with shots taken at the scene of the harassment, featuring logo-emblazoned delivery trucks, blurry license plates, and slumped-over Subway riders.

Photography-as-activism was "always the original intent" of Hollaback, says May. "That was the classic Hollaback: To take a picture of what happened. It was never intended to be a mugshot—you could take a picture of his shoes, or you could wait until he was a few blocks away and he was a tiny dot on the camera—but the idea was to respond in the moment and capture some essence of the harassment."

But when local activists Shannon Lynberg and Chai Shenoy mounted a D.C. branch of the Hollaback movement last March, they found that local harassees were a bit more reluctant to whip out the camera phone. On Holla Back DC!, locals regularly write lengthy retorts to the strangers who harass them on the street, but don't usually accompany the prose with a visual.

Why are District holla-backers more shutter-shy? Perhaps it's as simple as a branding issue. Holla Back New York City's main page features a line of New Yorkers holding their open cell phones menacingly toward the camera. Holla Back DC!'s more textual approach doesn't aggressively encourage the harassed to snap a pic in the moment, but it does provide the multimedia option on its submission form page. In lieu of user-submitted photos, Lynberg and Shenoy often accompany anonymous posts with stock images from Flickr.

But the local reluctance to broadcast visual evidence of incidents that often aren't quite crimes also illuminates a rift in activism styles between D.C. and New York. "D.C. is a much smaller place," Lynberg hypothesizes. "Someone knows someone who will know someone that knows the perpetrator in the picture. And that breeds fear. . . . people are more afraid of litigation here." According to May, to-shoot-or-not-to-shoot is a highly personal consideration, regardless of locale: "We know that in a lot of situations, people aren't comfortable taking a picture of the harasser," May says. "It's not appropriate for every situation, and it's up to the individual to decide if it’s appropriate or not."

Perhaps individuals in D.C. are more likely to decide that snapping a photo of a stranger isn't appropriate—or perhaps they just need a little encouragement. This month, May plans to launch a new iPhone app that she hopes will facilitate both photo- and text-based holler backs around the world. Meahwhile, Holla Back DC! is working to address street harassment through less confrontational methods —the group is working on a public mural in Columbia Heights, is raising money to start up a "RightRides" program to help women and LGBT people travel safely through the city at night, and is planning "town halls" to engage directly with community members on the issue. The blog also maintains a Google map to chart incidents of street harassment around the city, a technological feature the founders hope will encourage solidarity against street harassment, and help victims "find courage and strength to report their incident," if they so choose.

"Activism [is still] different in D.C. than it is in New York City, but that's changing," Lynberg says. Case in point: Last month, a Holla Back DC! photograph helped police identify a serial harasser who was groping and photographing women at the Courthouse Metro station.

members of the Third District's Crime Suppression Team, ICE, community members as well as the management of various PSA 307 hotels, worked together to arrest 9 individuals for prostitiion related crimes related to the use of the internet. Along with these arrest, came the seizure of various electronic items that were utilized to enhance their trade as well as money and various evidence. This inititave is another example of psa stakeholders coming together to get things done and we wish to say thanks to all that took part as well as we look foward to working on many more projects in the future. Thank you

In response to the announcement, some community members remained unimpressed. The sex workers are off my Internets, now when will they get off my sidewalks? R. Kelley (seriously) of the MPD-3D listserv has this to say:

There are still a lot of Street Walkers around 13th & K Streets NW; Mass Ave, etc. when I arrive at work around 6:00AM.

Mongal assured Kelley that police "are currently putting plans together to do a better job at elimintaing that problem" and solicited "any information or details relating to the activity, such as descriptions, cars, locations and tactics" of said "Street Walkers." Meanwhile, on the listserv, Ashley Shillingsburg politely requests that police not follow R. Kelley's every lead: "They are not 'street walkers,' they are 'sex workers,' and the only effective means of combating illegal sex work is by going after the people who purchase such services," she writes. "What are MPD's tactics for going after those people as opposed to those who are victims of both pimps and johns?"

D.C. police have released an alert about a "suspicious male individual" who is "attempting to make contact with adolescent females as they walk to school." The alert says that yesterday, "the suspect exposed himself to four juvenile females that were walking to school." He's operating around the 200 blocks of 17th Street and 17th Place, NE"—close to both Eliot Junior High School and Eastern Senior High School. He's described as "a black male, 20-30 years of age, 5’7, thin build wearing a white t-shirt, blue shorts, a black skull cap and sunglasses."

Alongside the profile of Frundt, the Post republished another story on local prostitution Dvorak wrote in 2002. That story painted a much different picture of the sex trade in the District of Columbia. The main problem with prostitution in D.C., circa 2002? It was too visible. The solution? Hide the prostitutes.

Dvorak's 2002 piece focused heavily on D.C. police efforts to reduce "visible prostitution." The solutions presented in the story were targeted at getting the women to move along, not to receive assistance if they need it. In the past, Dvorak writes, some neighbors have "operated sprinklers to try to drench them," as if sex workers were cats; once, police marched a group of sex workers one-and-a-half miles to the Virginia border, as if sex workers were goats. Police attempted to push the sex trade into new neighborhoods, preferably ones that are "lightly populated at night"—where presumably, fewer neighbors will complain. Cops faulted judges for administering light sentences to convicted sex workers, putting them back on the streets—and fully visible—within 24 hours.

Meanwhile, discussion of the behind-the-scenes stuff—the power relationships and trafficking networks behind much street prostitution—was afforded only a soundbite or two. At the time the story was published, police had been working on "a diversion program to help prostitutes leave the streets" for about a month. The officer leading the city's anti-prostitution efforts had already declared it as a failure, courtesy of his armchair psychology of the minds of sex workers: "Something tells me you can't do much to help the girls. They're like addicts. They've got to want to help themselves," he told Dvorak.

Throughout the piece, Dvorak's descriptions of sex workers were similarly focused on the visual element. The physical appearances of sex workers inspired paragraphs, while inner lives and subjective experiences of these women were largely ignored—Dvorak only quoted nine words from an actual sex worker. The story was written not from the perspective of sex workers,  but from the neighbors who don't like being forced to look at them.

So: These women were "barely clad" and "scantily clad." They walked around with "everything showing" while "teetering on four-inch heels." They wore "thigh-high, black vinyl boots with four-inch, clear acrylic heels" and "nothing but a short, black jacket" and "stockings and a thong bikini." And they came in three flavors: "crack mamas," "female impersonators," and the "show girls who wear flashy outfits and are brought in by the vanload by their pimps." The message: The view is grotesque, and citizens don't want to see it on the streets of Washington.

Dvorak's recent column suggests that the District's approach to sex work has changed in the past eight years:

The detective I talked to almost a decade ago was certainly onto [the problem of human trafficking in the sex trade]. But few called it slavery back then. It was "a network" and "runaways" and "groups of people traveling from city to city."

But over the past several years, detectives in our region began seeing younger prostitutes, girls promised excitement and glamour, lured from small towns and trapped by violence and manipulation. In 2004, the District organized the D.C. Human Trafficking Task Force.

The cops are now part of that task force, and they identify about 100 juveniles each year forced to work in the District.

Dvorak's reportorial approach to the problem has changed as well. She's moved on from the vantage point of neighborhood gawkers and beat cops in order to present the perspective of trafficked minors. And her physical descriptions of sex workers have shifted accordingly:

Her name was "Elizabeth London," she said. And, shivering in a short, white skirt and tottering on huge, acrylic heels too big for her little feet, she was standing on a corner in Northwest Washington, about four blocks from the White House, "waiting for a friend."

She was a child, about 15, I guessed. Her makeup was clumsy and clumpy, her long, blond hair was limp. The detective with me agreed that she was a kid, but she had no I.D., so he couldn't prove it.

. . . That frightened girl—with raccoon-eye liner and too-bright lipstick —is the face of slavery in America today, Frundt contends.

First, the familiar stuff: In this account, District sex workers are still "tottering" or "teetering" on their four-inch plastic heels, they're still heavily painted, and they're still scantily-clad. The tone, though, is different this time. This sex worker is not an out-of-control "addict" but rather a "clumsy," "limp," "frightened girl." The reader is meant to be more depressed than scandalized.

But the intense focus on the physical appearance of sex workers remains. Regardless of the spin you put on the omnipresent teetering high-heels, endlessly recounting the elements of the stereotypical street-walker outfit doesn't provide any insight into the problem. The approximate height of a woman's shoe doesn't help me understand what her life is like, or what sort of social services she might benefit from.

Some people see women in the stereotypical sex worker uniform as criminal sex "addicts." Some see them as frightened victims. And the idea that some sex workers may not fall into either of these categories is dismissed out of hand. As long as we keep on scrutinizing the bodies of sex workers, we're still gawking instead of listening. How are we ever going to address the problems of the American sex trade if we all treat sex workers like objects?

This week, local street harassment blog Holla Back DC recorded two incidents of street harassment by local firefighters. In the year that Holla Back has been publicizing sexual harassment in the District, the blog has aired plenty of stories of harassment originating from the District's men in uniform. In honor of this dubious occasion, I've collected the stories submitted to Holla Back about those firefighters, police officers, security guards, deliverymen, and bus drivers who are comfortable hollering at women while representing the D.C. government—or UPS.

* Harassment by firefighter:

As I was looking down the street at oncoming traffic, a fire engine drove by. It was not on its way to an emergency, as its lights and siren weren’t on and they were driving at a somewhat slow speed. However, they honked their loud siren at me and started cheering out of the window. This was of course just as my fiance was walking out of the ATM. He was offended that men in uniform would do that, and to tell you the truth, it made me feel like common street trash and that they treated me like a hooker.

—

A few weeks ago, I was walking my dog past Dunbar High School across from the fire station. It was one of the particularly beautiful days we’ve had this Spring, and a group of all male firefighters was sitting on lawn chairs outside. A couple of the firefighters hollered at me from across the busy street, but I couldn’t understand their exact words because of the traffic. When I (reluctantly) glanced over, it was clear from their leering and the lack of any other pedestrians in the vicinity that they were targeting me. I understand they wanted to enjoy the nice day out, and evidently they weren’t busy fighting any fires, but their behavior toward me was unprofessional. I wanted to enjoy my time outside, too. Instead I felt uncomfortable and the need to get away

* Harassment by U.S. Capitol police officer :

when I came upstairs, one of the capitol police guys started asking me a bunch of questions about myself. At first I thought he was just doing his job, or being friendly. But then he asked me for a number. I attempted to excuse myself, but I didn’t feel free to totally blow him off because he was a police officer. He persisted in “can I get to know you?” and “next time you’re in town, you can stay at my house,” and “you’re so beautiful,” and “you know, I could take very good care of you, and you could take care of me [implying sex].” Finally, I told him that I date women, not men… that’s not actually true, but I thought it would be a way to excuse myself without hurting his pride. His response was “really? Well, maybe I can turn you back.” That has to be the most offensive thing he could have said. He also suggested that we could take a bath together, and that he could wash me. This went on for at least 15 minutes—if he’d been some loser on the street, or a rent-a-cop, I totally would have left, but I was afraid to piss off a capitol officer, so I put up with the bullshit until finally I told him that I would think about calling him, and he put his number into my palm.I was actually a bit threatened/frightened by the incident, because he was a police officer, and very persistent, and sexually explicit right off the bat. I hate that shit!

* Harassment by uniformed officer:

The other night my roommate and I were going to a club together. We had both never been to the place before and weren’t really familiar with the area so we were looking a little ‘distraught’. As we were passing a street corner we spoted a few police officers or security guard looking men. So, being 2 girls alone we decided to cross over to their side of the street. However, as we cross over we hear an onslaught of sexual remarks. “Hey baby where are you going tonight? You sure look sexy in that skirt!” We didn’t really think much of it – beyond the fact that it was annoying- until we realized who it was who was saying these things. It was none other then those officers/ security guards we were going towards! We both walked past them as quickly as possible. It was one of the most ironic situations!

* Harassment by security guard:

Tonight I left my gym (13th and F NW) and hurried down the street to catch my bus home. I was walking and texting, and I noticed a uniformed guard standing outside a building up ahead. As I passed, he said loudly, “Hey yo, can I get a text too?” I kept my head down and ignored him; I had a long day at work and I was tired. I always feel somewhat defeated when someone in uniform (guard, police officer) says something or leers at me. I suppose it’s because they’re supposed to protect us and make us feel safe.

—

Then there’s the evening security guard at my office building who, if nobody else happens to be in the lobby, will carry on with the, “Hey sexy, how are you? I like that dress, you look fine. Give me a smile, girl. I watched you walk all the way down the street the other day,” until I’m out of the building. This happens several times a week.

* Harassment by UPS employee:

After getting my free ice cream from Ben & Jerry’s, at M & 31st I had to crouch down to pull my umbrella out of my bag since it started raining. A UPS driver was waiting at the light, and he had to say something to me:

“Ooh, girl! You don’t need to finish that all by yourself!”

