D.C. police will train a closed-circuit camera on a notoriously violent Adams Morgan dead-end intersection in an effort to curtail a string of crimes committed there.
But neighbors say the robberies and shootings won’t stop until the “dead zone” is reopened to traffic and the adjacent recreation center is revitalized.
Champlain Street ends at the Marie H. Reed Community Learning Center a block east of the 18th Street strip and immediately south of its intersection with Kalorama Road. The breezeway underneath the center is open for pedestrians but closed to vehicle traffic — leaving late-night fun seekers and residents easy targets for armed robberies, muggings and other crime.
On Thursday, following more violence there, Mayor Adrian Fenty and Police Chief Cathy Lanier announced the installation of a CCTV camera at the corner of Kalorama and Champlain. The D.C. Department of Transportation, meanwhile, is working to reopen the breezeway to traffic perhaps by the end of summer.
“There really isn’t a magic bullet,” said Bryan Weaver, Adams Morgan advisory neighborhood commissioner. “I think from a deterrent standpoint, the camera is more important than the street. The next thing I’d like to see is the city fulfill its promise to fix up the recreation center. It almost is a self-fulfilling prophecy: Treat it as ghetto, that’s what it becomes.”
The Kalorama-Champlain area was the scene of a gunfight last month between a pair of plainclothes officers on robbery detail and Michael Griffin, 18, who police say was armed and firing. Griffin was fatally shot and the two officers were injured.
In the last 60 days, according to the District’s crime map software, there was one armed robbery and four muggings within 500 feet of the intersection.
DDOT last week closed the bidding on the estimated $2 million-to -5 million breezeway project. The solicitation directs the winning contractor to finish the job in 135 days.
Reopening the underpass to traffic will reinvigorate the “dead zone,” said Ward 1 D.C. Councilman Jim Graham. The camera, he said, is another important tool.
“In the case of Champlain and Kalorama, none of this will work without sustained police presence and police action,” Graham said. “Nothing we’re going to do is going to work if we don’t have that.”
