Homicide Watch D.C.

The charging documents in the case against Ellsworth Colbert are below. We’ll have more details from his appearance today at DC Superior Court later this afternoon.

The Washington Post‘s Keith Alexander writes about how MPD struggled to find cooperative witnesses in the South Capitol Street murder case.

In the aftermath of a deadly shooting outside a party at a Southeast Washington apartment building, investigators searched for evidence that would positively identify one of their top suspects. But they never found it, and nobody came forward to name him.
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WJLA, Fox5 and WTOP have reports this morning adding to yesterday’s news that Ellsworth Colbert, a local campaign volunteer, had been arrested on suspicion of fatally stabbing his neighbor, Robert Wright. Watch news reports after the jump.
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UPDATED with press release from MPD at bottom of story.

A fight over dog “mess” left one man dead in a Southeast DC neighborhood Sunday morning.

The Washington Post reported earlier today that a man was unconscious and not breathing following a stabbing assault in the 3600 block of Highwood Drive SE.

According to a report from WJLA and an announcement on a neighborhood listserve, the victim, identified as Robert Wright, has died. Wright’s neighbor, Ellsworth Colbert, is in custody, WJLA reports.
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In brief:

A double shooting in Southeast DC killed Ronald Bryant, a 21-year-old DC man.

Rickey Pharr was found guilty of first-degree murder in connection with the shooting death of Angelo Jones in Northeast DC in Oct. 2010. The case “huge embarrassment” Pharr’s defense attorney argued in closing statements. “Justice has been served,” Jones’ family said of the verdict.

An extensive AP story backgrounding Albrecht Muth and Viola Drath, said that the domestic murder case was “veering off course.”

Washington’s Other Monuments has photos of street memorials and crime scenes left in the wake of recent homicides.

The South Capitol Street murder trial continued. Find links to all coverage here.

India Rice, whose brother, Quintin T. Perry Jr., was killed Dec. 25 in Oxon Hill, wrote a guest post about Perry and his case. She urged anyone with information about Perry’s death to contact police.

Kevin Benbow‘s preliminary hearing was delayed for the seventh time. He was scheduled for a preliminary hearing Friday. The 17-year-old is suspected in the November 2010 shooting death of Jinnell McQueen.

Wayne Jackson was ordered held after a preliminary hearing Friday in the stabbing death of Kevin Blackwell Jr. He is one of three people facing charges in the case.

Weekend Read: Greater Greater Washington looks at how DC police are ramping up high-tech crime-fighting efforts.

Homicide Watch brings you a behind-the-scenes look at MPD’s 94 percent homicide case closure rate with a links roundup of how and where the story has been covered.

For details on cases scheduled to be heard at DC Superior Court this week, see Week Ahead.

On the afternoon of Dec. 30, I was sitting in D.C. Metropolitan Police Department’s (MPD) command center with more than a dozen other journalists waiting for Chief Cathy Lanier and Mayor Vincent Gray to arrive. They had called the New Year’s Eve eve press conference to talk about the year in crime and policing, and, in part, to talk about MPD’s incredible 94 percent homicide case closure in 2011.

I knew that nowhere near 94 percent of 2011′s homicides listed in the Homicide Watch database were closed. I pulled up the site and did a quick check to make sure. According to our data, 61 of 108 homicides — or 56 percent — had been closed with an arrest.

When I checked with Lanier later that afternoon, I learned that the case-closure arithmetic MPD was using included the closures of homicides from previous years in the calculation of the 2011 calendar year’s closure rate. It was math that conformed to federal guidelines, but not math that I thought the public understood. To help, I wrote a quick post in our Year in Review package explaining the much-repeated case closure rate.

On Feb. 18, the Washington Post followed that explainer piece with an in-depth investigative feature headlined “The trick to D.C. police force’s 94% closure rate for 2011 homicides.”
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Greater Greater Washington looks at how DC police are ramping up high-tech crime-fighting efforts:

Public listservs now include more than 10,000 members and allow citizens to read arrest and crime reports in almost real time. MPD has installed speed cameras around the city, added closed-circuit television cameras, and ShotSpotter devices, which immediately alert police to the sound of gunfire, in high-crime areas.

Not all technology investments are working, however. A 2011 study by the Urban Institute concluded the city’s more than 70 neighborhood crime cameras do not have a measurable effect on crime.
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A man fatally shot in Southeast DC Thursday night has been identified as 21-year-old Ronald Bryant. Friends of Bryant have left messages on Homicide Watch DC, Facebook and Twitter identifying him as the man killed in a shooting in Southeast DC Thursday night. Some of their comments and memories are gathered after the jump. Leave your own messages in the comments below, or tweet them to @homicidewatch to be included in the post.

A press release from MPD is also after the jump.
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A D.C. Superior Court judge ordered Wayne Jackson be held after a preliminary hearing today in the stabbing death of Kevin Blackwell Jr.
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A D.C. Superior Court Judge today scheduled a status hearing in the case of Zachary Sims, a 18-year-old accused of shooting 16-year-old Jamal Bell to death after a graduation party last June.

Sims’ attorney said that David Weston, who was killed in Sept. 2010, made “admissions” regarding the case to at least two other people.
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