Ugh! This man did not give a damn about his job.

When I told him that it was tacky and classless for him to hit on me in uniform, he started cracking up. Oh yes, sexual harassment is funny! (obvious sarcasm).

I am never one who takes harassment lightly, be it from a citizen or someone in uniform representing a company . . . I did get the UPS driver’s license plate number: Maryland plates 21S 925. As soon as I got home I called UPS to report him, and the woman who took the info down was so sympathetic and apologetic and said she’d have someone get in touch with me in the morning.

Ladies, don’t let these men get away with harassment, and never feel bad about these men getting in trouble at work if you report them. If they cared about having jobs they wouldn’t feel the need to do this in the first place.

* Harassment by bus driver:

This may sound silly to people, but this makes me uncomfortable. There’s this driver of the 38B that goes through Georgetown around 5:40 in the evenings, and when we board the bus, he completely ignores everyone else but says “Hi, howya doin’?” to me. Then he stares at me a little too long for my taste. I have no problem saying “hi” to a bus driver if s/he says “hi” first—I do it frequently and thank them when I get off the bus. . . . One time I didn’t respond to his “hi,” and he gives a huge sigh and mumbles something under his breath. I don’t know why this driver is so desperate to get my attention. If it’s for what I think it is, then sorry man, I’m not interested in you like that. My only interest in you is for you to get me to my destination safely.

—

i never bothered to complain when this one bus driver would harrass me. if they cant even get their shit together to get my bus on schedule, how much faith do i have in them following up on dirty and corrupt employees? BUT it’s time to take a stand and hold them accountable!

* Harassment by parking attendant:

I was not being harassed, but I saw a young woman approaching me walking toward the garage in a professional dress. There were two men standing at the entrance to the garage, one wearing a PMI hat and appeared to be the attendant. The other man was wearing a light green button up shirt. The men cat-called and said things loudly in a language I could not understand (but the intent was clear) while pointing and turning their bodies to follow the path of the young woman, who ignored them.

Even in uniform, no respect.

File your experiences with uniformed street harassment in the comments. Here's mine.

Photo via NCinDC, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

For this week's paper, I wrote a cover story on one young woman's crusade to secure a rape kit after she believed she had been drugged and raped at a college party. The D.C. police response to the woman's case illustrates how District rape victims can be dismissed as liars, drunks, or otherwise unworthy of an investigation:

On Saturday, Dec. 9, 2006, Hannah* woke up in her Howard University dorm room with a piece of her life missing. Hannah, a 19-year-old sophomore, had unexplained pain in her rectum and hip. Her panty liner, which she had worn the night before, was missing. Vomit dotted her gloves and coat. Her friend Kerston lay beside her in the skinny dorm room bed. Kerston told Hannah not to shower—they had to go back to the hospital to secure a rape kit. That weekend, Hannah claims that she was provided the following excuses for why she could not receive a sexual assault medical forensic examination: She was drunk; she ate a sandwich; she was a liar; she didn’t know her attacker’s last name; the police had to authorize the exam; she was outside the hospital’s jurisdiction; she wasn’t reporting a real crime; she was blacked out; she changed her story; her case was already closed.

Read the rest here.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Last month, D.C. police released a report breaking down every hate crime reported in D.C. [PDF] over the past five years. In 2007, changes to the D.C. Human Rights Act required police to begin recording hate-bias crimes motivated by the victim's "gender identity or expression"—in other words, crimes that specifically target transgender victims. Since then, crimes against the transgender community have been the second most frequently recorded type of hate crime committed in D.C., after sexual orientation.

Since 2007, D.C. police have recorded 16 bias-related crimes based on gender identity. Last year, D.C. recorded seven of these crimes (which can include anything from destruction of property to assault to murder). But as trans activist group the DC Trans Coalition notes, transgender victims often face barriers to having crimes against them reported, investigated, and properly coded as a hate crime. According to the DCTC, "Since many trans communities (particularly low-income trans women of color and those who are sex workers) experience violence at the hands of police themselves, it is likely that anti-trans crimes in general are under-reported. Further, DCTC has also learned via a Freedom of Information Act request that MPD still is not tracking statistics about police response rates to cases involving trans individuals."

And because the transgender community in D.C. is so small, seven crimes in a year is an extremely significant figure. We're talking about a very limited population of potential targets, which means that any hate crime against a trans person holds more power to terrorize the entire community.

In 2009, D.C. experienced several highly visible bias crimes motivated by the victim's gender identity. Last March, a transgender man was assaulted outside of Fab Lounge by some of the gay bar's other patrons. In August, Tyli'a Mack and a friend, both trans women, were stabbed on the street in the middle of the afternoon. Mack was killed. The most recent hate-bias crime based on gender identity occurred last weekend, when two transgender individuals were assaulted in Petworth with a metal pole.

The new D.C. police report resolves one reporting problem for D.C.'s transgender community: In an original hate crimes report released in November of last year, D.C. police failed to distinguish between gender identity and sexual orientation in its data, leaving the transgender community with no information on how many victims were being targeted specifically for their gender identity. After some prodding by activists, D.C. released the fully differentiated data last month.

The man never even touched Miranda Vargas, but her body felt him. While riding the Metro, Vargas watched as a man with a “stale, semen smell” inched close to her, opened his legs, and “began playing with himself over his pants,” Vargas says. As the guy publicly masturbated to her, Vargas’ body experienced symptoms of mild shock. She started sweating, breathing rapidly, and overheating. Her mind raced through various exit strategies.

Meanwhile, Vargas struggled to maintain a perfectly calm exterior. “I was so horrified the whole time, I just pretended I was reading my book but I never turned a page,” she says. “When I started breathing faster, I remember I consciously told myself to breathe slower, because I didn’t want the man to know how much he was upsetting me.”

Even the most low-contact public groping incidents assault the nervous system. One woman lay in bed shaking with rage all night after a man swiped her butt at a coffee shop. Another woman dry-heaved after a man grabbed her genitals at a bus stop. One man felt so sick after being deliberately rubbed on the Metro that he was physically unable to look himself in the mirror. Instead, he sat blankly in front of the television all evening until he could fall asleep. Years later, memories of the incident still produce a shudder.

Violent revenge fantasies are common.

Months after 27-year-old Jessica Graves was grabbed in the coffee shop, she still had daydreams about kicking her groper’s ass. “What I wanted to do was push him down the stairs and pound his face into the pavement,” she says. The bus stop victim, 28-year-old Elizabeth, has a recurring fantasy, too. “My anger and my frustration—I got those feelings out in my fantasy,” she says. “In my fantasy, I would turn around and grab him and get someone to grab the Metro police, and he would have gone to jail, and then he would learn that groping isn’t OK.”

One groping victim has spent years reliving his assault, but with one slight revision—the swift downward motion of a sharp pencil.

A couple of years ago, John, then a 23-year-old law student, was sitting on a crowded Red Line train, clutching an open casebook in one hand and a pencil in the other. Halfway through the trip, a new seatmate decided to make it a bumpy ride. “As the train started moving…I felt some
motion from the man next to me—his body was kind of moving slightly up and down against my side,” John says. “At first, I thought this was due to the natural movement of the Metro train, but it soon became clear that the movement was not from the train, but from the man.”

As the train continued down the track, the guy’s movements advanced beyond “natural movement.” “As the train moved on, the [rubbing] got more intense to the point where the man was grinding his side and back, half his ass, and part of his leg up against me,” John says. When John attempted to edge his body away and focus on the reading, his assailant stepped up his activity. “My efforts to get away from him seemed to only embolden him more, and at one point he even reached back to lift up his shirt so the skin of his back was rubbing up against my arm, leg, and side,” he says.

John did nothing. “I just retreated into myself,” he says. Years later, he still fantasizes about taking the pencil in his hand and swiftly stabbing the guy in the leg. Or leaning over and quietly whispering, “If you don’t stop that right now and get the fuck away from me, I’m calling the cops.” But mostly, he thinks about the pencil. “Out of all the scenarios I went through in my mind where I actually did something, this is the one I replay over and over again,” he says. “Of course, I didn’t follow through on it, and I still don’t know if I ever would have been able to. But I do keep thinking about the possibility of attacking my attacker.…It seems more satisfying than trying to embarrass him in front of a train car full of people.” Memories of the minutes-long attack still produce a physical effect in the victim. “I wanted him to feel some sort of physical pain for what he did to me,” he says. “I still do.”

Megan Carpentier, 32, makes gropers feel physical pain. In the decade she spent as a District resident, Carpentier was groped, grabbed, and grinded over and over again. Eventually, she began responding by pushing, elbowing, and stomping. “The crotch-grab—and my lack of reaction to it, honestly—was what pushed me over the edge,” says Carpentier. In 1999, she and some roommates were exiting a crowded Republic Gardens dance floor when a man swooped in for a double grope: “One dude literally just reached down and cupped my genitals over my skirt…without even looking at me. And I just froze,” she says. “He then reached down and did the same thing to my roommate.”

After that, Carpentier understood that the common club practice was a legitimate assault. “[He did this to me] because I had female genitals, and he was bigger, and close enough to grab them, and felt entitled. And it was the first time I realized that,” she says. Since then, Carpentier has been living the fantasy. “The next time some dude groped me in a club…I turned around and punched him in the kidneys,” she says. When another man attempted to grope Carpentier’s friend at (since-shuttered) retro club Polly Esters, Carpentier reached over her friend’s shoulders and “pushed him to the ground,” she says. The latest recipient of Carpentier’s self-defense groped her at an ill-fated Rumors bachelorette party. “Dude walked up behind me, ground his crotch into my ass and attempted to cup both breasts in his hands,” says Carpentier. “He got a 5-inch stiletto to the top of his foot, an elbow in the ribs, and if I’d had less to drink, he might’ve ended up with a sprained wrist.”

The aggressive approach can yield mixed results. Some victims find that no amount of pushing, elbowing, or stabbing can negate a sexual assault. “Almost every victim of assault thinks they could have controlled what happened to them. So you get mad at yourself or blame yourself for what you did or didn’t do,” says local self-defense expert Lauren Taylor. “But even if you do everything you’re ‘supposed’ to do, you were still sexually assaulted.”

Other physical resisters find themselves with less philosophical concerns. Last week, another Rumors-based groping ended in a hospital visit for the victim’s boyfriend. According to police, a woman was with her boyfriend inside the M Street club on Jan. 24 when a stranger approached and groped the woman. The boyfriend responded by confronting the groper, who “without warning or provocation head-butted [the boyfriend] in the face.” For the record, here’s the D.C. police’s official word on assaulting your groper: “The Metropolitan Police Department would never recommend that victims of assaults confront the suspect. This can be extremely dangerous.”

This column is the fourth in a series. Catch up:

Part 1: Touch and Go: How Groping Happens.
Part 2: "I Just Wanted Him to Finish And Leave”: Why Some Groping Victims Stay Silent.
Part 3: "Why Would I Want to Touch Your Ass?": When Groping Victims Talk Back.

Find all the Sexist's groping coverage here.

(Illustrations by Brooke Hatfield).

One of the gripes leveled at the Sexist's recent groping coverage is that it has so far focused on only one category of victim—women. Men get groped, too, so let's hear one male victim's story. This weekend, a male MPD officer was subjected to a public genital grab, courtesy of a violent burglary suspect. The incident was aired on the MPD 1st District Listserv on Saturday:

On Friday January 22, 2010, at about 3:00 pm, Officer Andrew Zabavsky (Third District) was off duty and walking his dog in the 500 block of 6^th Street SE. About the same time off duty Officer Andrew Horos (First District) was responding to work at the First District Sub-Station.

Officer Zabavsky was walking his dog (on a leash) when he observed a citizen yelling for help and the perpetrator fleeing. Officer Zabavsky then identified himself as a police officer and attempted to restrain the perpetrator. The perpetrator started violently choking Officer Zabavsky. Officer Horos was responding to work when he observed the struggle, alighted from his vehicle and assisted. Officer Horos identified himself and asked the perpetrator to stop resisting. The perpetrator used profane language then grabbed the genital area of Officer Horos.

According to police, the 47-year-old suspect has been charged with burglary and assault. As for the Andrews? "Both officers are okay," the Listserv claims. If you're a man who has been the victim of groping, tell the Sexist your story here.

File photo by Darrow Montgomery.

Recently, D.C. police chief Cathy Lanier decided to restructure the department's Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit (GLLU)—a unit of officers specially-trained in LGBT issues—in order to disperse trained officers across the force. The move has been criticized by LGBT activist groups, who are concerned with the force's ability to adequately address LGBT-specific crime without a visible, coordinated, and well-staffed unit.

