Joshua and Christian Benton, two of the five individuals on trial for the July 2008 murder of 13-year-old Alonzo Robinson in Trinidad, were acquitted this morning inside D.C. Superior Court, WTOP reports. more ›

D.C. police have arrested a second man allegedly involved in the murder of Spingarn High School student Joseph Sharps on November 8 in Trinidad. Larnell Allen, a 19-year-old, was taken into custody on Friday and charged with first-degree murder while armed. Police believe that Allen -- along with Kwan Kearney, who was arrested last Tuesday -- killed Sharps as he was walking with a friend on the 1300 block of Holbrook Street NE. No concrete motive for the shooting has been established. more ›

Good morning Washington. Is everyone ready to venture forth for another day of travel? Just close your eyes, bite down hard, rip quickly and get it over with. And if you're choosing to drive back home today, that band aid is going to feel more like a gunshot to the head, as our area is notorious for bottlenecks. For those of us lucky to have gotten our gluttonous fill of turkey in town, sit back and watch our version of the Macy's parade, as visiting relatives flee en masse and far flung transplants return to the district. more ›

NBCWashington.com reports that three District residents, who were part of the legal challenge against 2008's Trinidad police checkpoints, will be awarded $3,500 and legal fees as part of a settlement reached last week. As part of the deal, police will also be required to expunge any data they collected on individuals they stopped while the checkpoints were in effect. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in July 2009 that the highly controversial police checkpoints infringed on the neighborhood residents' Fourth Amendment rights protecting against unlawful search and seizure. more ›

Are you drowning in a sea of negativity, the kind that seems to, at times, swallow this city up like a whale does krill? Yeah, I hear you. But, there are good stories out there, I swear. For instance: David C. Lipscomb's story in the Washington Times about how Trinidad has made the transition from a place more known for random gunfights and vehicle checkpoints to a neighborhood united, working with police, churches, advisory neighborhood commissions, the city government, and, of course, the residents, to make living there a better place. It's a rare thing when all of those agencies come together and flex their muscles for a common purpose; we should cast the spotlight it when it happens. more ›

The U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. on Thursday denied the District's petition to re-hear its case challenging the constitutionality of the police checkpoint program used in Trinidad in 2008. more ›

The woman who was struck by a Metrobus in Trinidad on Monday evening has died, according to D.C. Police. The victim, who has been identified as Stephanie Richardson, 61, of the 1600 block of 11th Place NE, died at just after 4 p.m. Tuesday afternoon. more ›

A 30-year-old Maryland man was found shot Thursday evening in the 1600 block of K Street NE, on the edge of the Trinidad neighborhood. He was discovered at about 5:45 p.m. after police officers responded to a Shotspotter alert, the Post reports. The victim, Andre Pate, later died from his injuries at a local hospital. D.C. police had no more information available today on the shooting. more ›

Read this fascinating story from The New York Times on the D.C. Fire Department's Engine Company 10, by all accounts the busiest firehouse in the country. These Trinidad firefighters at the "House of Pain" spend most of their time not fighting fires, but rather serving as emergency medical responders.

About 80 percent of the calls handled by Engine Company 10 are medical emergencies because the firehouse serves one of the city’s poorest areas, where few residents have health insurance, doctors’ checkups are rare, and medical problems are left to fester until someone dials 911.

The Post reports this morning that the shooting of 24-year-old Trey Joyner -- an incredibly messy incident, which saw hundreds of residents pour on to the streets of Trinidad in protest and the placement of six Park Police officers on administrative leave -- isn't much closer to being hashed out, although community activists are certainly leaving their mark. Joyner was shot to death by Park Police on June 8, after officers had received a tip that there was a man with a gun in the area -- though how the Police got from the tip to discharging a weapon is still very much in contention. With yesterday's ruling that Trinidad's checkpoints violated resident's constitutional rights, this story will most certainly become much more visible as details about what actually happened are revealed. more ›

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has ruled that last summer's controversial "Neighborhood Safety Zone" checkpoints in the Trinidad neighborhood were likely unconstitutional, sending the case back to the U.S. District Court for trial. more ›

NBCWashington.com reports that The Partnership for Civil Justice -- who unsuccessfully sued the city last year in an attempt to strike down last year's controversial checkpoints in Trinidad -- was back in front of an appeals panel yesterday in a last-ditch attempt to strike the practice. Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, an attorney with the organization, argued that the checkpoints violated "fundamental constitutional rights," and that the police's standards for selecting who could enter the neighborhood were arbitrary. The checkpoints in Trinidad, an incredibly combustible issue last summer which even led to internal rifts in the police force, could potentially return this year if the appeal is denied and violence spikes again. more ›

The Examiner's Bill Myers managed to get a hold of a bunch of internal MPD emails concerning last summer's controversial "Neighborhood Safety Zone" checkpoints in Trinidad, and the resulting story paints a chaotic picture of disagreement and confusion over the tactic within the department. A series of emails written by Assistant Chief Diane Groomes complained that the additional officers sent to staff the Trinidad checkpoint had left areas of the city under-protected. You can download the emails here (PDF). more ›

D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier announced this afternoon that five men have been arrested for the killing of 13-year-old Alonzo Robinson and shooting of four other people in Trinidad last July. The shooting spree was one of the worst incidents in a wave of increased violence in Trinidad that lead police to establish controversial checkpoints in the area. Police say the five men, all from the Kenilworth-Parkside area, sprayed gunfire in the neighborhood in an attempt to settle a cross-neighborhood dispute with members of the Trinidad neighborhood. One of the suspects was arrested in early July and has been cooperating with the police. more ›

We balked at the initial news that the Metropolitan Police Department planned to throw up barriers and checkpoints in certain D.C. neighborhoods experiencing excessive violent crime. Later, when we learned the details of the first case, the week-long checkpoint that was established in Trinidad, the MPD's plan appeared to be both constitutionally dubious and potentially not very effective. So it's with great interest that we read today's Washington Post editorial lambasting critics of the checkpoints for getting more upset about murky constitutional issues than about high rates of violent crime and murder.

There's a dispute over whether the operation violated Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. There is some merit to the claim that police were using the checkpoints for general law enforcement, which could render them unconstitutional. But city attorneys make a convincing argument that because the program's goal was the physical safety of roadways, it passes constitutional muster. Indeed, they liken the Trinidad stops to sobriety checkpoints, which have been upheld by the Supreme Court.

Chief Lanier announced for the first time that the stated reasons for instituting a blockade of the Trinidad neighborhood were not the true reasons, or at least not the major reason, behind the cordon. There was another, more important, reason, she told the committee, but she could not reveal what that reason was. If the committee members knew what she knew, she was confident that they would agree with her actions, but she couldn’t tell them what she knew. She had, she said, specific information that there were specific individuals who were going to enter that neighborhood to commit a particular crime. Preventing that crime was the real reason for quarantining Trinidad. No lesser measures — tracking those specific individuals, warning the intended victims of the crime, etc. — would have sufficed to prevent the crime. Only a full-scale lock down of the neighborhood and lockout of other citizens was enough. But councilmembers would have to take her word for it, because she couldn’t tell them anything more.