Harry Jaffe: As the fallout from the shooting of 14-year-old DeOnté Rawlings continues, it’s now Mayor Adrian Fenty taking some of the heat. According to Jaffe, Fenty’s decision to pay for Rawlings’ funeral and invite his sisters to speak at a press conference has soured some police officers on the young mayor, who saw the moves as an indication of where Fenty’s allegiances were. “How can Fenty rebuild trust with the police?” asks Jaffe. “’Let the investigation take its course,’ Cunningham says. ‘And start going to roll calls and speaking to officers.’ Time for Fenty to go door to door again — this time to connect with his cops.”

Jonetta Rose Barras: While the government has plenty of blame to share for Rawlings’ death, writes Rose Barras, it’s ultimately the responsibility of District parents to do something about their kids. “Together these cases raise that all-important question: Where were the parents? A certain permissiveness prevailed — although parents claimed they knew better. There seemed to have been a disconnect between knowing and acting as the master authority in their child’s life,” she writes. “Everyone knows government can never effectively do what adults, by bringing children into the world, are obligated to do as parents: keep their children out of harms way at all costs while shaping them into productive citizens. Still, it tries. And because government tries and predictably fails, it becomes the culprit. Sometimes, I feel sorry for the government.”

Courtland Milloy: Instead of trying to find someone to blame, Milloy tries to find the cloud’s silver-lining — and he does in one D.C. social worker. “When Ann Brogioli showed up in the Washington Highlands for a candlelight vigil not long ago, teenagers ran to greet her with unabashed affection. Neither D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty nor D.C. Council member Marion Barry, who represents the Southeast neighborhood, was received as warmly when each arrived,” he writes. Brogioli, who works at Hart Middle School and worked with Rawlings before he was shot, knows the bleak circumstances many of the District’s poorest children live in. “‘The odds are stacked against so many of them,’ she said, surveying the homes whose occupants she knows so intimately. Many of her nights and weekends are spent with some of the city’s poorest residents, seeking medical and financial help for them, trying to coax their children off the streets and back to school, and grieving with them when the streets win out,” recounts Milloy.