Today, the D.C. Trans Coalition (DCTC), the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance (GLAA), Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence (GLOV), and the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club released a statement enumerating their beefs with the decision. "MPD Chief Cathy Lanier is poised to call this initiative a success, but we are unfortunately quite skeptical," they write. "An award-winning unit has been effectively dismantled without meaningful input from the very community that unit serves."

Full release after the jump.

December 9, 2009

Contact:

Sadie Ryanne Baker, DC Trans Coalition, 202.557.1951
Rick Rosendall, GLAA, 202.328.6278
Chris Farris, GLOV, 202.368.5321

Broad Coalition of LGBT Community Organizations Oppose Metropolitan Police Department Plan to Restructure Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit: Groups object to flaws and inadequacies found throughout new GLLU training program for affiliate officers.

Washington, DC – Today a broad coalition of DC’s LGBT community groups stand together to express our severe disappointment with the Metropolitan Police Department’s ill-conceived plan to restructure the Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit (GLLU). MPD Chief Cathy Lanier is poised to call this initiative a success, but we are unfortunately quite skeptical. An award-winning unit has been effectively dismantled without meaningful input from the very community that unit serves. Lanier is quick to point out that she and her staff have held meetings with community members to discuss their plans, but she fails to mention that not one critique of her plan was accepted.

In spite of repeated requests, MPD has not been able to say how many officers will serve GLLU full-time (there is currently only one, with three on full-time leave), whether GLLU will again have a full-time sergeant, or how new affiliated officers will be effectively coordinated to both respond to LGBT issues and learn and share best practices. Many members of our communities have had exceptionally negative experiences with police, while others have enjoyed quite positive interactions – these latter advances have often been credited to GLLU’s outreach work both within and outside the MPD. Thus to upend this unit without seeking real community input calls into question MPD’s self-stated claim to serve our communities. We look forward to MPD demonstrating its willingness to act in good faith to work with us in both cleaning up the fallout from this hasty restructuring program and in making additional progress in other areas.

Moreover, community members have been largely shut out of the process to develop the training course for GLLU’s new affiliate officers, which concluded last Friday. Lanier has boasted that 32 hours of classroom training have been provided to these officers. However, only 2 of those hours featured any discussion whatsoever of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues. The MPD promised to share its training curriculum with community representatives at a meeting on October 22, yet failed to do so. At that same meeting, organizations were promised an invitation to suggest reading materials, case studies and specific modules for the training program. Finally, the Chief stated under oath at a City Council Hearing on November 20 that she would share the curriculum for the training with the LGBT community and incorporate their feedback. There was absolutely no follow-up to this invitation, despite repeated requests by LGBT community organizations. Last week, some LGBT community leaders were invited to speak at the training session (for 10-15 minutes each). They were given less than two days and asked to prepare outlines of their presentations before attending. This left no time for any real preparation, and only allowed for a few minutes of time for community members – almost entirely volunteers – to present anything at all.

In addition, individuals who were able to sit in on the training are deeply concerned about numerous errors of omission and commission that will seriously endanger DC’s LGBT communities. Specific concerns include:

• Failure to consult with the LGBT community to foster confidence and gather community input to inform the training,
• Failure to follow through on the commitment to have stand-alone GLLU training for at least half a day – instead, training was limited to less than two hours, and with combined attendees from both the GLLU and the Latino Liaison Unit;
• Failure to provide culturally competent training for officers on how to sensitively approach and manage specific needs for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual and gender non-conforming individuals;
• Failure to include in the curriculum any discussion of the distinction between sexual orientation and gender identity;
• Failure to discuss the need to actively curtail profiling trans individuals as criminals;
• Failure to address domestic violence situations, which make up 82 percent of GLLU’s caseload, until after training was well underway, which converted what limited LGBT Domestic Violence training there was into a mopping-up exercise;
• Failure to provide guidance and training on how to appropriately track and record hate crimes related to an individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression;
• Failure to address strategies on how to ensure a supportive workplace for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender affiliate officers and those performing LGBT liaison duties;
• Failure to develop a public education plan aimed at encouraging community members to report homophobic and transphobic violence and crimes;
• Failure to encourage affiliate officers to attend significant LGBT events to promote visibility and develop strong and meaningful relationships between police and LGBT community members.

There is a critical need for a more comprehensive LGBT training program to be provided before new affiliate officers are certified as GLLU members – a training program that is developed in partnership with the LGBT community. This includes intensive field training with existing GLLU officers, and in-depth classroom training that covers the range of safety, discrimination, and access to justice issues that LGBT individuals face across this city. We also feel strongly that we need answers to the key questions on the size, structure, and responsibilities of the GLLU moving forward. We hope that MPD acts quickly to demonstrate a genuine commitment to community safety, and cooperates with concerned individuals and organizations to address its flawed GLLU restructuring program.

It's been over a month since a man died inside an underground sex club at 1618 14th Street NW. The club, operated by David J. Butler and the D.C. Wrestling Club, had been throwing near-nightly "Men's Parties" in Logan Circle for years. The party came to a halt on the morning of Oct. 4, when one reveler died of "blunt impact injury to the head" on the club's stairs.

Forty-five days later, the D.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner says that the "manner of death" in the case—which determines whether a death came as a result of a homicide, suicide, accident, or some other cause—is still pending.

Today, D.C. police released a 911 call made from outside the sex club on the morning of Oct. 4. The call, which originated from one of the club's patrons, points to one possible contributing factor in the man's death—that party organizers allegedly hesitated to call an ambulance:

The full transcript of the call is after the jump.

Operator: D.C. Emergency 911 Dispatcher 6741. Police, Fire or Ambulance?

Caller: Ambulance.

Operator: To come where?

Caller: It’s um 14^th street, 1618 A. This guy fell down the steps at this after-hours club, and the guy’s, um, he doesn’t look like he’s breathing, and they won’t call the police, I mean, call the ambulance.

Operator: OK, repeat the address?

Caller: It’s 1618 A 14^th street.

Operator: 1618 14^th Street Building A?

Caller: Yeah it’s A. It’s um, it’s right on the corner of Corcoran and 14^th

Operator: Oh, it looks like someone already called the ambulance.

Caller: Okay, because he—he fell down—

Operator: They’re en route there, somebody already called.

Caller: Okay, because he fell down a while ago. How long ago did they call? Because he was laying there—

Operator: They called at 5:06.

Caller: Oh, okay. What time is it now?

Operator: It’s 5:10 now.

Caller: Okay, yeah. Because he fell before that, and I saw him. And I told them. I don’t know, I’m just upset about it, because it’s actually—it’s like an after-hours sex club—and they didn’t want to call the police, because he didn’t have any clothes on.

Operator: Okay. Look out for the police for him. I mean the ambulance.

Caller: I see them, I see them now, thank you.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery.

On Wednesday, the District of Columbia filed suit to shut down "Men's Parties," the underground male sex club operating at 1618 14th Street NW. The lawsuit's three defendants—David J. Butler, 1618 14th Street LLC, and the D.C. Wrestling Club—face charges of "opperation of a business without a basic business license" and "use of premises for business without appropriate certificate of occupancy."

The initial documents in the case offer a glimpse into the club's secretive activities, as well as additional information concerning the fatal accident that occurred inside the club on the morning of October 4th.

According to court documents, D.C. police responded to the report of "an unconscious person at the address" at 5:18 a.m. Detective Thomas Smith, a former Prostitution Enforcement Unit cop, was called to the scene to investigate a potential homicide. During the course of the investigation, Smith met Butler, "who identified himself as the President of a private club, doing business as the D.C. Wrestling Club."

Butler told Smith that he hosts parties where "men come into the premises, make a donation, and socialize." By the time Smith entered the property, Butler was accompanied by "more than twenty patrons and staff." Three other staff members identified themselves to Smith, according to documents: Jerome Goodman, Juan Adams, and Ralph 'Jay' Rushing.

According to Smith's affidavit, the activities of the club were obvious: "Strewn throughout the entire location are used condoms, empty condom wrappers, paper towels, cloth towels and other indicia of frequent, non-discrete sexual behavior." What, no snacks?

The affidavit offered a full inventory of the club's amenities:

First Floor: "A lounge area immediately inside the front entrance" which includes "two sets of lockers" and couches. Also on the first floor, "separated by curtains, are three wooden stalls containg 'glory holes' used for sexual activity" The floor also contains a "powder room and a linen closet."

Second Floor: An additional "lounge area with several counches and a mounted television set" sits on the club's top floor. The second floor also yields a "kitchenette and full bathroom." Behind the lounge are "sexually-oriented materials" including a "sex swing, large wooden cross that permits an individual to be bound to the structure, and a bench." The second floor also includes a bedroom "reportedly belonging to Ralph 'Jay' Rushing," and another bench.

Basement: Two sets of stairs lead to this floor (the accident victim was found at the foot of one staircase). In the basement are"thirteen bed spaces separated by built-in wooden partitions and dark curtains," each containing a "mattress and trash can."

At tonight's ANC 2F meeting, 3rd District Lieutenant Vanessa Moore provided some details into the police investigation of Sunday's sex club death at 1618 14th Street NW. The building has long been known for hosting a late-night sex party called "Men's Parties" as well as meetings of the "Jack Off Enthusiasts Club." Last Sunday, a man was reported dead inside the building.

The victim, who was found at the bottom of a stairwell in the building's basement, was discovered in the early morning hours of Oct. 4. Moore described the victim as a 47-year-old white male. Police now think the man suffered from a "possible broken neck" that may have resulted from a fall down the stairs.

"This remains a death report, not a homicide," Moore clarified. But the death has again drawn D.C. police attention to the sex club at 1618 14th Street, which drew city scrutiny in 2005 when a fire broke out at the location. Four years later, Moore says D.C. police are working with the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs to attempt to close the club. "I know he does not have any license at that location," Moore said. "We're looking for ways to shut him down."

Moore said that to her knowledge, the club is "not operating right now," though neighbors present at the meeting challenged that assertion. (Borderstan reported yesterday that the joint appeared open for business). Moore added that the sex club's manager had stated, in his defense, that he "provides a safe place for men to have consensual sex." But it's still unclear as to whether or not unsafe building conditions contributed to the man's death. Moore was not on-scene at the time of the incident, but she had been told the place was outfitted with "sex toys" and that the stairs were "steep."

She also heard tell of snacks. "He said he doesn't collect money," Moore said. "But he said he does collect donations for chips, dips, and soda. And we'll leave it at that."

On Wednesday, Aug. 26, one person was killed and another critically injured in a daytime stabbing outside 209 Q St. NW. In the hours following the homicide, police and reporters gathered witness testimony, formed a description of the suspect, and chased likely motives. This time, cops and journalists were also forced to devote resources to another developing story: the gender of the victims.

Within three hours of the incident, three local news sources had independently verified the victims’ gender identity with police. They all got it wrong.

Fox 5 news reporter Roby Chavez gave this report at 3:59 p.m., about an hour and a half after the stabbings occurred. “D.C. Police sources tell Fox  5 officers found two transgender male victims in front of the building when they arrived,” Chavez reported.

At 4:36 p.m., the Washington Post’s Paul Duggan filed his item on the stabbing, also published in the next day’s paper. “Police said the victims, whom they described as ‘transgender males,’ were stabbed shortly after 2:30 p.m. in the 200 block of Q Street NW.”

WUSA9’s Bill Starks weighed in at 5:23 p.m.: “Officers…arrived and found two transgender males in front of the building at 209 Q Street, both suffering from stab wounds.”

The Washington Blade’s Lou Chibbaro was the first to nail down the correct gender identity of the homicide victim, who has since been identified under her legal name, Joshua Mack, as well as her chosen name, Tyli’a. At 7:06 p.m., four-and-a-half hours after the incident occurred, Chibbaro wrote, “One transgender woman was stabbed to death Wednesday and another was in stable condition with stab wounds from an unknown assailant.”

But even after Mack’s correct gender identity was established, the struggle continued. In “D.C. Transgender Community Outraged After Fatal Stabbing”—filed more than 24 hours after the incident occurred—ABC 7 reporter Sam Ford announced: “One transgender is dead, another is in critical condition.”

Mack was not a “transgender male,” a “transgender man,” or a "transgender.” Mack was a male-to-female transgender woman who clearly appeared to be female. On the reward poster for her homicide, she’s shown wearing eye shadow, shaped eyebrows, and two long braids. “Of course, when the one young lady was murdered and the other was hospitalized, we were quite upset [with the media coverage] because they aren’t transgender men—they are transgender women,” says Brian Watson, the director of Transgender Health Empowerment, which counted both victims as clients. “I know both of the young ladies that were attacked, and they lived their lives as transgender women. They looked like women. For me, there shouldn’t have been any confusion about them being males. If you saw them on the street, you would see they were females.”

Since the victims in this case clearly presented as women, how were they initially identified as “transgender males”?

