Mount Pleasant DC Forum

[Laurie]

Did anyone attend the PSA meeting this week and if so, can someone update this forum on what happened?

Thanks.

[jack]

This was our first meeting as "PSA 301", though the change makes little difference to us, our boundaries and officers remaining unchanged. (PSA 302, which met Thursday evening, is a different matter.)

One principal topic was the problem of Latino gangs, most significantly MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha. They hang out mainly on the southern end of Mount Pleasant Street, between Harvard and Irving, but they roam the entire neighborhood. MS-13 gang graffiti is prominent at Bancroft (I'm dealing with that), and they've come as far as 19th Street (my garage). Scrubbing or covering gang graffiti as soon as possible after its appearance is important.

Officer Garrison said that there was rival Latino gang graffiti (one gang X-ing out the other's graffiti) in the 3300 block of 18th Street. I think he was referring to the convoluted alley that runs from the "triangle park" to Newton Street, opposite Bancroft. The police are on the alert for this; no one wants a repetition of the rival-gang gunfight here of last October.

Walter Martinez has, with my encouragement, been attending these meetings, and bringing some of his "7-11 Latino" friends. This is useful for a constructive dialog between the police and the 7-11 folk. No easy solution to the friction is at hand, but simply talking about differences, in a nonconfrontational situation, helps each side understand and respect the other's point of view. Cultural misunderstandings, and the language barrier, underlie this problem.

The Latinos complained that Officer Henderson, one of our beat officers, poured a sticky substance on the sidewalk in front of the 7-11, evidently to annoy the 7-11 loiterers. I believe that Dominic Sale agreed to investigate this bizarre accusation.

Karen Abrams, who lives on Monroe right behind the Sacred Heart School, noted that there are problems -- drug dealing? -- in the Sacred Heart parking lot. Evidently their gate is not working, so the parking lot is open to intruders.

Lomax, the reputed leader of our little drug-dealing gang, is out of jail, but still under weapons-possession charges, and is supposed to be confined to his home. I haven't seen him for some time. The MPD is working hard at closing down his operation.

Those are, I think, the main points. This is my interpretation only, of course. -- Jack