Bryan Weaver, 38, the advisory neighborhood commissioner in Adams Morgan, has lived in the neighborhood since 1993. He is the former president of the Adams Morgan Civic Association and runs Sacred Hoops, a nonprofit that helps at-risk kids.
Why doesn’t Adams Morgan have a neighborhood crime watch?
I think it’s tough to get people out. Guardian Angels and the Orange Hats have come out to patrol, but we have had a low turnout. Adams Morgan is sort of a different beast because you have wealthy homeowners on the west, south of 18 Street, and nonprofit, low-income residential apartments on the east side, and a thriving business corridor down the middle. So you have very different interests.
It seems weird that Adams Morgan, one of the most conscientious neighborhoods, doesn’t have a crime watch.
It’s not like it’s a bedroom community. You have a cultural and economic diversity, which makes Adams Morgan great but doesn’t make for a good area for the Orange Hat patrol.
How is the crime in Adams Morgan these days?
In September, we had 32 violent crimes and 11 different incidents of shots fired; most were happening in the outlying areas of residential streets, like the Marie H. Reed Community Learning Center. But then on Oct. 1, police put in 40 officers on Fridays and Saturday, and the violence dropped dramatically.
But as you saw last Wednesday [in the fatal shooting of a 21-year-old outside the Reed Center] … we didn’t address the issues of why these shootings are happening.
You think this was gang- or crew-related?
Yes.
You knew the victim, Derrell Goins.
He was a really good kid. He had no police record. The community locally raised money to send him to art school. Worked at the Hilton Hotel and a health club. But he goes back to the apartment building where he grew up and these two guys are waiting for him and shot him.
How does crime compare to five or 10 years ago?
Now that we have multimillion-dollar houses, it’s a lot more property-related crime, and the aggravated assaults have gone down. Crew-on-crew violence is less, but muggings have grown. In a city, that’s sort of the fallout of prosperity.