Chavez, Duggan, and Starks all attributed the “transgender males” identification to “police sources.” Duggan says that the department’s public information office provided him the term. “The police department put it out there, and we went on what they said,” says Duggan. Starks got even more specific, sourcing the terminology to Quintin Peterson, the public information officer on duty when news of the stabbings broke. “‘Transgender males’—those were his exact words,” says Starks. “I’m not trying to get him in trouble or anything, but that’s what was said.”

Peterson denies that the police originated the term. “‘Transgender males’ was never used. Not by me or anyone in this office,” he says. “We cannot be held responsible for the terminology the news media chooses to use. We did not put anything out other than what the correct terminology is.” Acting Lieutenant Brett Parson, the police department’s top liaison to the GLBT community who was on scene shortly following the stabbing, similarly defers the misidentification to media reports. “It’s the media that seems fixated on their gender identity. That issue did not come from the chief of police,” says Parson. “We’ve had to correct the media on countless occasions because they have been reporting, insensitively, terms that are not used in the community.”

Wherever the term “transgender males” originated, no one really wanted to touch it. Starks says he never asked Peterson for clarification on what the term “transgender males” actually meant. “I didn’t ask him to go beyond that,” he says. “I assumed that it was referring to a person who may be in the process of either a sex change or someone who is dressing in the clothing of another gender.” When asked if “male” refers to the victim’s biological sex or gender identity, Starks was stumped. “That’s a good question,” he says. Duggan says that the Post avoided parsing the term with a deft use of punctuation. “It was a short brief that we wrote really fast, so we decided to use, in quotes, ‘transgender males,’” says Duggan. “I got beat up a lot over that, because I wasn’t educated on [the terminology] at the time, and I was quickly educated on it.”

For cops and journos, employing the correct terminology is more than a matter of respect. Both D.C. police procedure and Associated Press style mandate that transgender individuals be addressed in accordance with their gender expression. According to the AP Stylebook, reporters are to “use the pronoun preferred by the individuals who have acquired the physical characteristics of the opposite sex or present themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth.” And in 2007, D.C. police adopted one of the nation’s most comprehensive transgender policies, which states that when a police officer is unsure of a person’s gender identity, “the member shall inquire how the individual wishes to be addressed (e.g., Sir, Miss, Ms.) and the name by which the individual wishes to be addressed.”

Of course, ascertaining the correct terminology becomes more difficult when the transgender individual is dead. Sometimes, even the victim’s family can’t help identify the preferred gender. ABC 7’s story on the stabbing included a quote from Mack’s brother, Aaron Walker: “I’m just hurting right now. My mom, she’s got 10 boys, and that’s one of my little brothers and for me to see him pass like that,” Walker said of Mack. (ABC 7 also misidentified Walker as “Aaron Hall,” proving that newsroom slip-ups are sometimes based in sloppiness, sometimes in ignorance).

In the event that a victim’s gender identity is unclear, sometimes it helps to do some reporting. Chibbaro took care to verify Mack’s gender identity with “sources both in the community and in law enforcement” before publishing his story, three hours after the first news of the stabbing hit. “This misidentification is not always the fault of police, or the press, or others—this is something that everyone is grappling with,” says Chibbaro. “The first concern that I have, and that I think the Washington Blade has, is whether the information is accurate.”

As the scene of the daylight stabbing grew dark, reporters set about correcting the terminology in their stories, abandoning “transgender males” for “transgender women” and swapping “he” for “she.” But for some members of the transgender community, the damage had already been done. “[S]ix hours and (at least) six edits later, we finally have gender appropriate language in an article based on a double homicide attempt that was clearly motivated by hatred and transphobia,” wrote one commenter on the Fox 5 story. “[I]’m saddened on so many levels."

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

The Metropolitan Police Department has issued a reward poster in the death of transgender woman Joshua Mack, a.k.a. "Na Na Boo" (pictured). The flier, which you can download here [PDF], doesn't include any intel on possible suspects. It does, however, promise a $25,000 reward for "anyone who provides information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for any homicide committed in the District of Columbia." Information on how to tip the MPD in this case is after the jump.

On Wednesday August 26, 2009, at approximately 1430 hours, Joshua Mack aka “Nana-boo” was found stabbed in the 200 Block of Q Street, Northwest. The Metropolitan Police Department seeks the public’s assistance in gathering information regarding the incident.

This case is under investigation by members of the Department Homicide Branch. Anyone with information about this case is asked to call Detective Jonathan Clingerman 202-497-4994 and his partner Detective Al Batton 202-486-0620 or the Metropolitan Police department’s Command Information Center (CIC) at 202-727-9099. Anonymous information may also be forwarded to the department’s TEXT TIP LINE by text messaging 50411.

A D.C. police officer, Tuma says, responded with some hate-speech of his own—and a swift arrest. Second District Officer J. Culp, Tuma says, "charged 40-50 feet" toward him, "pushed him against a transformer box," arrested him, then told him to "shut up, faggot."

Tuma's arrest, the Blade reports, is currently being investigated on the orders of D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier. Meanwhile, Culp may have picked the wrong group of gays to fuck with: Tuma and the two friends on the scene, Luke Platzer and Dave Stetson, are all attorneys. The exact reason for Tuma's arrest is still unclear. But while he initially agreed to pay a fine "as part of a 'post and forfeit' plea" which helped him avoid cell block time, he now says he intends to fight all charges in court:

[Tuma] said police took him to the Second District station at Connecticut and Idaho avenues, N.W., near the National Cathedral, where he was booked and released about four hours later. He said his release came after he agreed to pay a fine as part of a “post and forfeit” plea, which is an acknowledgement of possible guilt.

Tuma said he agreed to the post and forfeit plea after officers who processed his arrest told him he would be forced to remain in a holding cell before being presented before a magistrate in D.C. Superior Court had he pleaded not guilty to the charge.

He said he had a longstanding commitment that morning and did not want to miss it by having to appear in court. Tuma said he plans to exercise his right to withdraw the post and forfeit the plea at a later date and fully contest the charge in court.

Tuma's lawyer friends, too, are committed to fighting the charge:

D.C. attorney Luke Platzer, one of Tuma’s two friends to witness the arrest, said he and a second friend, attorney Dave Stetson, were approached by a D.C. police sergeant shortly after police drove Tuma to the station to process his arrest. Platzer said the sergeant, whose last name is Geer, told them he observed Tuma attempting to “resist” arrest in a disorderly way and asked them if they would give a statement confirming his observation.

“We said, ‘No, we did not see that at all,’” Platzer told the Blade. “We thought he was trying to trick us into saying that there was physical resistance by Pepin to the arrest. That is not true.”

Here's the sex offender view outside the Washington City Paper offices:

Below the map, the names, photographs, and To Catch a Predator convictions of CP's seven registered-sex-offender neighbors pop up.  The addresses are only specific to the sex offender's block. The whole thing seems a little creepy to me, if only because it seems like a total sex offender move to map a radius of targeted individuals around your home or workplace. Click here to do it!

The deets:

Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Foundry United Methodist Church
5:00 – 6:00 pm Community discussion on public safety and anti-GLBT crime
6:00 – 7:00 pm DC Chief of Police Cathy Lanier joins the discussion

According to the press release, "Chief Lanier is expected to discuss the status of MPD's efforts to combat crimes in general and hate crimes in particular, as well as discuss her plan to staff the Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit of the MPD."

The GLLU, MPD’s Gay and Lesbian Liason Unit, serves the District’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender communities. Last week in police activity related to the GLBT community—including a juvie assault in a fast food restaurant—below.

TWEETING TOM. Thursday, April 9. 11:30 p.m. "Members of the Second District responded to a complaint of a suspicious person in the 3000 block of M Street, N.W. According to the callers, they observed a black male taking photographs of strangers with his cell phone. The male was located and identified."

UNHAPPY MEAL. Saturday, April 11. 11:50 p.m. "Members of the Second District responded to the area of the 1600 block of 17th Street, N.W. for the report of an assault. Upon arrival, officers located the adult male victim suffering from minor injuries to his head. According to the victim, he was inside a nearby fast food restaurant, when he became involved in a verbal altercation with an adult female and her small child. At some point, the adult female directed her child to strike the victim with a bottle. The child broke the bottle and struck the victim in the head, causing the injuries. According to the victim, the altercation began when the victim heard the child yelling racist and homophobic slurs and confronted the child. The suspects are described as a black female, heavy set, approximately 50 years old, with red or orange hair and a black male, approximately 7-9 years old, slim and about 5'5" tall."

GANG BANG. Saturday, April 18. 7:30 p.m. "Members of the First District responded to the area of 7th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. for the report of an assault. Upon arriving on the scene, officers located the victim, an adult male, suffering from minor injuries to his face, neck and wrist. According to the victim, he was attacked by his boyfriend and a group of males accompanying his boyfriend. The victim was treated and released at a local hospital and was provided a safe shelter until the suspect can be apprehended."

PIN-UP PIN. Sunday, April 19. 3:30 a.m. "Members of the Sixth District responded to a residence in the 4500 block of Douglas Street NE for a family dispute. Upon arrival, officers interviewed the mother and daughter engaged in the dispute. It was learned the daughter, who is 17 years old, was displaying photographs on her bedroom wall, which were unwanted by her mother. The daughter refused to remove the photographs. The dispute was resolved and the family was referred to local organizations for further support and assistance."

THIS ONE IS JUST :( Sunday, April 19. 4:30 a.m. the on-call member of the GLLU was paged by an employee of a business in the area of Logan Circle. According to the employee, while cleaning the business, be discovered a hypodermic needle. While attempting to dispose of the needle, he accidentally stuck himself with the needle. The victim was advised to respond to a local hospital emergency room immediately, for the purpose of evaluation and treatment of any potential communicable diseases. Furthermore, the victim was advised to bring the needle to the hospital, so it could be analyzed and disposed of according to the health and occupation standards.

GIRLS ON GIRLS VIOLENCE. Monday, April 20, 2009. 3:30 a.m., members of the First District responded to a call for an assault in the area of 8th and G Streets, S.E. Upon arrival, officers located the three adult female victims. All three were suffering from the effects of pepper spray and had to be treated by D.C. Fire/EMS on the scene. According to the victims, they were leaving a nearby club, when they noticed a white SUV occupied by two black females. One of the vehicle's occupants began to yell homophobic epithets towards the victims. The SUV circled the block and returned. The passenger of the SUV exited the vehicle and deployed pepper spray, striking all three victims. The suspects fled in the vehicle.

HAPPY ENDING. Monday, April 20, 2009. 3:30 p.m. members of the Third District responded to a residence in the area of 5th Street and Florida Avenue, N.W. for the report of a theft. Upon arrival, the officers were advised by the adult male victim he had met the suspect on an adult oriented internet site and invited the suspect to his home for the purpose of engaging in consensual sexual activity. After the departure of the suspect, the victim realized personal property was missing from inside his residence and suspected it had been stolen by the suspect. Officers were able to contact the suspect, who returned the property to the victim.

GET NAKED GUN. Monday, April 20. 4 a.m., members of the First District were flagged down by a male-to-female Transgender individual in the area of the Bus Terminal located near 1st and K Streets, N.E. According to the victim, she was walking in the area, when she was approached by a vehicle occupied by multiple males. At some point, one of the males pointed a firearm at the victim and sped off. Officers were able to stop the vehicle within blocks of the location and conducted a full search of the vehicle and its occupants. No weapon was recovered.

LAME. Saturday, April 25, 2009. 1 a.m. "Members of the First District were dispatched to an apartment in the 1300 block of Delaware Avenue, S.E. for the report of loud music. Once on the scene, the resident was advised to turn the music down, so as to not disturb his neighbors."

GETTING SOME "NO ACTION." Saturday, April 25. 3:30 a.m. "Members of the First District were dispatched to the area of the Bus Station, located at 1st and K Streets, N.E. for the complaint of prostitution. Upon arrival, officers observed several members of the Transgender community walking around the area of the bus stop. No action was taken."

Photo by ebruli

It's feast or famine over at the Gay Crime Log. The Sexist isn't sure what she did to anger the Gay Crime Gods, but for the past two weeks, her D.C. police crime report e-mails have been barren. Today, her inbox was blessed with a mammoth three weeks of anti-trans hate crimes, costly club hook-ups, and anti-Fred Phelps action.

DOUBLE MOTIVE. "On Sunday, March 15, 2009, at approximately 2 a.m., two adult male victims reported they were robbed at gunpoint by three suspects. During the robbery, one of the suspects referred to one of the victims using a homophobic epithet. The victims received minor injuries. The suspects were described as black males, in their early 20’s. Two of the suspects wore their hair in plaits."

