Rafael Briscoe of Southeast, DC, who was killed Tuesday afternoon by D.C. Metropolitan Police officers, is the third person to die in a D.C. officer involved shooting this year. On Feb 13, Davon Sealy, 19, of Gaithersburg, and Akeem Jamaal Cayo, 21, were fatally shot in a shoot-out with officers after a botched home invasion robbery.
MPD’s protocol for deadly use of force is here. A good discussion of the use of deadly force, it’s impacts and how communities respond is on the FBI’s website, here. That document describes the general tension surrounding officer-involved fatal shootings as follows:
Some members of the public seem to automatically assume that the officer did something wrong before any investigation into the incident begins. Conversely, others believe that if the police shot somebody, the individual must not have given the officer any choice.
Finally, we used information from MPD’s 2010 report on page 30, to compile this chart of deadly use of force in D.C. by year. (Note: there were none in 2010.)
I was delighted to be selected earlier this year for Knight Digital Media Center’s News Entrepreneurs Bootcamp at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. I’ve been hard at work the past several weeks studying. More than any course I have ever taken, this one is important. If Homicide Watch is going to continue creating and providing this valuable resource, we must find a sustainable business model for the project.
The program will take me away from D.C. for twelve days next month. Instead of shuttering the site during that time, I’ve found an excellent journalism student from American University who has offered to pick up the coverage. Karen Frantz will be monitoring the city’s pulse for breaking crime news and attending scheduled court hearings, vigils and memorials.
But she, and I, need your help.
I’ve offered Karen $250 from my own savings to compensate her for her work (approximately 30 hours). I’d like to offer her more. Please consider making a donation to Homicide Watch to help make sure the site stays running smoothly while I’m away.
You can use the PayPal donation button on the center sidebar to pay by credit or debit card.
Karen Frantz is a graduate student in public policy journalism at American University in Washington, DC. She graduated in 2003 from the University of Virginia with a degree in psychology, and since that time worked in numerous fields, including documentary production, policy and communication. She currently interns at the Durango Herald, where she covers the Colorado delegation to the U.S. Congress.
A thirty-year-old D.C. man found guilt of voluntary manslaughter was sentenced today to 22 years in prison for the crime that he maintains was committed only to “take care of” his family.
Marcus Silver offered Shadawnchea Gardner’s family his “remorse and condolences” at his sentencing Friday, saying “there is just so much I want his family to know.”
Prosecutors proved at Silver’s trial, which was held in February, that Gardner, Silver’s ex-girlfriend and another woman went to Silver’s Northeast D.C. apartment on March 10, 2010 to retrieve a video game. At the apartment, Silver’s ex-girlfriend got into an argument with his current girlfriend. When Gardner tried to separate the woman, Silver shot him in the head, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
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A 40-year-old Metrobus driver was arrested while on the job today and charged with negligent homicide in the death of a California man in D.C. in 2008, the Washington Examiner reports.
Ronald Taylor was indicted on the charge by a Grand Jury Tuesday. He is suspected of running a red light and crashing into a taxi carrying Bartlett Tabor, 55, and his family. The Tabors were visiting D.C. from Alamo, Calif. and were on their way to the airport when the collision took place, the Examiner reported.
Taylor is expected in court May 10 for arraignment.
A total of thirty new charges were added today to the cases against five young people accused in last year’s violent South Capitol Street shooting.
The charges, consisting mostly of conspiracy and counts of assault with intent to kill, mean that Sanquan Carter, 20, his brother, Orlando Carter, 21, Jeffrey D. Best, 22, Robert Bost, 22, and Lamar J. Williams, 22, all could be sentenced to life without parole if convicted.
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There’s a good discussion going on today over at Prince of Petworth‘s post about Monday night’s fatal shooting in Columbia Heights.
Says one anonymous reader:
Let us set a goal of zero homicides in the District and then set out seriously to achieve it. Some of our neighboring jurisdictions actually accomplish that goal year after year. That we have a goal of less than 100 annually somehow doesn’t sit right with me. That’s a murder every third day.
Marie responded:
I don’t like the zero homicide goal because once you have one, you’ve failed. I think it’s more productive to set an aggressively low goal, like under 80, that way you have something to continue to work toward throughout the year.
Otherwise, what do you do after you have the first homicide of the year? Which we will. We just will, even if it’s not from street violence it could be domestic or something that is harder to prevent.
What do you think? Does setting a goal help law enforcement? What are the best goals to set? (number of crimes, number of arrests, number of prosecutions, number of successful prosecutions?) How does the number of homicides influence how you feel about safety in D.C.?
For the record, Monday’s shooting was the 31st recorded homicide in D.C. this year and the ninth in the past 18 days. For a complete listing, use Homicide Watch’s Google spreadsheet embedded after the jump.
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Bernard Gayles, a 40-year-old D.C. man, was sentenced to 12 years and three months in prison today after he pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the stabbing death of 54-year-old Nathaniel Hall in 2009.
More information from the U.S. Attorney’s office is after the jump.
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A 34-year-old Maryland man was sentenced to 90 years in prison today in the 1999 shooting deaths of Duane Hicks and Passion McDowney in a car in Northwest D.C.
Details from the U.S. Attorney’s office are after the jump.
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washingtonpost.com | Apr 17, 2011
Whatever the Promised Land was that Martin Luther King Jr. saw before his assassination 43 years ago this month, those parts of the city where Jackson and hundreds of his contemporaries lived and died were definitely not it.
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Harry Jaffe thinks so. In a column this week in the Washington Examiner he writes:
Robberies are up. Burglaries are on the rise. Car theft is in vogue. Summer in Washington brings heat and humidity that makes everyone a bit more crazy. Crime will spike. Trust me… It’s not that there are fewer guns, just fewer cops to find and recover the ones on the street — which might have been used to kill the six victims gunned down last week.
What do you think?
