April 29, 2008
Morning Roundup: Walk the Line Edition
Good morning, Washington. Since D.C. cab drivers are finally going through the big change to meters this week, the Washington Post decided to write up yet another story about how hard it is to be a cab driver in D.C. We already know how most of you feel about that line of argument, so we'll leave it up to you to say the same thing we're all thinking in the comments. There's still no real way to tell how many drivers have already had meters installed, but the piece of good news in this story is that it appears many of them are lining up this week to have the hardware put in. In just a little over 36 hours, the meter rule will technically become law. Don't forget to check out the results of our reader poll to see what your fellow cab riders plan to do starting on Thursday.
City Response to Violence Criticized: Both the Examiner and the Post ran stories this morning detailing the anger and disappointment expressed by residents at a meeting about the city's response to violent crime held last night at Turkey Thicket Recreation Center in Northeast. It was the stuff of made for TV movies as grieving mothers stood up and told Mayor Adrian Fenty that he wasn't working hard enough to find their children's murderers and prevent future killings. Violent crime is actually down 3 percent compared to this time last year, but sections of Northeast have been hit hard by a spate of shootings and homicides in spite of increased police patrols in the area.
Tornadoes Hit Southeastern Virginia: Three tornadoes barreled through southeastern Virginia yesterday, leaving behind more than 200 injured residents in areas of Suffolk, Colonial Heights and Brunswick County. Gov. Tim Kaine declared a state of emergency.
Briefly Noted: Teachers Union Vice President sues Rhee and Union President ... Bus service between Kent Island and D.C. may expand ... Palisades neighborhood's sewer troubles prompts new study ... Parkside Terrace redevelopment underway.
Photo by m hoek
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Virginia got lucky this time. Tornadoes mean only one thing: GOD HATES VIRGINIA! God is punishing the Old Dominion State for their tolerant attitude towards heterosexual "marriage," permissive tobacco usage, irresponsible gun laws, fetish for Mammon-esque McMansions, and hatred of Latinos. It's in the Bible people! Ezekiel 25:17? "The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee."
Repent! The sin of Cain is upon thee! Death awaits you! You have made a covenant with death and with hell you are in agreement! You're all going to die! Don't you realise? Can't you see? You're all going to DIE! Death awaits you all! Death! Death! DEATH!
Peace,
+++JMJ+++
Call me uncaring, but how is it Fenty's fault that people are getting shot? And how is it Fenty's fault if the "no snitching" mentality is causing people with information to not talk to the cops in order to help solve murders? I sympathize with the mothers who have lost their children to senseless violence. But is that the Mayor's fault?
cranky: you're right, it's not his fault. responsibility has to lie with the community at some level. i feel that we are to permissive of violence in some of our neighborhoods, but i don't know how to say that to people without being accused of a lot of nasty things.
Here's a tip: if you want "to find [your] children's murderers and prevent future killings," I got two words for you: START SNITCHIN. Because increased police patrols ain't gonna do s**t when nobody comes forward as a witness or to provide evidence at trial. You remember trials, right? That's where people get to prove their innocence? It's not where you sit around and blame the po-lice and act like "they planted them drugs on that poor little boy" and talk crazy s**t like "I'd never believe ANYTHING a policeman says."
Until you're ready to get your s**t together, you really have a lot of guts blaming the Mayor for your problems.
I'm sorry, this meeting was held at the Turkey Thicket Recreation Center? Is there really a turkey thicket in Northeast? What does a thicket of turkeys entail, exactly? Does the thicket get less ticket-y in November?
Inquiring minds want to know.
you know, i called the police yesterday when i saw a man threatening a woman with a knife outside the columbia heights metro at 8 am. my husband heard shots fired within a few blocks over the weekend. it's only a matter of time before we get another body nearby and one of those extremely obnoxious police statements about how crime rises in the summer. maybe it's time to move. (maybe, i realize, it's time to be more involved in my community, but mainly i feel like ducking and covering.)
jen, ever notice "roach run" near dca? what the heck is that about???
ona sidenote, re the photo: reminds me of tina modotti. nice idea of wilt and decay of the natural world along the footsteps of the urban world, although i'm prob the only one who sees that....
The center was actually named after the Revolutionary War hero Ignatius "Turkey" Thicket, the "Hero of Squid Harbor." Armed with only a rowboat and a bag of rock-hard johnnycakes, he successfully held off the Hessian squadrons until the colonial relief ships arrived. His dying words were, "Name a rec center after me and I will curse you from beyond the grave!"
THE PROPHECY HAS BEEN FULFILLED!
Oh PLEASE. Washington Post needs to do a better job investigating for these stories. Maybe that cabbie reports 650 gross but if he isn't making more than that he is just lazy.
Say he only drives 5 days a week. On those days say he is only on the clock for 7 hours. He only needs to pick up 2 10$ fares per hour to gross 700 a week. PLEASE. As the article says it costs 8.80 just to go from Union Station to Nationals Park.
