Marion Barry’s fans might start wearing T-shirts that say: “The Bitch Set Him Up — Again.”
And they might be justified, again.
The first time Barry allowed himself to be set up by a female companion, it was Hazel Diane “Rasheeda” Moore. She lured him to the Vista Hotel, plied him with cognac and supplied him with crack cocaine. D.C. police and FBI agents raided the room and busted then-Mayor Barry in the infamous 1990 sting.
Last weekend, Barry and his current love interest, Diane Watts-Brighthaupt, arranged a weekend trip to the beach. As the story goes, the two argued over lunch in Annapolis, canceled the trip and headed back to D.C.
There the story becomes murky. We know that Ms. Watts-Brighthaupt returned to her apartment in Southeast to check on her West Highland terrier. Her ex-husband was caring for the pup. Later in the afternoon she was driving through Anacostia Park when she spied Barry driving behind her. She flagged down a U.S. Park Police officer and told him a man in a vehicle was “bothering her.”
The cop pulled Barry over. The Park Police officer apparently did not recognize the former mayor for life and current Ward 8 D.C. Council member. What he saw was an agitated 73-year-old man, a bit gaunt thanks to years fighting various diseases and addictions. Barry looks frail these days.
The officer questioned Barry and arrested him on a misdemeanor stalking charge.
To which I ask: Can’t Park Police cops spend their time arresting muggers on the Mall? What Barry did may have been annoying; it ain’t stalking.
Here’s how D.C. Code 22-404b describes stalking:
“Any person who on more than one occasion engages in conduct with the intent to cause emotional distress to another person or places another person in reasonable fear of death or bodily injury by willfully, maliciously and repeatedly following or harassing that person.”
Lord knows there are too many stalkers who fit the description in the law. Women plead with judges to issue restraining orders to protect them from raging males; judges occasionally issue such orders, but even then, getting cops to arrest a man for stalking is a chore. Women too often die at the hands of a man who is under a judge’s order to stay away.
Unless the alleged stalker is a 73-year-old black dude following you in a car, and you tell a Park Police cop he’s “bothering you.” Then he might get busted.
This situation is embarrassing on so many levels. The cops look petty and racist; Barry comes off as a pathetic old man, chasing a woman who hung around for a while and dumped him a few days before he got his liver transplant. No way prosecutors press charges, unless they are looking to avenge their failure to get jail time for Barry for not paying taxes.
As to who set up whom, my buddy Benny Barnes put it this way when I defended Barry: “He’s the one who puts himself there.”
E-mail Harry Jaffe at [email protected].
