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Photo of the crime scene by Jeff Martin
WJLA culls this remarkable detail from today's double shooting in Columbia Heights: the argument between two youths that precipitated the shooting began at an orientation for the mayor's Summer Youth Jobs Program. Ward 1's Jim Graham confirmed that police confiscated a revolver and a set of brass knuckles at the orientation, attended by some 2,500 summer jobbers, at the Washington Convention Center earlier today, and that this incident appears to have stemmed from that earlier scuffle.
This connection appears to make it official that the city's notoriously inept summer jobs program is the absolutely most embarrassing D.C. government initiative of all time.
Other updates: it seems the bystander was merely grazed in the leg, while the victim who was involved in the argument is in stable condition after suffering multiple gunshot wounds to the legs.
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Graham really needs to quit it with the Sally Jesse Raphael glasses. I'm not kidding, when he talks at a serious event like this, he does not inspire confidence.
Yeah I'm with you on that one; Grahm needs to tone down on those glasses a bit... He's not Elton John or Sally Jesse and he needs to stop trying to be! :-p
He needs a powered wig to complete the look and a JUMBO SLICE PIZZA T-Shirt.
OK, this is too much. I refuse to believe that this isn't some sort of sick scheme perpetrated by DCist editors to bring about the commentpocalypse.
Next thing, you'll be telling me that Swine Flu originated with the DC Summer Youth Jobs program. Or that the Summer Youth Jobs program rigged the Iranian presidential election.
I hope those dimwits in Richmond realize that NoVa's transportation woes are all attributable to the DC Summer Youth Jobs program. Good going, Fenty.
If each and every one of DC's summer-job-wanting-youth was gainfully employed as a pedi-cab operator and kept busy shuttling VA commuters to and from their sylvan abodes, well, this never would have happened. The logic is inescapable.
Let Senator John Ensign run the DC Summer Youth Employment Program. He gets good jobs for teens and his gun-totin' pals can start a youth marksmanship program.
Youth marksmanship program? Who'll be the shootee and who'll be the shooter? I wonder.
Who'll be the shootee and who'll be the shooter?
Shirts vs. Skins, just like always.
I'd like to know what hillvada has to say about this.
I'm surprised nobody's blamed Marion Barry yet. The Summer Jobs Program was his idea, y'know?
You mean when the Summer "Jobs" program meant you stayed at home and just turned up every other Friday to collect your paycheck? Much better system than this new-and-improved program.
National legislation requiring that all guns be embeddded with an RF chip at point of manufacture, allowing their remote detection, would put an end to this very quicky. But of course the gun lobby -- accessories to every gun crime in this country -- would never stand for that.
And what of the illegal guns? That won't solve anything.
It's a good thing software can't be hacked by even the most retardedest of monkeys nowdays. Just to be safe, we should put RF chips in the ammunition as well. Also, I need a pony.
Yeah, RFID chips in guns is even more retarded than micro-stamping.
Great idea!! (Other than the fact that, like micro-stamping, it doesn't work.)
I just find it ironic that a program designed to give kids opportunities ends in behavior spawned by the attitudes it's trying to change.
See! This is why we just can't have nice things anymore...
Er, uh... and why DC kids are scary little minions of SATAN! I'd rather be locked in a room full of hardened xcons on death row than spend even a few seconds in a room of DC school kids, just a handful is too many let alone 2500! I hope they all wore bullet proof armor during that orientation...
Yeesh this is scary, I have a knack for hitting up Columbia Heights on the days when shootings occur, I often miss them only by a matter of minutes... this time it was 2 hours fortunately. I got there just in time to nearly walk in front of the nice Fox lady as she was talking to her camera :-) Look for the dumb ass in a purple polo haha....
You can imagine one of those thugs working for you and he doesn't take too kindly to your critiquing. Blammo!
Yeah, I can't imagine hiring one of those....thugs...I now HATE going shopping up there at that Target and Bed Bath and Beyond. Over the winter, at 10pm at night during the ice storm I was harrassed by a group of really young ones. They were throwing ice chunks at cars. Where are their parents? In jail? I guess if its any consolation, their kids will be joining them very soon in the cell next to them. But those 'thugs' are too far gone. They have no respect for law, people or life. If they are confiscating brass knuckles, revolvers, numb chucks, etc at ORIENTATION, I can only imagine what goes on at these places of employment. Im sure internal theft goes through the roof. Can the employers count that theft as part of their paid taxes?
The really smart ones dress the part by wearing their Scarface T-Shirts and or gang sign memorabilia t-shirts.
Not to mention, the low pants wearing punks exposing their BVD's and wearing the black Do-Rag skullcaps. The people offering jobs should have a NO THUG rule.
it's hard to imagine anything more retarded than advocating the unfettered flow of offensive weaponry as an answer to gun crime.
Have some more Kool-Aid
I wish I could even begin to comprehend the forces at work in the heads of these kids... that someone so young could be so increadibly hardened that they will pull a gun in broad daylight, shoot someone in front of a rush hour crowd, and not give a flying f*k as to the consequences...is just absolutely beyond my reasoning ability! I can't imagine why these kids are so completely amoral.
Year round schooling. DC should try it.
AND... WAMATA should move the bus stops away from that corner. Putting a Target and a metro there attracts more than enough people to bump into one another. No one waiting around for the bus = no idle crowd at that corner = fewer bystanders to get shot in the leg, & maybe then the cameras and Po can clearly see the bad guys.
Wait. You mean giving these kids jobs does not stop the violence?? WHAAAAT??
According to the DC Government website, the name of SYEP is Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's 2009 Summer Youth Employment Program.
Please include Supreme Leader's name when discussing it.
For anyone shocked by any of this, we welcome you to the District of Columbia! Enjoy your stay.
Shame on you Sommer Mathis.
"This connection appears to make it official that the city's notoriously inept summer jobs program is the absolutely most embarrassing D.C. government initiative of all time."
Another negative generalization.
How is this violence the fault of an employment program? Inept or not it isn't culpable in any way.
Making this "connection" is careless journalism. While you are at it, why not connect their race or income level or musical tastes to the violence on the street.
Let's interview the kids at the program, let's ask them if DC government was somehow involved in this situation. I bet most of those kids are great kids and looking for a summer job. This violence happens inside or outside of school or employment programs.
Let's not condemn a program for the wrong reasons.
Milo, can we condemn the program for the right reasons? I'm thinking horrific cost overruns, little supervision for participants, no vetting process for applicants (so that non residents end up in the program), not to mention many students with no work skills and no motivation? How about we condemn it for that? And I site these flaws in the program based on my personal experience in working with it for four years. It's a boondoggle, make-work, bs, hot mess of a program.
Of course you can condemn the program if you dont feel that it works, but that doesnt change the fact that it has nothing to do with this shooting. The budget overruns did not make two kids shoot each other.
Generalizations about the kids and the program don't solve the problem and don't actually provide any sort of useful reporting, DCist. The program intends to help kids like this, but no one can make them care or try.
If only there were a midnight basketball league these kids could participate in.
Is it just me or is that one cop gettin it in the behind from that other cop? Is it interracial? This is huge! Where the hell is Shiloh Baptist Church when you need them?
This kinda thing is rediculous... people just don't value human life anymore
This kinda thing is rediculous... people just don't value human life anymore