My dad is a cab driver and doesn't even spend that much time driving yet still manages to make around 60k in a metered city. He has established relationships with some hotel people that always call him directly instead of calling dispatch yet he still makes about the same as the other guys at the company but he just has more free time.
Another issue I had with the Post article is that they mention how many more cabs per person that this city has but don't make any mention of the average fare compared to other cities. The number of trips you get is only relevant if you include a discussion of what you are getting from those trips. If you are able to get twice as many fares in Boston due to less cab competition but you are making half as much per average trip doesn't that kind of even out? I don't have any empirical data but just based on my own experience cabs in DC have a much higher fare than in other cities.
I think that this is just like the "doomsday" that was predicted by some bar and restaurant owners before the smoking ban. Remember all the businesses that were supposedly going to go bankrupt etc. if the smoking ban passed? Like Y2K apocolypse never materialized. Once all appeal options have been exhausted and the realization that meters ARE happening sets in with the cabbies this whole change will happen pretty quietly and the debate will die out. I am sure nothing much will really change either except that tourists and drunk college kids won't get randomly fleeced for a few extra bucks here and there.
By the way everytime I mention this zone stuff to my dad he tells me how absolutely ridiculous of a system it is and how he knows a lot of drivers who would be having a field day if that system were implemented where he drives.
That Loose Lips article about the WTU says nothing about Nathan Saunders suing Michelle Rhee.
"Named in the lawsuit are Parker, WTU Chief of Staff Clay White, Al Squires and Edward J. McElroy of the American Federation of Teachers (the WTU’s parent organization), four members of the WTU executive board, and three unnamed DCPS employees."
The "three unnamed DCPS employees" seems less likely to have anything to do with Rhee, and more with Saunders' allegation that union leaders were trying to "silence him by tampering with DCPS personnel records."
@Xtena:
"Turkey thicket" produces an amusing image in my head. "Roach run" just grosses me out. Thanks.
(RE: Crime Spree) I don't know how many of you were also Wire fanatics but if so, do you find it hard to follow politics/police/crime stories like these and not immediately start relating it to Wire storylines?
I see the rise in murders and immediately wonder whether there is some kind of power struggle going on between two rival factions, see the police statements and lower crime statistics and wonder if stats are being juked, see the symbolic (but probably useless) police responses and wonder what kind of power plays are going on between the Fenty camp and police officials. The stories themselves even make me wonder what is being missed or angles not covered due to budget cutbacks and shrinking of local coverage. Maybe these deaths are related and part of some drug war or something but nobody on the police force or city desk knows enough about the local crime world to put it together.
While a lot of it might just be conspiracy theory I always just read city headlines now and assume things are way more intricate than they seem on the surface.
If we suddenly get a homeless serial killer, we'll know that The Wire is now God.
RE: Taxis: Not much mention in the post article about how income taxes affect taxi drivers take home pay. I wonder why that could be? Bring on the meters.
RE: Turkey Thicket: The check for a DC license is sporadic at this fine DPR facility in surly NE DC. So you MD/NoVA residents can get your swim on, free of charge. Plus hot tub! Baste like a turkey in a shallow pool of simmering microbes.. for free!
Roach's Run is named after James Roach, an inhabitant of the area back when jet noise wasn't as much of an issue. See http://www.arlingtonhistoricalsociety.org/learn/sites_properties/dwellings.html and scroll down to "Prospect Hill."
I don't see how you can't connect these dots...all the fired DCPS employees who thought they were going to get cushy jobs driving cabs but Fenty stepped in with an 11th hour decision to keep them down. They have since been driven into the crime-ridden world of small-scale drug trafficking. This induced a lot of turf war tactics from the old guard dealers, which in turn has led to the spike in murders. Clearly, this is Fenty's fault.
QED
Little known fact: James "Crusher" Roach, an amateur entomologist and studier of insect sex habits, patented the "roach brothel," which the Black Flag Company shamelessly stole, forcing Roach to die in alcoholic, drug-addicted squalor. But not before he gave his name to the clip that bears his name. The legend goes that he was kicked out of a Chinablock opium den and was forced to find his fix using old "reefers" that the local "ragtime" musicians would discard. Cobbling together a clipping device using old chopsticks and sock thread, he sold his invention to a mysterious "Mr. Bogart." The rest, they say, is history.
The Roach family also had a chain of motels, but they went belly-up in the Great Depression.
"RE: Turkey Thicket: The check for a DC license is sporadic at this fine DPR facility in surly NE DC. So you MD/NoVA residents can get your swim on, free of charge. Plus hot tub! Baste like a turkey in a shallow pool of simmering microbes.. for free!"
That's if they even check your ID.
Speaking of roaches, there's been a couple of shootings in Northeast AGAIN. This time the perp carjacked a Terminix truck.