Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Nice piece on Jamie Stachowski, who’s getting close to opening his butcher shop in the old Griffin Market space (or a “candy shop for carnivores” as he calls it).
• GM was convinced the Muth trial couldn’t get weirder. He was wrong.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• The center of Georgetown is N St. and Potomac, according to Google.
• The Halloween shooting is now a homicide. Georgetown’s second of the year, after five years without one.

At last night’s ANC meeting, crime was very much on the mind of the attendees. The ANC was scheduled to be visited by U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen long before the Halloween shooting on Monday, but the crime made his presence all the more apt.

But before Machen arrived, the audience was treated to an update on the Halloween crime from MPD Captain Jeffrey Herold. He recently transferred to the Second District from the Special Operations division. So while he is new to the neighborhood beat, his old assignment actually meant that he’s worked the Georgetown Halloween shift for over twenty years.

He said emphatically that he’s never seen the scene he saw Monday night. GM wasn’t there himself, but he’s heard from multiple people that the crowd was particularly bad this year. Herold reported that it seemed as if large groups of people (mostly teens) were simply roving the neighborhood appearing to try to start fights.

Along with this behavior came a spike in some rather alarming crimes. While most attention was focused on the horrible shooting, there were several muggings as well Monday night. But the thing is, you have to be a really stupid criminal to target Georgetown on Halloween. There is basically a cop on every corner. So all the muggings resulted in arrests. Even more disturbing: three guns were seized by the cops. One kid even was caught with a sawed-off shotgun.

Captain Herold told the crowd that he expects the shooting investigation to be “closed” in a matter of days.

Later during the meeting, Machen arrived. He gave a brief run-down on his offices efforts at community prosecution. His office is unique among U.S. Attorney offices. Since DC has no District Attorney or other “state” prosecutor, the U.S. Attorneys office handles all criminal cases from “local” crimes like assault and battery all the way up to federal crimes like corruption. GM asked Machen whether he supported the proposal to establish a DC District Attorney to handle the “local” crimes. He didn’t say no explicitly, but he essentially said that his office is perfectly able to handle the load and that it’s much easier to recruit top candidates to become Assistant U.S. Attorneys than it is to recruit Assistant District Attorneys.

Here’s what happened at the rest of the meeting:

• DPW is reinstating trash inspectors, so make sure to keep your trash in cans.
• Neighbors of the 7-11 are pissed about the possibility that 7-11 might use P St. Pictures old front door. GM suspects much of the aggravation is a result of the bad blood that arose over the eviction of P St. Pictures. Representatives from 7-11 appeared and seemed to be disinclined to not use the door, but we’ll see if that withstands steady neighbor resistance.
• The ANC is fighting to restore the removed Circulator stops. DDOT’s own report states that the time gains from removing the stops was minimal to nil and Jack Evans’ office might jump in, so don’t be surprised if the stops reappear.
• The ANC objected to the new proposed M Cafe at 3236 Prospect St. Details need to be worked out over hours, etc.
• The Georgetown Post Office/East Banc project has undergone yet another radical change. The DC State Historical Preservation Office determined that the external addition–which every plan assumed was expendable–was in fact a contributing structure (i.e. not tear-downable). So a project that began as a big condo with rowhouses, that became a scaled-back office, and then became a scaled-back condo, is now simply a small conversion of the addition into a small office building. GM’s just happy to see they got rid of the parking garage.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Remember, the President will be at the Waterfront Park today, and all that that entails.
• Some updates on that shooting Monday night.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Letter from Elizabeth Taylor (who was Mrs. John Warner at the time) to Andy Warhol gives a Georgetown return address.
• There’s got to be a better description for this crime than “forcible fondling“.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Carol Joynt relates her unusual experience with Albrecht Muth.
• If Georgetown smelled weird yesterday morning, here’s why.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• The death of a Georgetowner who was found dead in her home on Friday is now being characterized by MPD as a homicide. Viola Drath was 91 and lived on Q St. just west of 32nd. Very few details are public as of now. What is morbidly coincidental about this tragedy is that it occurred just feet from the last homicide in Georgetown.
• In much less depressing news: GM’s not crazy enough to do this, but people seem to like this boot camp.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Is there more retail theft recently? Well, GM found that it’s actually down a bit this first half of this year.
• This project on Thomas Jefferson St. has been kicking around the ANC for a while, but here’s a nice description of it.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• GM’s not really sure where to start with this one. Apparently a British newspaper wrote an article about the concept of shoplifters using Twitter to organize flash mobs to descend on a store, overwhelm the staff, and make off with some merchandise. But to do this, they (remember “they” is a British newspaper, which generally covers, you know, British or important international news) discuss a recent shoplifting episode at Victoria’s Secret in our little Georgetown. The mob that descended? Four people, with two baby carriages. Four people apparently is British for “mob”.
• As expected, the Georgetown Post Office is not among those in DC being considered for closing. The USPS, however, is still planning on selling the property to EastBanc, but the post office functions will remain.

Now the the first half of 2011 is safely in the books, GM took a look back at the crime stats to see how we’re doing. Not so great is the answer.

There were 459 crime incidents in Georgetown and Burleith during the first half of 2011. That compares with 407 during the first half of 2010, which means crime was up 13%.

But the story gets more interesting when you look at the individual categories. In most crime was level and even down. But in one category spiked dramatically:

• Theft
• 2010 – 269
• 2011 – 246
• Robbery
• 2010 – 27
• 2011 – 18
• Burglary
• 2010 – 29
• 2011 – 66
• Theft F/ Auto
• 2010 – 66
• 2011 – 70
• ADW
• 2010 – 13
• 2011 – 11
• Sexual Abuse
• 2010 – 2
• 2011 – 4
• Stolen Auto
• 2010 – 23
• 2011 – 22

The spike started in the spring and has been spread out pretty evenly across the neighborhood:

The one bright spot, if you can call it that, is that so far only four burglaries have been reported for July. So at the very least it appears we’ll get back down below 10 this month.

]]> http://georgetownmetropolitan.com/2011/07/21/crime-up-first-half-of-2011/feed/ 7 GM Crime Up First Half of 2011 burglaries burglary map