DC to block passage to rough neighborhoods
Now we have the gov't telling us where to go and not where to go. I have no idea how this will keep away the criminals as most of these neighborhoods are full of criminals anyway. In essense it forms some kind of caste system. Not a good precident to set.
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D.C. police will seal off entire neighborhoods, set up checkpoints and kick out strangers under a new program that D.C. officials hope will help them rescue the city from its out-of-control violence.
Under an executive order expected to be announced today, police Chief Cathy L. Lanier will have the authority to designate ??Neighborhood Safety Zones.? At least six officers will man cordons around those zones and demand identification from people coming in and out of them. Anyone who doesn??t live there, work there or have ??legitimate reason? to be there will be sent away or face arrest, documents obtained by The Examiner show.
Lanier has been struggling to reverse D.C.??s spiraling crime rate but has been forced by public outcry to scale back several initiatives including her ??All Hands on Deck? weekends and plans for warrantless, door-to-door searches for drugs and guns.
Under today??s proposal, the no-go zones will last up to 10 days, according to internal police documents. Front-line officers are already being signed up for training on running the blue curtains.
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Police checkpoints don??t comfort concerned Trinidad residents Peter Nickles, the city??s interim attorney general, said the quarantine would have ??a narrow focus.?
??This is a very targeted program that has been used in other cities,? Nickles told The Examiner. ??I??m not worried about the constitutionality of it.?
Others are. Kristopher Baumann, chairman of the D.C. police union and a former lawyer, called the checkpoint proposal ??breathtaking.?
Shelley Broderick, president of the D.C.-area American Civil Liberties Union and the dean of the University of the District of Columbia??s law school, said the plan was ??cockamamie.?
??I think they tried this in Russia and it failed,? she said. ??It??s just our experience in this city that we always end up targeting poor people and people of color, and we treat the kids coming home from choir practice the same as we treat those kids who are selling drugs.?
The proposal has the provisional support of D.C. Councilman Harry ??Tommy? Thomas, D-Ward 5, whose ward has become a war zone.
??They??re really going to crack down on what we believe to be a systemic problem with open-air drug markets,? Thomas told The Examiner.
Thomas said, though, that he worried about D.C. ??moving towards a police state.?
Lanier plans to seal off rough â??hoods in latest effort to stop wave of violence - Examiner.com
DC to block passage to rough neighborhoods
Yeah. I'm not really sure what I think of this. It sounds bad, but as I remember it, they did this kind of thing with some of the high-crime housing projects, and everyone was against it EXCEPT the people who actually lived there. They were OK with a bit of hassle as long as it kept the criminals out of their buildings. Poor folks don't generally have access to gated communites and secure buildings, so I guess this is sort of the same concept, except the police are running it instead of an HOA.
