Yesterday’s WUSA newscast brought an exclusive interview that’ll be of interest to anyone living near Shaw: apparently the Fifth and O and Seventh and O crews have agreed to a truce. The linked video includes a group interview conducted by Bruce Johnson in which the gang members express bewilderment at the extent of their years-long feud, and hope for a lasting truce.

We certainly wish them the best of luck. Several current and former DCist staff members live in the area, including myself. Police tape and shell-casing markers have become an unnervingly common site around Seventh and O. And although the warring crews seemed primarily intent on victimizing one another, there’s no question that innocent bystanders were at risk as well, as the February shooting of a 15 year-old girl at Seventh and O demonstrated.

Credit for brokering the truce goes to The Alliance Of Concerned Men, Scripture Cathedral Church and the Peaceoholics. And some credit for WUSA’s coverage of the story has to go to Shaw’s plentiful bloggers, who over the past year have begun consistently reaching out to local media.

So it’s good news all around, and good luck to the newly-pacified gang members. However, we are left with one loose string: Bruce Johnson ended the video segment by warning of other D.C. gangs, including the “9th and O” crew. Unless the folks on their laptops in Azi’s Cafe have banded together to form some sort of criminal enterprise, we have no idea what he could be talking about — unless it’s the editorial stance of WUSA that every odd-numbered O Street intersection is a hotbed of criminal activity.

Photo courtesy of Off Seventh, who also has a post on the truce