This Week in Crime 5/23/16-5/30/16

++++++

UPDATE

++++++

Due to a pretty significant uproar MPD has reversed course, and will once again tweet from their main account about breaking crime events and ongoing issues. DCist reports on the welcome change.

+++++++++++

In a move that I can't imagine will prove popular with residents, the Metropolitan Police Department has said it will no longer tweet crime alerts. The Washington Post has a story with more details about the change. Basically it means you'll find yourself relying more on the DC Alerts (unofficial) twitter feed of the AlertDC system that will send those sign up for it text and email alerts. That's the same AlertDC system that did not send a text/email alert to me or others I spoke to regarding Sunday's shooting at the Giant, but apparently it did alert people I heard from in Bloomingdale and Brookland of a DDOT reported street closure due to police activity.

 

This is not the Twitter handle you're looking for (at least not for breaking crime news)

You might also want to check @dcfireems and @IAFF36 (that last one is unofficial). By the way, MPD actually does have the active Twitter handle @dcpolicetraffic, but it did not tweet about closed streets following the shooting at Giant Sunday.

 MPD reported a stabbing at 5:22 pm Monday, May 23rd in the 1200 block of Mt. Olivet Road. Police issued a look out for a black female. This was on the border between the Trinidad and Ivy City neighborhoods.

Just after 11:30 pm that same day MPD officers responded to the sound of gunfire in Rosedale. They found an adult male conscious and suffering from multiple gunshots in the 1600 block of Isherwood Street NE. No suspect information was provided.

The crime alert went out as a stabbing, but what happened at 2 am Thursday, May 26th in the 1600 block of Montello Avenue in Trinidad was more of a slashing. A man suffered a laceration to his arm after a man he was involved in a verbal dispute with produced a knife and cut him. The victim was conscious and breathing when police arrived. MPD described the suspect as a black male about 25 years of age with short hair and a slim build, about 6 feet tall, and wearing a white shirt with black writing and tan or brown pants.

At 8:47 pm Friday, May 27th a wounded, but conscious and breathing, man was transported to the hospital from the 2000 block of Maryland Avenue (Carver-Langston). The man stated that he heard the sound of gunfire and realized that he had been shot. An older box-style model white Ford station wagon was seen leaving the scene and heading west on Maryland Ave.

Just before 6:30 am Sunday, May 29th an off duty DC police officer working security at the Giant grocery store at 3rd and H Street spotted a man leaving with apparently shoplifted items. When the officer instructed the man to stop and follow him, the man produced a gun and failed to comply with the officer's demands. The officer then shot the man who was taken to the hospital in critical, but stable, condition. This is crazy, but NBC 4 is reporting that the man was carrying a bag containing $76.54 worth of crab legs for which he did not pay.

+++++++++

UPDATE

+++++++++

The Washington Post is now reporting more details from this incident. The suspect is Anthuan Phu Pham, 47, and the gun wielded was apparently a replica, not a working firearm. Mr. Pham is a registered sex offender having plead guilty to attempted first degree child sexual abuse in 2009. Googling his name also pulls up several old stories crime stories, including ones related to a man with the same name and age who attempted in 2002 to escape the custody of corrections officers by leaping from the third story window of a doctor's office. The would be escapee was being held in the maximum-security wing of a Prince George's County facility and visited the doctor for an ear infection. Officers at the time attempted to physically restrain him and sprayed him with pepper foam before wounding him by shooting him twice.

Tyrone Bradley, of SE D.C., was fatally shot May 30th in the 700 block of 24th Street in the Carver-Langston area. MPD received a report of gunfire at 2:14 am and found Mr. Bradley unconscious and with no signs of life.