YOU HAVE TO GO HOME, AND YOU CAN'T STAY HERE. "On Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at approximately 5 p.m., members of the Second District were dispatched to the area of Dupont Circle for a possible assault. Upon arrival, officers located an elderly male at the nearby bus stop. He was disoriented and possibly intoxicated. He was accompanied by another male, who advised he was attempting to get his friend home from the local bar. The two began to argue. The elderly male was transported home."

JAIL CELL PHONE. "On Wednesday, March 18, 2009, at approximately 11 p.m., members of the Fourth District were dispatched to the 7700 block of Georgia Avenue, N.W. for the call of an assault. Upon arrival, officers located the victim, a male-to-female Transgender individual, suffering minor injuries to her face and lip. According to the victim, she was in an argument with her former boyfriend, when he punched her a stole her cell phone."

THE COUPLE DETAINED TOGETHER ... "On Saturday, March 21, 2009 at approximately 10:30 p.m., members of the GLLU and Deaf and Hard of Hearing Unit (DHHU) responded to Gallaudet University for the report of a domestic assault. Investigation was unable to determine which individual was the initiator and/or aggressor and both males were arrested. Both received minor injuries."

HEAD CASE. On Sunday, March 22, 2009, at approximately 2:30 a.m., members of the Third District responded to Howard University Hospital for the report of a victim of a domestic assault. Upon arrival, offices located the adult male victim, who was suffering from a serious laceration to his head and possible concussion. According to the victim, he was assaulted by his boyfriend inside their shared residence near 4th and V Street, N.W.

CLUB CLUSTERFUCK. "On Sunday, March 22, 2009, at approximately 3 a.m., members of the First District were monitoring the closing of a club in the 1100 block of 8th Street, S.E., when they observed a large fight outside the club. Three adult males were arrested and all were treated for minor injuries."

IDLE THREAT. "On Tuesday, March 24, 2009, an attorney representing a local GLBT Rights organization contacted the GLLU to report possible hate/bias threats via the internet on an internet blog. A member of the GLLU and the Federal Bureau of Investigations responded to the organization and reviewed the postings with the attorney. It was determined no threats were made and the organization did not want to pursue any further action against the individual who posted the comments. Also at that meeting, the attorney made the GLLU aware of an employee at the organization being harassed via email by a known individual. Members of the GLLU will be investigating this complaint."

HOW ARE THREATS NOT "CRIMINAL ACTIVITY"? "On Thursday, March 26, 2009, at approximately 3 p.m., members of the Third District were dispatched to the Metro Station at 7th and S Streets, N.W. Upon arrival, the adult male caller advised officers he was threatened by several juveniles inside a nearby business and the caller believed he was going to be robbed. The caller also heard the juveniles using homophobic language outside the business. Although the juveniles were stopped and identified, it was determined no criminal activity occurred, so the incident was documented as a hate/bias related incident."

FUCKED AND ROBBED. "On Friday, March 27, 2009, at approximately 5:30 a.m., members of the Third District responded to a residence in the 600 block of Irving Street for a report of an armed burglary. According to the victim, an adult male, he met the suspect at a business located in the 3500 block of Georgia Avenue, N.W. and agreed to allow the suspect to return to his home to engage is sexual activity. When the two arrived at the victim’s residence, a dispute arose over payment and the victim demanded the suspect depart. The suspect returned to the residence, kicked in the door, and while armed with a knife, robbed the victim of U.S. currency. The suspect fled the scene prior to officer’s arrival. The victim was not injured. The suspect is described as a black male in his 30’s wearing all black clothing."

M I.S.O T. "On Friday, March 27, 2009, at approximately 4:30 p.m., a female caller paged the on-call member of the GLLU to complain about officers harassing a member of the Transgender community. According to the caller, officers had visited the Transgender individual’s home, which is located in the 5200 block of 3rd Street, N.W. on four occasions, in the attempt to locate the Transgender individual. According to the caller, the Transgender individual no longer resides at that address. This information was passed along to the Warrant Squad, as they were attempting to locate the individual pursuant to an arrest warrant."

SEX-NEGATIVE "On Saturday, March 28, 2009, at approximately 3:30 a.m., an adult male contacted the GLLU to report his ex-boyfriend was advertising as a male prostitute in Baltimore, MD, but not disclosing he is HIV positive. The information was forwarded to the Baltimore City Police Department’s Gay and Lesbian Liaison Officer for their investigation and follow-up."

GETTING SPECIFIC. "On Sunday, March 29, 2009, at about 8 p.m., an adult male victim responded to the Third District to report he had been the victim of a sexual assault. According to the victim, he met the suspect, an adult male, inside a bar in the 1500 block of 17th Street, N.W. After engaging in conversation, the victim and suspect walked to the victim’s apartment, which is located in the Logan Circle neighborhood. Once at the victim’s apartment, the two men engaged in consensual sexual activity, up to the point the victim refused to engage in specific sexual acts. The suspect then forced the victim to engage in the unwanted sex act. The victim was examined at a local hospital, but did not have serious injuries. This case is being investigated by members of the Metropolitan Police Department’s Sexual Assault Unit."

DISAPPEARING GUN. "On Monday, March 30, 2009, at approximately 2:30 a.m., members of the Sixth District responded to the call for a man with a gun in the area of 900 Division Ave, NE. Upon arriving on the scene, officers located the 9-1-1 caller, a male-to-female Transgender individual, who stated she was robbed by the suspect. No weapon was mentioned and the victim was not injured. The suspect, an adult male, was located and arrested. The case is being considered a potential hate/bias crime based upon the victim’s actual or perceived sexual orientation and/or gender identity, based upon comments made by the suspect at the time of the robbery."

BAD CONNECTION. "On Monday, March 30, 2009, at approximately 3 a.m., members of the Sixth District responded to an apartment in the 1700 block of Minnesota Avenue, N.E. for the report of threats. Upon arrival, the victim, a male-to-female Transgender individual, advised her boyfriend had threatened to kill her and pull the phone cord out of the wall when she attempted to call 9-1-1. The suspect was arrested later that day."

FUCK FRED PHELPS. "On Monday, March 30, 2009, members of the GLLU, working with members of the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division, United States Park Police and Metropolitan Police Department’s Intelligence Division, monitored a counter-protest of the Westboro Baptist Church. The demonstrators moved about the city, culminating their demonstration in the 1600 block of Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. There were no incidents or arrests."

UNWANTED ADVERTISEMENT. "On Wednesday, April 1, 2009, at approximately 3 p.m., a citizen found a brochure on the windshield of her vehicle, which was parked in the 1800 block of Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. Handwritten on the brochure were homophobic, racist and anti-Semitic remarks."

DEEP LOVE. "On Thursday, April 2, 2009, at approximately 2:30 a.m., members of the Fourth District responded to the call for a stabbing inside a residence in the 5300 block of 8th Street, N.W. Upon arrival, the officers located the adult female victim suffering from a stab wound to her hands and arms. The victim was uncooperative and refused to provide officers with any information regarding who attacked her. A witness advised officers the victim was stabbed by her former girlfriend, but the witness did not know the suspect's identity. The victim refused medical attention."

POLICE ASSISTED BREAK-IN REQUESTED. "On Friday, April 3, 2009, at approximately 4:30 a.m., members of the Third District responded to a call for assistance at an apartment in the 1500 block of Ogden Street, N.W. Upon arrival, the officers were met by the caller, a male-to-female Transgender individual, who desired assistance getting back into her apartment. Further investigation revealed the caller did not live at that address and was heavily intoxicated. She was escorted from the building."

GUNS AND GROCERIES. "On Friday, April 3, 2009, at approximately 3 a.m., members of the Seventh District responded to a call for threats in the area of Good Hope Road, S.E. Once on the scene, officer located the victim, a juvenile male, who advised he was walking home from a nearby grocery store, when a male suspect began to call him homophobic names and threaten to shoot him. No weapon was displayed. Although the suspect had fled the scene prior to the officer's arrival, he was located later that night and arrested."

UNDERCOVER PROSTITUTE. "On Saturday, April 4, 2009, at approximately 3:30 a.m., a male contacted the GLLU's on-call member to report he had been the victim of a theft. According to the victim, who was visiting from New England and staying at a hotel in the 1500 block of New Hampshire Avenue, N.W., he met a black male online and invited him to his hotel room. Upon the departure of the guest, the victim realized he was missing a significant amount of U.S. currency from his wallet. The suspect is described as a black male, approximately 40 years old, 6'2" tall, 225 pounds, wearing blue jeans and a white sweatshirt."

Photo by k763

U/C: “How you doing?”

Schmidt: “I’m good. This is a really nice room.”

U/C: “I’m glad you like it. So, What do you do for a living?”

Schmidt: “I work with the government.”

U/C: “How cool is that!!! So, what you want?”

Schmidt: “Half hour.”

U/C: “That’s going to be $80.00. $80.000 for sex right.”

Schmidt: “Well, I’ll do a little of licking. Do you like that?”

U/C: “What?”

Schmidt: “When someone goes down on you?”

U/C: “Of course, I like everything.”

Schmidt: “Let me get comfortable I’ll be right back.”

Schmidt was then arrested.

The GLLU, MPD’s Gay and Lesbian Liason Unit, serves the District’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender communities. Last week in police activity related to the GLBT community—including a domestic violence victim who takes refuge in a bus, and a man who clubs his boyfriend while in da club—below.

SURPRISE VISIT. MONDAY, MARCH 9 AT 11:40 PM. Members of the Fifth District responded to a hotel located in the 600 block of New York Avenue, N.E. for a destruction of property complaint. Upon arrival, the officers discovered a large window had been shattered and identified the individual who did the damage. He was arrested. Further investigation revealed the incident was motivated by a domestic dispute between the arrest subject and two other men staying at the hotel.

SLOW GETAWAY. MONDAY, MARCH 9 AT at 11:30 PM. Members of the Third District responded to the area of the 1500 block of 9th Street, N.W. for the report of an assault. Upon arrival, they located the victim on a Metro bus. According to the victim, he was inside a residence in that area, when he became involved in a verbal altercation with his boyfriend. At some point, his boyfriend punched him in the face, causing a minor injury. The victim fled outside to the bus, where MPDC was summoned. The suspect was located and arrested.

HOT NIGHT. TUESDAY, MARCH 10 AT 12:30 PM. A member of the GLLU was on routine patrol when he observed an unconscious individual in the area of 18th and T Streets NW. DC Fire/EMS responded and transported the adult male to a local hospital, where he was treated and released for intoxication.

LOVERS' BRAWL. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11 AT 6 PM. Members of the Sixth District responded to the area of the 4100 block of Gault Place NE. for the call for a large fight. Upon arrival, officers saw several juvenile females fleeing from the area. A victim advised officers the fight began at a nearby school and the juvenile females were fighting over their ex-girlfriends. There were no injuries and members of the Metropolitan Police Department’s School Resource Unit are following up. One hour later, officers were summoned back to the location for another assault. At that time, they located a female victim suffering from minor injuries to her head and face. A female suspect was arrested.

GET OUT. THURSDAY, MARCH 12 AT 2:15 AM. Members of the Seventh District responded to a residence in the 200 block of Savannah Street SE for the call for an assault. Once on the scene, officers were advised by the adult female victim that she was attempting to get her ex-girlfriend out of the house, but she was refusing. Officers were unable to determine if an assault actually occurred and documented the complaint without further action being taken.

CANE JOB. SATURDAY, MARCH 14 AT 2:30 AM. Members of the Second District were dispatched to Massachusetts Avenue and 21st Street NW for the report of a robbery. Upon arriving on the scene, the officers located an elderly male victim, who advised he had just been robbed by a male he met at a nearby club. The suspect was described as a black male in his 30’s, wearing all black and using a cane. The victim was not injured.

TALK TURNS PHYSICAL. SATURDAY, MARCH 14 AT 3 AM. Members of the Sixth District responded to an apartment in the 2300 block of Good Hope Road SE for a shooting. Upon arrival, the officers discovered the victim was not injured, but was the victim of an attempted robbery. According to the victim, he met the suspect on a telephone chat line and invited him to his apartment. Once there, the suspect attempted to rob the victim with a handgun. During the struggle, the gun discharged and the suspect fled the scene. The suspect is described as a black male, about 24 years old, 5'7” tall, 200 lbs., with a medium skin complexion. He was wearing a black shirt and black pants.

FOUR-ON-ONE. SATURDAY, MARCH 14 AT 2:50 PM. Members of the Second District responded to the 2000 block of K Street, N.W. for the call for an unconscious individual. Upon arrival, officers located the victim, a male-to-female Transgender individual, suffering from injuries to the head and face. A witness advised that four suspects punch the victim repeatedly, eventually knocking the victim to the ground. The victim was transported to a local hospital in serious but stable condition. The suspects were only described by the witness as being black males, with no further information.

