Normally a quiet street, this block was the site of public brawling Friday
The Washington Post has a rather disturbing story about a complaint filed by a Trinidad family. They say MPD officers did not take appropriate action to apprehend street fighters, including a ski mask clad man who threatened to kill the wife when she confronted him. The fight broke out Friday night a little after 11pm in the 1200 block of Neal Street. There were reportedly 20-30 people on the street, and at least three separate fights going on at the same time.
10 comments:
Pretty common. Police inaction like this happens all the time, which results in a known false underreporting of the crime rates by police. We have literally no idea how many assaults, robberies, thefts, and burglaries occure because such crime are many time minimized by police and therefore not reported in official reports/stats.
In this case, the sergeant didn't take a report for this melee/assault/felony threats on his own, and instead tried to get out of doing anything by asking the victims if they really wanted to make a report. Happens all the time, and has for years.
30 people out in the street, 3 fights going on, an innocent lady gets threatened with murder and police do nothing: another instance of fantastic teamwork by DC police
Similar thing happened on my street, but it was the result of a late night party.
Loud music and people in the street until about 1am, when I finally called the cops and placed a noise complaint. One cop came, told them to move the party inside. The group did, but the music didn't turn down. Finally, at about 2:30am, I see a girl emerge from the house, basically half-clothed. 30-40 people come out from the house and a giant street fight starts.
At that point, I called the cops again, and like 6 squad cars descended and broke the fight up.
I have to say, I found the police response really impressive for that second call. In this case, if they only sent one police officer, there is no way he/she can handle a large group of people fighting.
What should have happened is what happening in my situation: they sent a fleet of cars to break up the fight.
But this kind of behavior can't be tolerated. The police need to strictly patrol Trinidad and H St to deter these kind of crimes. It is only going to get worse as the weather improves.
I'm a little surprised at this, mostly because the cops have been patrolling Trinidad (or at least my part of it) so actively since the shootings in December. They put out light towers and parked patrol cars on busy corners every nice evening since then near where I am. Although the light tower didn't make an appearance this weekend... maybe they thought they could relax their scrutiny a bit?
This is so disturbing that something like this could happen in one of DC's safest neighborhoods!
What!?! Violence in premier NE Trinidad. That doesn't sound right to me at all!
I find that I pretty much have to embellish what's going on when I call 911. If I just say 'there's a couple of guys out front drinking, smoking weed and being loud', they won't come quickly enough, if they come at all. If I add to that, 'they're fighting, and I think someone's going to get hurt', that usually lights enough of a fire. It's a shame, but it's basically necessary to get the appropriate level of service.
So it sounds like in Trinidad, I can put on a ski mask, get into a fight, call a neighborhood resident a racial slur and after all of this, I won't get arrested. Good to know, thanks MPD!
But let's not forget how AWESOME it is living in Trinidad.
I believe we call that "Old Trinidad".
In a few more years, that will be something
for the festival
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