Owners open wallets to boost security
with off-duty officers
The reimbursable detail is costing H Street business owners about $3,000 a month, Joe Englert, owner of a half dozen bars and restaurants on the street, said Saturday. The goal is to attract visitors from a 40 or 50 square-mile area, he said, so it behooves H Street entrepreneurs to “make people feel as safe as possible.”
“I am fortunate to be surrounded by like minded business people who get that to ensure the long term success of a corridor you have to be organized,” Englert said.
The extra patrols, generally between 11th and 15th streets Northeast, will continue Friday and Saturday nights from 11:30 p.m. to 3:30 a.m. Business owners fund 50 percent of the cost, and the city pays the other half.
“I believe as H Street becomes a lot more popular that some of the problems that have been going on in Adams Morgan will crop up,” said Ward 6 D.C. Councilman Tommy Wells. “We just have to keep an eye on that and keep that from happening. But H Street is still safer than most of the other nightspot places in D.C.”
There were 15 violent crimes — 10 robberies, four assaults and one sex abuse case — and 39 property crimes reported in the past 60 days within 1,000 feet of 11th and H streets, according to D.C.’s crime map. That’s 13 more crimes total — a nearly 32 percent increase — than in the same period in 2008.
Violent crime is down in the past 60 days within 1,000 feet of 15th and H, statistics show, but property crime is up.
Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Joseph Fengler said the District has taken steps to reduce nuisance crimes along H Street, such as banning the sale of single beers. But there have been a series of high-profile violent incidents, he said, that heighten the “perception” that the corridor is unsafe.
H Street Martini Lounge was briefly shut down in October after two people were stabbed during a scuffle inside. In November, 21-year-old George Rawlings was shot and killed as he boarded a Metrobus at 14th and H.
“I believe H Street is safer than it was in the past, but perceptions are a reality you have to deal with,” Fengler said.
Fengler’s commission recently urged Mayor Adrian Fenty to take additional steps — upgrade lighting, add parking and relocate construction barriers — to improve safety along H Street. The corridor is undergoing a $50 million overhaul as D.C. lays down streetcar tracks, replaces lights, constructs new sidewalks and redesigns intersections.