CLUB CLUBBING. SATURDAY, MARCH 14 AT 2:15 AM. Members of the Third District responded to 11th and V Street NW for the report of an assault. Upon arrival, they located a male victim, who was suffering from a cut to his head. The suspect, his boyfriend, was also on the scene. The investigation revealed the two men were inside a club located in the 2000 block of 8th Street, N.W. when they began to argue. At some point, the suspect struck the victim in the back of the head with an unknown object. The victim refused medical attention and the suspect was arrested.

GRAND STAB. SATURDAY, MARCH 14 AT 2:30 AM. Members of the Second District responded to the outside of a club located in the 2100 block of P Street NW. for a large fight. Upon arrival, officers located several victims who had been stabbed. None of the injuries was life threatening. No arrests were made and the victims were too intoxicated to provide any usable lookout for the suspect(s).

NO-CALL LIST. SUNDAY, MARCH 15 AT 10 AM. A homeless male contacted the on-call member of the GLLU to report a violation of a Temporary Protection Order (TPO) that he had obtained against his former boyfriend and his former boyfriend’s current boyfriend. According to the victim, despite being ordered by a judge not to contact the victim, the suspects left a voicemail message on the victim’s cell phone. An affidavit in support of an arrest warrant will be presented to the United States Attorney’s Office seeking the arrests of both suspects.

FIRE HIM! MONDAY, MARCH 16 AT 3 PM. A male contacted the GLLU’s on-call member to report that he was being threatened by one of his employees. While on the phone with the on-call member, the victim reported the suspect was at the front door of his residence, which is located in the 1000 block of Massachusetts Avenue NE. Members of the First District and the GLLU responded and located apprehended and arrested the suspect, who was charged with stalking and felonious threats to do bodily harm.

WITHIN FEET. MONDAY, MARCH 16 AT 4 PM. Members of the Fifth District responded to a hotel located in the 600 block of New York Avenue NE for the report of a suspect violating a protection order. Upon arrival, officers discovered the suspects had departed the scene prior to their arrival. According to the victim, the suspects were under order of a Temporary Protection Order (TPO) to stay at least 100 feet away from the victim. An investigation revealed the suspects were not within 100 feet, however the incident was documented, so the victim can make representation in court during future court proceedings.

NO FUNNY BUSINESS. TUESDAY, MARCH 17. A male contacted the GLLU by email to request assistance regarding an allegation of sexual activity in a public restroom. According to the individual, he is being accused by his employer of engaging in “inappropriate activity” in the public restroom at his place of employment. The individual was referred to an attorney for legal advice.

Photo by Coradia1000

Reported rapes in 2006: 182
Reported rapes in 2007: 192
Reported rapes in 2008: 186

But how many rapes actually occurred in the District last year? It's impossible to say.

A 1992 report from the National Victim Center (Rape in America: A Report to the Nation) suggests that only one out of every six rapes are reported to authorities. The reason for that can be pretty well explained by another statistic from the report: "80% of the girls and women who were raped were victimized by someone they knew."

Let's assume that the National Victim Center has got it's shit together, and multiply the reported rapes by six to estimate a more realistic figure:

Estimated rapes in 2006: 1,092
Estimated rapes in 2007: 1,152
Estimated rapes in 2008: 1,116

We're getting closer now—except for the fact that records of "reported rapes" don't even reflect all of the rapes actually reported to the police.

After a crime is reported to the police, it can later be "unfounded" and purged from the numbers game. Crimes are supposed to be deemed "unfounded" if the report is found to be fraudulent. But since police departments self-report their crime data to the FBI, there's no filter to tell whether an "unfounded" case is truly false, or if they are "merely stuck or inactive" due to lack of evidence or inability to locate a suspect. Unsurprisingly, due to the he-said-she-said difficulty of prosecuting rapists, rape cases are more likely to be "unfounded" than any other crime.

MPD doesn't report how many of its reported rape cases have been "unfounded"—those cases are simply subtracted from the number of reported cases. The subtraction occurs "in the month in which [the case is] unfounded, regardless of the date the crime was committed." So in some months, more cases are unfounded than are reported: in August of 2006, MPD's Second District reported negative one rape.

So how many women are raped in D.C. every year? Two hundred? One thousand? Some negative figure? MPD's reports aren't terribly illuminating.

* Investigators detect suspicious overtones. 9 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 28, the GLLU was contacted by the victim of a "burglary and attempted sexual assault," with "hate/bias overtones." Two suspects pushed him into his apartment. They robbed him and attempted sexual assault. Investigators say they were "unable to verify the victim’s account of the events."

* Whose bathrooms lock from the outside? 11:30 a.m., Fri., Jan. 30. A Petworth resident contacted the GLLU "to report the abscondence of his adult ward." (This isn't the first time this has happened). The caller, "the guardian of an adult male," called after being notified of a problem by the man's home health care professional.  Here's what happened: "While at work, the caller was notified by a home health care professional that the ward had locked the home health care professional in the bathroom and fled the home." Within "hours," the man was located "in good condition."

* Alert Jason Cherkis. 5p.m., Friday, Jan. 30. The Amtrak Police Department contacted the GLLU for assistance with "sexual activity inside Union Station"—specifically, "on-going prostitution involving members of the Transgender community inside bathroom stalls and stairwells. " The GLLU is "coordinating a meeting."

* You've got on-going harrassing mail! 1 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 31. A male contacted the GLLU for assistance with "on-going harassing mail being sent to his home in Virginia," which he suspects is "related to his job in D.C." (this, too, has happened before).

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

The GLLU, MPD’s Gay and Lesbian Liason Unit, serves the District’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender communities. As the inauguration neared, police activity ramped up. A round-up of inauguration week crime reports—including some unsupervised homeless house guests—below.

* At 3:30 a.m. on Jan. 14, 2009, police responded to Adams Morgan for a neighborly dispute. The callers asserted that they were being "harassed by other building residents because of their sexual orientation." The other building residents had a different perspective—they said the callers were "creating an undesirable living environment in the building by having large, loud parties late at night, inviting homeless people to stay in their apartment without supervision, and also allowing their guests to verbally abuse building residents and owners." MPD referred the case to Landlord-Tenant Court and the D.C. Office of Human Rights.

* At 11 a.m. on Jan. 14, 2009, a man called the police to report his former partner "acting violently and threatening the kill him." The partner, who "is now mentally disabled and in the victim’s care," was taken into custody and referred to the Comprehensive Psychological Emergency Program.

* At 10 p.m. on Jan. 14, 2009, police responded to a Southeast apartment after a report of arson. There, they found their suspect—a woman who had "intentionally set fire to her girlfriend’s clothing." No one was hurt. The woman was arrested.

* On Jan. 14, 2009, a female Virginian contacted the GLLU ro report the "vicitmization" of an elderly Southeast woman. The woman had "allowed a much younger male acquaintance to stay with her in her apartment," but then fell ill, was admitted to the hospital, and recuperated while the male proceeded to use "her check book and credit cards without her authorization."

* At 8 p.m. on Jan. 15, 2009, police responded to 4400 Connecticut Ave. NW for a deceased person. There, they found an "adult male" who had "committed suicide by ingesting an undetermined quantity of prescription medications. "

* At 7 p.m. on Jan. 16, 2009, the GLLU, the Financial Crimes Unit, and the United States Postal Inspector teamed up to search a Southeast residence "related to an investigation into credit card and prescription fraud." One suspect—identified as "a male-to-female Transgender adult"—was arrested.

* At 7:15 p.m. on Jam. 16, 2009, police located "an adult female," in the alley near the 1300 block of 10th St. NW. The woman was in serious condition, "suffering from serious injuries to her head and face," after an apparent mugging. The suspect is described as a 20-something "black male, wearing a black coat and black pants."

* At 3:30 a.m. on Jan. 17, 2009, the GLLU responded to a call for an assault in Dupont Circle. When they arrived, they were directed to two married individuals by an uninvolved witnesses who had observed the man push the woman "into a plate glass window, causing her to fall to the ground." The woman was uninjured; the man was arrested.

* At 4:30 a.m. on Jan. 19, 2009, police responded to the call of a "disorderly customer" inside a business at the 1600 block of 17th St. NW. Employees advised police that the man "was acting in a bizarre manner and was asked to leave." He left—then broke the front window "with his bare hands." The man was admitted for psychological review.

* At 9:30 p.m. on Jan. 19, 2009, police responded to a New Hampshire Ave. apartment for the report of an assault. There, they found "a group of men disputing over the ownership of a laptop computer." The dispute centered around two ex-boyfriends "who had recently broken up and were arguing over shared property." No assault had actually occurred.

* In the evening of Jan. 21, 2009, the GLLU was contacted to help with "an allegation of a robbery and sexual assault" near 1st St. and New York Ave. NW. The victim, "a male-to-female Transgender individual," said that around 1 a.m. that morning, "she was kidnapped, robbed and sexually assaulted by three suspects." She couldn't provide a detailed description of the suspects, but offered that one of the attackers was "a black male-to-female Transgender individual, approximately 6’ tall with a dark skin complexion . . . a brown wig and had a light mustache."

photo by sneakerdog

The GLLU, MPD’s Gay and Lesbian Liason Unit, serves the District’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender communities. Last week in police activity related to the GLBT community—including some very intoxicated calls to the police—below.

* Spit take. Sun., Jan. 11. A man contacted the GLLU to report an assault that occured a week earlier—as he was walking his dog, a man "approached him and called him a homophobic name." The man then "spat at the victim, but did not strike him."

* Federal offense. Tue., Jan. 6. A male employee of the Federal Government contacted the GLLU to report verbal assault from a female Fed. The employee alleged "homophobic taunts, language and threats" from the woman in a government meeting. The incident was also reported to the Federal Protective Service (FPS).

* Because, why not. Wed., Jan. 7. at noon. "A Moroccan male walked into the Gay and Lesbian Liaison office to report the loss of his passport."

* Delayed reaction. Thu., Jan. 8. A Mount Peasant resident called the GLLU for help with an incident he reported last March. Last spring, he reported being "assaulted and called homophobic names by a contractor working at this neighbor's home." Now, he's "not been satisfied with the progress of the investigation." Police are re-investigating the matter

* "I'm so clumsy. I just fell down the stairs." Thu., Jan. 8, at 12:30 a.m. Officers arrive on the scene to find two men. One was "suffering from an injury to his leg." The men, "former intimate partners," began arguing. A physical struggle ensued, ending in "the victim falling over the stairway railing." The GLLU reports that "An affidavit in support of an arrest warrant will be presented to the United States Attorney's Office."

* Get out of my dreams, and also out of my car. Sat., Jan. 10, at 1:45 a.m.. A man "met another male inside a club" at 21st and P Streets. He "departed with that male inside the male's vehicle" before realizing his "wallet containing credit cards and U.S. currency . . . was missing from his pocket." The other man fled the scene, but was located by police and arrested.

* You can take the prostitute off the street, but . . . Sat., Jan. 10. 2:30 a.m. Police officers were dispatched to a bus station on First and K Streets NE for a possible prostitution call. There, they "observed a group of five to eight individuals, all of whom appeared to be members of the Transgender community, walking back-and-forth along the sidewalk and across the street." The group was asked to leave, and did. At 3:15 a.m., police were again dispatched to the area, where they found the same group. "Upon observing the marked police vehicles approaching the area, the individuals fled on foot and did not return to the area."

* I drink with you most of the day because I love you. Sat., Jan. 10 at 8:30 p.m. Police arrived at a NE apartment for a possible assault call. There, an "investigation revealed the couple had been consuming alcoholic beverages most of the day and became involved in a verbal altercation." One of the men "barricaded himself in the bedroom." The other entered through a window and proceeded to punch and kick the man, and the suspect entered through a window. Once inside, the suspect punched and kicked the victim." Unsurprisingly, "there is a history of violence between these two individuals."

* Robbed: Any memory of this happening. Sun., Jan. 11 at 3 a.m. Police responded to 17th & R Streets for the call of a robbery. Here's what happened:

Upon arrival, officers were unable to locate the caller, however during a search of the area; they located an adult male at 17th and Q Streets, N.W. The male was extremely intoxicated and advised officers he had called 9-1-1. While being interviewed the caller was difficult due to his insobriety. It was determined no robbery or other offense had occurred. There were no signs of injury to the male and he appeared to have all his personal property. The male was transported by an officer to his apartment in the neighborhood. Later that day, the caller was re-interviewed by a member of the GLLU. The caller advised he could not recall contacting 9-1-1 earlier that day.

Photo by Tambako the Jaguar.

The GLLU, MPD’s Gay and Lesbian Liason Unit, serves the District’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender communities. Last week in police activity related to the GLBT community—including a New Years hate crime and a knife-wielding ex-lover—below.

