Let’s be clear and honest about the melee on Metro last weekend: It was wilding on wheels, pure and simple.
Let’s also acknowledge that teenagers marauding through Metro cars and assaulting innocent riders is not news, especially after dark: Riders, cops and Metro officials have known about the violence for years.
Ever ridden the Red Line from Shady Grove through Tenleytown when schools let out on a weekday afternoon? You can expect to get pushed and shoved by kids who don’t know how to behave, and you might get hurt if you protest.
Facts rolling out of Friday night’s fights show that scores of teenagers started battling and shoving near the Gallery Place and Chinatown Metro platforms. Cops tried to break up the fights; the brawlers broke off and descended into the Metro — and kept fighting. The cops washed their hands of the situation and walked away.
The teens boarded Metro cars on the Green Line headed east. The violence continued in the cars and spilled out onto the L’Enfant Plaza platform a few stops away.
Video cameras recorded brawling among as many as 70 teenagers. Evidence for arrests, you might think? Not in the peaceable kingdom of Washington, D.C., where all teenagers are angels. Authorities arrested and charged two 16-year-olds and one kid who’s 18. The rest are free to roam and wrestle anew.
“This was chaos,” says police union chief Kristopher Baumann. “You have 70 people on tape and arrest only three? Where’s the disincentive for the rest of the kids?
“And,” he adds, “once they are arrested nothing will happen because they are juveniles.”
What galls me about this sorry situation is that it could have been prevented. Anyone who has walked the streets below Chinatown in the past year has seen the potential for calamity. Not one of our esteemed law enforcement agencies reacted to a clear and present danger.
Five years ago Gallery Place was just emerging as a downtown destination. Abe Pollin’s arena seeded the neighborhood, restaurants began to open, movie theaters came next. Now the streets are bustling with Washingtonians and tourists by day; but on weekend nights, groups of teenagers looking for trouble make the streets uninviting, mean and just plain scary.
I am not a fan of D.C. Councilman Tommy Wells’ call for an 11 p.m. curfew for teenagers. But at the moment it’s the only tool that police have to keep those streets safe. The answer to the violence in Chinatown and on the Metro is more cops, armed with laws that will allow them to remove rowdy kids from the streets.
As a society, we are comfortable with drunk tanks, where we can stow the inebriated. Perhaps it’s time to establish teen tanks, so we can confine misbehaving kids. Then kids without evil intent and families seeking a safe night out do not have to fear for their safety.
Seems that’s the least the government can provide.
Which begs the question: Why have we not heard from Mayor Adrian Fenty and Police Chief Cathy Lanier?
Harry Jaffe’s column appears on Tuesday and Friday. He can be contacted at [email protected]
