Jim Myers, 20-year Hill East activist, has a single item in his lost and found bin: a bag of marijuana.
“It’s a small bag,” Myers said of his Friday morning find. “It’s got a few seeds in it. It doesn’t look like the greatest weed in the world, but what do I know? I don’t use dope.”
Myers found the purported drug, in addition to 54 plastic baggies often used in crack sales, during a morning walk in a triangle park at the corner of 17th Street and Massachusetts Avenue SE. He said he wants to take the baggies to the police station and say, “Look, this is what’s accumulating in this one spot overnight.”
As for the drugs, Myers is looking for the owner.
“I’m going to make a flier that says ‘Found, bag of weed,’” he said.
An early version of the flier described the park as: “Where Grass is King, and Every Night’s a Party.”
He posted his idea to the Hill East electronic mailing list, in addition to e-mailing the police department — drawing attention to the chronic neighborhood drug problem. His message included a call for help spreading the word.
“Perhaps, then, if the party who lost the weed is not on the listserv, he or she can be notified that way that the lost weed has been found, is in safe hands and that the neighbors around Spielberg Park are good-hearted people,” Myers wrote.
In Hill East, a neighborhood not far from RFK Stadium and the D.C. Jail, several known drug hangouts have been shut down in recent years, including the New Dragon restaurantat 15th and C streets. The regulars there, Myers surmises, have been pushed to other locations, including the park.
“Spielberg Park” is so-named because Steven Spielberg used the site to film the opening scene of “Minority Report.”