* New Years (conflict) resolution. Thu., Jan. 1, at 12:30 a.m. Police responded to a home at 13th St. & Iowa Ave. NW after the report of an assault. There, they found two males, both "suffering from minor injuries and heavily intoxicated." The story: When the men stepped outside for a New Years smoke, "three black females" approached and subjected the men to "homophobic taunts." A "verbal exchange ensued." The three women called for back-up: "two black males." The men were assaulted. Police have no suspects, but are encouraging "community members to avoid confronting others on homophobic language, especially when alcohol is present."

* Just a "small knife." Fri., Jan. 2, at 2:20 p.m. Police respond to a report of an assault in SE producing "minor injuries" to a female victim. The woman claims she was walking down the street when she was confronted by a "former girlfriend," a meeting that progressed into a "verbal altercation." The ex then heaved a rock at the woman, but missed. A full-contact assault ensued. There was a struggle. The ex withdrew "a small knife" and stabbed the woman. Police plan to issue a warrant for the ex-girlfriend's arrest.

* Missing cousins. Sat., Jan. 3, at 12:30 p.m. A woman contacted the GLLU on behalf of her "male cousin," who was having a property dispute with his ex-boyfriend. The woman "alleged violence between the two in the past," and requested help in reclaiming her cousin's property from the ex's place. Though the GLLU made arrangements to do so, "the caller and her cousin failed to keep the appointments." Now, they won't return calls.

* Remember me. Sun., Jan. 4, at 12:45 a.m. Police responded to a call concerning an “Unwanted Guest” in a SE home. When they arrived, they found a "78-year-old man suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s disease and dementia" insisting upon the removal of "his home health care professional." The caller's family was notified.

Photo by *Sally M*

The GLLU, MPD’s Gay and Lesbian Liason Unit, serves the District’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender communities. Last week in police activity related to the GLBT community—including details about the apparent hate crime at the Hong Kong Delite Carry Out —below.

* Anti-gay club. On Thursday, Dec. 4, a Rhode Island Ave. NE club owner contacted the GLLU for "advice regarding neighborhood relations." The owner had "received a couple of complaints from area residents." She thought the complaints stemmed from the patrons being gay. The owner was referred to the Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration.

* Hate crime to go. At 10:30 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2008, police responded to a carryout restaurant at the 3100 block of Martin Luther King, Jr. Ave. SE.  They found two victims. They had "visible injuries." They said they were walking past the restaurant when they "became engaged in a verbal dispute with a group of juveniles." They used homophobic epithets. They assaulted them with a knife. One "suffered multiple stab wounds." One was injured in the lip.  The two suspects are described as: A black male, "5’8, 160lbs, medium complexion, early 20’s, wearing a black North Face jacket and blue jeans" and a black male, "5’3, 180lbs, dark complexion, early 20’s, wearing a black hooded sweat shirt and blue jeans."

* Low-class transit. On Dec. 6, a man e-mailed the GLLU to ask for help for a friend. On Monday, Dec. 1, the friend was "verbally berated" by a group of juveniles outside the Takoma Park Metro Station. The group "used homophobic language."  The Metro Transit Police Department is currently investigating the matter.

* Speed racers. At 2:30 a.m. on Monday, Dec. 8,  police stopped two speeding vehicles racing down U Street. The drivers—two adult women—were arrested and charged with "reckless driving." Their excuse? "[T]hey were speeding because they had been verbally abused at a club . . . and called homophobic names."

Photo by ginnerobot.

* Denial twist. On the evening of Nov. 28, 2008, the mother of a 16-year-old male flagged down police outside the Metro on Minnesota Ave. The mother claimed "her son was sexually assaulted" by a 17-year-old one month earlier. Police interviewed all parties, and determined that "the sexual contact was consensual and no crime occurred." The mother refused further police resources.

* Trouble in Florida. On Saturday, Nov. 29, an Assistant United States Attorney contacted the GLLU for support with "a male victim of domestic violence" who said he was assaulted by his boyfriend the previous day, on the 200 block of Florida Ave. NW. The boyfriend was arrested, and "the victim was provided with emergency shelter."

* Epithet and run. That evening, police responded to a call at 14th Street and Columbia Rd. NW. A man had been crossing the street. Three men came up from behind and assaulted him, one uttering "homophobic epithets. The three men robbed him and fled. Police described the suspects as: "suspect one: black male, 20 years old, slim build, 6’2”, wearing blue jeans, black jacket; suspect two: black male, 15 years old, 5’8”, wearing a black ski mask, black coat and blue jeans; suspect three: black male, teen, wearing a black coat and blue jeans."

* If it bleeds. At 3 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 30, a woman flagged down a GLLU officer in Dupont Circle. Her "window had just been smashed by a drunken male in the area." The male was found—he was "suffering from a serious laceration to his arm." Police took him to a hospital, and "damage to the vehicle window was resolved without a criminal complaint."

* Lone gunman. A half an hour later, police responded to a call for armed robbery. A transgender woman claimed she was "robbed at gunpoint by a lone black male." Officers found the suspect and arrested him.

* Gays on the run. On Tuesday, Dec. 2, police write, "members of the Department of Corrections Warrant Squad contacted the Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit to request assistance in locating several fugitives with connections to the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered (GLBT) community. At this time, the information is not being released, however should the Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit (GLLU) be unable to promptly locate the wanted subjects, the identities will be released and the community’s assistance sought."

* Lip service. On the afternoon of Nov. 18, D.C. police responded to the report of an assault. A group of friends had had a fight over "missing personal property." A victim had been punched in the face, and suffered a "minor cut to his lip." The victim asked that the suspect—whom police identify as a "Transgender female"—not be arrested, but he did ask for "information regarding how to obtain a Stay Away Order."

* Minor wound, small child. On the morning of Nov. 20, police found two women suffering from "minor stab wounds." They were dating. Each girlfriend accused the other of stabbing her with "a small knife." A "small child" on the scene was unable to advise officers on the facts of the case. Both women were arrested, treated, and charged with assault.

* False identification identification. On the night of Nov. 21, a P Street bar called the police to mediate a customer dispute. A male patron said that a staffer had seized his ID. The staffer said he had tried to "pass the identification to a friend in line," so he "suspected it was fraudulent." It was found legitimate and returned to the patron.

* Follow that gay-basher. On Nov. 22, police arrested a man suspected of grabbing a Gay Pride flag from a victim on election night in front of the White House and assaulting him. "The suspect was charged with two counts of misdemeanor assault," police say, and will be pursued as a hate crime.

* Can't touch this. Early in the morning of Nov. 22, police were called to a club on 22nd St. An anonymous caller claimed he had been assaulted by security. He left the club before police arrived. The club's staff had another story. According to them, "the individual was thrown out of the club for inappropriately touching other patrons."

* Turn coat. Later that morning, the GLLU responded to a reported theft at a 17th St. bar. A man had "left his coat on the back of his chair." It disappeared—along with his wallet, credit cards, ID, keys, and "personal papers." Later that morning, the cards were used at several nearby locations.

* Hospital visit. Even later that same morning, the GLLU assisted a transgender woman at a local hospital. She had thoughts of suicide. She said she was sexually assaulted the day before. According to police, the victim "provided several contradictory accounts of the crime and also admitted to being engaged in illicit drug use when the assault allegedly occurred." The investigation is on-going.

Photo by the prolific NCinDC.

First, GLLU's report of the David Kerstetter case, in full:

On Thursday, Nov. 6, at approximately 10:20 am, uniformed officers from the department’s Third District responded to a residence located in the 1300 block of 13th Street, NW to assist the building manager with a possible open door at that location. Upon arriving and initiating their investigation, the officers were suddenly confronted by an adult male inside of the premises reportedly wielding a knife. Reportedly, a struggle ensued as the officers repeatedly ordered the man to drop the weapon. It was at that time that the police in the face of apparent imminent danger fired upon the subject, striking him. The suspect, Mr. Kerstetter, was transported to an area hospital where he was pronounced dead at 12:48 pm. There were no reported physical injuries to the two officers involved in this incident. The identities of the officers, both males, are being withheld at this time to allow for the proper notification of their families. A knife was recovered at the scene of the incident. Both members have been placed on routine administrative leave with pay as the circumstances surrounding this case remains under investigation by members assigned to the Force Investigation Team from the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau.

Read the rest of the GLLU blotter, after the jump.

On 11/6/08, at approximately 10 p.m., a male walked into the Third Police District to report an ongoing dispute with his boyfriend of three years. The male, who advised he was breaking up with his boyfriend, advised there had been previous violence, but refused to provide sufficient details to document a criminal allegation. He indicated he needed assistance with a property dispute, so was advised to obtain a Temporary Protection Order (TPO), from the District of Columbia Superior Court. The GLLU’s Victim Advocate also contacted him to offer resources and provide safety planning.

On 11/7/08, at approximately midnight, members of the Third District were dispatched to a bar located in the area of Florida Avenue and 18th Street, NW for an assault. Upon arrival, officers located a male victim suffering from a minor cut to his lip. An investigation revealed the victim was engaged in a political conversation with the suspect, when the conversation became heated. At some point, the suspect became enraged and punched the victim, causing the injuries, then threw a glass at the victim. The suspect fled prior to the officer’s arrival.

On 11/8/08, at approximately 1:30 a.m., members of the First District were dispatched to the area of 6th and K Streets, NW for a complaint of Transgender individuals prostituting in the area. Officers responded to the scene and observed six to ten Transgender individuals walking in the area, but did not observe any evidence of prostitution. When the officers arrived on the scene, all of the Transgender individuals departed from the area. The officers returned 10 minutes later and discovered the same individuals back in the area standing on the corners, walking back-and-forth along the sidewalk and crossing back-and-forth across the street. No police action was taken, however the information was passed along to the GLLU, as the area has come under recent scrutiny by community members and local politicians, who regard the prevalence of prostitution in the area as a risk to public safety. The GLLU has been working with local outreach organizations such as Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive (HIPS), Transgender Health Empowerment (THE), Different Avenues and the Mayor’s Office for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Affairs to address the complaints, while providing adequate resources to individuals forced in to commercial street sex work due to marginalization.

On 11/9/08, at approximately 2 a.m., members of the Sixth District responded to the 3700 block of Minnesota Avenue, SE for an unconscious female. Upon arrival, the individual who was Transgender (male to female), awoke and refused medical attention. There were no signs of injury and the individual appeared to be under the influence of alcohol or other drugs. She refused to identify herself and refused offers to transport her to a safe location.

On 11/10/08, a female contacted the GLLU to report a series of harassing phone calls to her home, beginning 10/4/08 and continuing until the reporting date. According to the victim, she was involved in the organization of a large national dinner for the GLBT community in Washington, D.C. Since the dinner, she has been called countless times by an unidentified male, who uses homophobic language and other profanity and then hangs up the phone.

On November 14, 2008, at approximately 2 a.m., members of the Second District were dispatched to the area of Connecticut Avenue and Van Ness Street, NW for the call for a sick person. Upon arrival, officers located a 19 year-old male, who was expressing suicidal thoughts. The male volunteered to be transported to a local hospital for examination and treatment.

On November 14, 2008, at approximately 3:30 a.m., members of the Third District responded to an assault complaint in the area of 14th Street and Columbia Road, N.W. Upon arrival, the victim advised officers he was walking wearing his IPOD earphones, when he was approached from behind by a group of young black males. Without provocation, one of the males slapped the victim on the back of the head. The victim was not injured. The suspect is described as a black male, between 15-17 years old, 5'5"-5'7" tall, wearing a black coat, pants and shirt.

On November 14, 2008, at approximately 4 p.m., members of the Sixth District responded to an apartment in the 4200 block of Benning Road, SE for a domestic dispute. Upon arrival, officers learned the two residents were boyfriends of six months and the two were engaged in a heated argument that one of the men feared might turn violent. With no evidence of criminal activity, the officers provided the men with available resources and the GLLU's Victim Advocate contact them to assist with safety planning.

On November 14, 2008, at approximately 5 p.m., members of the First District responded to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library, which is located in the 900 block of Street, NW. Once on the scene, officers located the victim, a Transgender female, who advised she had been assaulted by a male inside the library's stairwell and robbed. The victim suffered minor injuries, but refused medical attention. The suspect is known.

On November 15, 2008, at approximately midnight, a Latino male walked into the Third District Sub-Station to report he was being threatened by his landlord. According to the victim, his boyfriend and he were engaged in a landlord-tenant dispute with the owner of the property. The owner left a voicemail message on the victim’s voicemail, in which she expressed homophobic beliefs and intimated the victim might fall victim to violence.

On November 15, 2008, at approximately 2:45 a.m., members of the First District were dispatched to the area of 6th and K Streets, N.W. for the call for Transgender individuals engaging in prostitution. Upon arrival, officers observed approximately 8 individuals, all of whom appear to be members of the Transgender community, walking back-and-forth along the side walk and across the street. The individuals were advised to disperse from the area, however several additional calls were received after officers departed the scene. Officers returned at 3:15 a.m. and observed many of the same individuals engaged in the same activity.

