A white car pulled up in front of Nellie’s Sports Bar at Ninth and U at about 1:15 on Monday afternoon. Two men got out and walked into the bar. One brandished a gun.
Nellie’s is a comfortable gathering place in the center of the Shaw neighborhood. It’s still an edgy part of the bustling U Street corridor, east of Dupont Circle. Its clients are the new D.C. brew of gay and straight, black and white, mostly young.
“Post-gay, post-racial,” one of the regulars tells me.
But not post-crime.
One of the two men went to the cash register and ordered the bartender to empty it out. The robbers left with a few bucks. No one was hurt. Nellie’s is back in business.
“I wasn’t shocked in the least,” says Matt, who runs the Borderstan blog. “These types of things happen on U Street.”
These types of things — as in gun crime — are happening more and more in Borderstan, which roughly covers the city’s hip center of Dupont Circle, Logan Circle and the U Street Corridor. Actor Kal Penn was mugged at gunpoint at 15th and S streets early Tuesday morning.
“There are new businesses and more people along U Street, 14th Street and 17th Street,” says Matt. He’s been gathering and publishing community news for the past two years. “These are destination targets for criminals.”
Borderstan is not the only destination. My neighborhood of Chevy Chase has been hit by the most brazen robberies that anyone can recall. A block captain was at home when she heard a window break and saw the burglar, who still walked off with a computer. One of my neighbors came home from work last Friday and saw a guy breaking into his garage and walking out with his bike. He confronted the robber, who grabbed a baseball bat, clocked him in the head and sent him to the hospital with a concussion. The thief walked off with the bike.
MPD’s 2nd District, which covers Upper Caucasia, recorded 45 robberies during March and early April.
Mayor Adrian Fenty and Police Chief Cathy Lanier claim crime in the city is dropping. If you want to get a true sense of crime and how it affects people’s lives, read the blogs and Listservs.
“People are being victimized on a daily basis,” says Kristopher Baumann, head of the D.C. police union. “The mayor and the police chief have to be honest about the crime rate. If they are not honest, we don’t put in the resources or pass the laws to get criminals off the streets.”
And if the streets are run by criminals, and the citizens do not feel safe, the politicians should be running scared. Fenty becomes vulnerable. Council Chairman Vince Gray, who would be mayor, can’t paint himself as tough on crime.
Says Matt: “My advice to my neighbors is to stop bitching about noise and start bitching about crime.”
Now is the time to make politicians listen.
E-mail Harry Jaffe at [email protected].