On November 16, 2008, at approximately 3 a.m., members of the Third District were summoned to an apartment in the 900 block of M Street, NW by the boyfriend of an individual suffering from erratic behavior. Upon arrival, officers located the 26 year old male and his boyfriend. The 26 year old was exhibiting signs of an acute psychological episode and agreed to be transported to a local hospital for evaluation and treatment.

On November 16, 2008, at 11:30 a.m., a Transgender victim walked into the Seventh District station to report she was the victim of a violent attack on October 31, 2008, at about 8:30 a.m., in the area of the 4600 block of Livingston Road, SE. According to the victim, while congregating in the park area with friends, the suspect approached her and punched her without provocation, causing serious injuries to her jaw. The victim responded to a local hospital and did not immediately report the assault to the police. The suspect is described as a black male, medium complexion, weighing between 250-280 lbs. and between 5’6”-5’7”. He has a mustache and beard and may be in his early 30’s. His keeps his hair in a short style and may go by the nickname of “Fats or “Sulliver.”

On November 16, 2008, at approximately 11:30 p.m., members of the Second District were dispatched to an apartment in the 1700 block of Massachusetts Avenue, NW for a burglary in progress. According to the caller, two men had broken into his apartment and were hiding in his bathroom. Officers responded immediately and upon arrival found the caller, a 64 year old male. A search of the apartment revealed no intruders and no sign of forced entry. Furthermore, after consultation with the caller’s personal doctor, it was determined the caller was suffering from mental illness and needed immediately psychiatric attention. The caller was transported to the Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program for evaluation and subsequent treatment.

On November 17, 2008, at approximately 7 p.m., a female caller contacted the GLLU via the on-call pager to request assistance with a homeless person who had refused to leave the front of her home in the 1700 block of Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. Officer responded and transported the individual to the Hypothermia Shelter.

On November 17, 2008, at approximately 3:30 a.m., members of the First District were dispatched to the area of the 500 block of K Street, NW for the complaint of Transgender individuals engaged in prostitution. Officers responded and found a group of eight to ten individuals, who all appeared to be members of the Transgender community walking back-and-forth on the sidewalk and crossing back-and-forth across the street. The individuals departed upon observing the marked police cars, however returned to the area within 10 minutes. Several additional calls were received with no arrests made.

On November 18, 2008, at approximately 3 a.m., Third District officers were dispatched to the 2000 block of Connecticut Avenue, NW for a white male running in the street bleeding and naked. Upon arrival, officers located the 45 year old victim, who was suffering from injuries to his head and face. He was also under the influence of alcohol and other drugs. He refused medical treatment. The victim provided conflicting accounts, however officers were able to determine the victim patronized a local bar located in the west end of Dupont Circle beginning at about 4:30 p.m. on November 17, 2008. At some point later that evening, the victim departed the bar with an unknown black male and took a taxi to the victim's apartment, located in the 2000 block of Connecticut Avenue, NW. Once at his apartment with the unknown black male, the victim engaged in consensual sexual activity with the suspect and also engaged in the use of an illegal drug with the suspect. At some point, the victim was attacked and ran from the apartment to seek assistance. There is no further description of the suspect.

Inside, first aid gauze sat near a hotel chair. Police turned over a trash can outside the bathroom into the sink. Inside, he says, they  found burnt skin mixed with "miscellaneous food items"—a can of "some type of Spaghetti-Os" and candy bar wrappers. A wallet held a Nevada non-drivers I.D. and a Master Card identifying Graure by name.

La la la, the contest continues, see the full 64-workplace bracket here, D.C. government I've got my eye on you this week, all right are you ready let's go show me your men!

FIRE DEPARTMENT: Nothin' manlier than emptying your hose on some hot property, am I right ladies? OR AM I WRONG:

Fire Chief Dennis L. Rubin (Male, 10 points)
Assistant Fire Chief Alfred Jeffery (Male, 9 points)
Assistant Fire Chief Lawrence Schultz (Male, 8 points)
Assistant Fire Chief Brian Lee (Male, 7 points)
Assistant Fire Chief Michael Williams, MD (Male, 6 points)
Assistant Fire Chief Rafael Sa'adah (Male, 5 points)
Agency Fiscal Officer Shelly Robinson-Smith (Female, ZERO)
General Counsel Marceline D. Alexander (Female, ZERO)
Chief of Staff Amy Ward (Female, ZERO)
Hydrant Inspection Coordinator Sean Egan (Male, 1 point)

Nope. I was right. With 46 out of 55 manly points, the Fire and Emergency Medical Services staff proves only slightly less manly than the fireman stereotype. But how will it fare against the District's lawmen and lawymmin?

—

METROPOLITAN POLICE DEPARTMENT:

Police Chief Cathy Lanier (Female, ZERO)
Assistant Chief Alfred Durham (Male, 9 points)
Assistant Chief Diane Groomes (Female, ZERO)
Assistant Chief Patrick Burke (Male, 7 points)
Assistant Chief Joshua Ederheimer (Male, 6 points)
Corporate Support Bureau Head Edward Hamilton (Male, 5 points)
Assistant Chief Winston Robinson (Male, 4 points)
Assistant Chief Peter Newsham (Male, 3 points)
General Counsel Terrence Ryan (Male, 2 points)
Agency Fiscal Officer Martin Carmody (Male, 1 point)

Book 'em, officer! With 37 out of 55 manly points, or 67 percent manliness, the D.C. police department's girls and boys in blue should receive their Miranda warning—because Miranda is such a feminine name! Looks like Fire and Emergency Medical Services out-mans MPD handily. Tune in tomorrow when the D.C. government bracket wraps up—with the D.C. Council and the Department of Corrections!

Firemen by FredoAlvarez; MPD photo by Andrew Feinberg

Fennell also testified as to why there might have been a Secret Service agent outside the club when he arrived: Good Guys backs up against the Naval Observatory. "Where the Vice President resides," Fennell says. Secret Service officers routinely patrol the Glover Park neighborhood for that reason, Fennell says. In all, Secret Service, police, ambulance, and fire department officials responded to the blaze, while employees and bystanders stood around in shock, Fennell says.

"I can't recall any of the faces, but I do remember some of the females, consoling each other and crying," Fennell says.

Henderson rightly points out that the "lewd references to sexual acts by [openly gay police officer Matt] Mahl and a female police sergeant who is also assigned to the Third District substation" indicate that Mahl was not the only victim of the hate-based slurs. Police sources identified the male officer in the graffiti to the Blade as Matt Mahl, but didn't identify the female mentioned in the case, or describe how the graffiti implicated her. Henderson is also right that it would be interesting to note how D.C. police have discussed the case—are they, too, focusing solely on the homophobic epithets, or considering the misogynist ones as well? I'll update if and when I hear back from MPD.

If you have information on the crime, call Crime Solvers at (800) 673-2777.

Last month, I wrote a story about a sexual harassment complaint filed against D.C. police photo lab head William "Bill" Gresham. The story speculated on a finer point of the extremely graphic lawsuit filed by former Gresham employee Mary N. Gilkey—an allegation in paragraph 14 that “Defendant Gresham introduced what he called a ‘peter meter’ to the office.”

Gresham and D.C. police declined to comment on my story about what, exactly, a "peter meter" is. Now, the photo lab boss has officially denied that he ever "introduced" one to his office. Last Friday, a response was finally filed in the case on behalf of Gresham and the District of Columbia. The answer to the complaint denies the allegation concerning the "peter meter," along with the remainder of Gilkey's allegations of sexual harassment and retaliation. There are a lot of allegations to deny. In her Sept. 24 complaint, Gilkey claimed the harassment spanned 14 years of her employment in the photo lab, and included Gresham commenting on her body while "he licked his tongue and touch[ed] his penis," Gresham showing her "pictures of two men engaged in a sexual act where one man had his arm up the other man's ass," and Gresham hitting her "on the top of her head with a telephone receiver so hard she bled."

After denying Gilkey's "allegations of discrimination, hostile work environment, retaliation and violation of the common law violation," the answer to the complaint, filed by Acting Attorney General Peter J. Nickles, requests that the "matter be dismissed."

Last night, a commenter on this blog made the connection between a Washington Blade story identifying the victim of yesterday's police shooting as David Kerstetter, and a 2003 Metro Weekly feature which highlighted the home Kerstetter shared with his now-deceased partner, Paul Brazitis. Kerstetter was shot and killed by police yesterday inside the condo—part of Logan Circle's Iowa building at 1325 13th St. NW—after he allegedly threatened officers with a knife. A neighbor, who identified Kerstetter to the Blade, said that Kerstetter was suicidal and mourning Brazitis, who died in October of last year. Five years ago, 1325 13th St. was a very different place.
It looks like they had a nice home life, and a really nice home: Crown molding, antique Austrian china set, a $15,000 Viking stove. That was five years ago, when the couple had the luxury of agonizing over interior decorating. Now, both men are dead. After the whirlwind tour of Kerstetter and Brazitis' immaculate home, the Metro Weekly piece ends this quote from Brazitis:

We didn't consider having the inside of this [cabinet] stained — it was this ugly blonde wood inside. One day, I was in the other room painting and all the sudden there was this red mist through the entire house. David was [staining] this cabinet. All the new hardwood floors had red on them, the animals had red on them, we had red on us. That was one thing I should have put my foot down and said, "No!"

Photo from Metro Weekly.

On Thursday, November 6, 2008, at approximately 10:20 am, uniformed officers from the department’s Third District responded to a residence located at 1325 13^th Street, NW to assist the building manager with a possible open door at that location. Upon arriving and initiating their investigation, the officers were suddenly confronted by an adult male inside of the premises reportedly wielding a knife. Reportedly, a struggle ensued as the officers repeatedly ordered the man to drop the weapon. It was at that time that the police in the face of apparent imminent danger fired upon the subject, striking him.

Full release after the jump.

POLICE INVOLVED SHOOTING IN THE 1300 BLOCK OF 13^th STREET, NW

The Metropolitan Police Department is currently investigating the circumstances surrounding a police involved shooting that occurred on 13^th Street, NW.

On Thursday, November 6, 2008, at approximately 10:20 am, uniformed officers from the department’s Third District responded to a residence located at 1325 13^th Street, NW to assist the building manager with a possible open door at that location. Upon arriving and initiating their investigation, the officers were suddenly confronted by an adult male inside of the premises reportedly wielding a knife. Reportedly, a struggle ensued as the officers repeatedly ordered the man to drop the weapon. It was at that time that the police in the face of apparent imminent danger fired upon the subject, striking him.

The suspect, an adult male, was transported to an area hospital and admitted in critical condition.

There were no reported physical injuries to the two officers involved in this incident. The identities of the officers, both males, are being withheld at this time to allow for the proper notification of their families.

A knife was recovered at the scene of the incident.

Both members have been placed on routine administrative leave with pay as the circumstances surrounding this case remains under investigation by members assigned to the Force Investigation Team from the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau.

* Don't hit the door on the way out. On Thu., Oct. 30, 2008, a call from SE concerning "damaged property" yielded a damaged "interior door," two arguing "male residents," and some cartoonish finger-pointing. According to the police, "Neither male took responsibility for the damage or advised officers how the damage resulted."* Costume contest. On Fri., Oct. 31, a man "wearing a pink wig" was approached on 14th St. by three black males. The group, it seemed, didn't like the style. "One of the males made a homophobic comment about the victim’s appearance and the victim was then struck in the head with an unknown object," the police report. After the victim was released from the hospital, "A juvenile male was arrested . . . in possession of a loaded handgun." But "although it is believed the juvenile was involved in the victim’s assault," the pink-wigged man was still suffering from unclear vision. He "was unable to positively identify him as one of his attackers," police report.

* Fighting like girls. Later Halloween night—early on Sat., Nov. 1—cross-dressing inspired another assault. This time, two men, one dressed in costume as a woman, "were walking to a nearby home, when they were approached by two black males." One "commented on the victim’s appearance as a woman and made homophobic references" before assaulting both men. Suspects fled the scene; victims "suffered minor injuries."

* Ex fugitive. At midnight on Sun., Nov.r 2, 2008, officers responded to an incident at a Dupont bar, where a victim "stated his ex-boyfriend had assaulted him and fled toward Dupont Circle." The suspect was stopped and arrested by an off-duty officer, while his ex "suffered a minor injury."

* Brotherly shove. Later that morning, a "family disturbance" brought police to 4th & Irving Sts. NW. There, a man informed police that his boyfriend has been "assaulted by his brother, who was intoxicated. " The brother fled, and the victim refused to cooperate—police say he did not "provide officers with enough information to complete a report."

* Wake-up call. At 3:30 a.m. on Mon., Nov. 3, a Virginia resident called the GLLU for help "regarding an ex-boyfriend suffering from a drug addiction." The resident "was referred to a local non-profit organization for counseling and support."