Update: We’ve gotten information that Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) will be hosting Friday night potlucks in Potomac Gardens starting on May 30 to discuss issues related to neighborhood safety. He’s indicated that he’ll ask the police department’s top brass to attend, as well as community leaders.

As the District continues grappling with a stubborn and constantly shifting crime problem, residents in one Capitol Hill neighborhood are debating a controversial response — marching on a housing project.

Residents of the Hill East section of Capitol Hill (generically thought to encompass much of the Hill from 11th Street to RFK) have in the past days discussed and debated crime in their neighborhood, focusing primarily on incidents involving teenagers. In one posting to a neighborhood email list, a resident proposed organizing a march on Potomac Gardens, a housing project located south of Pennsylvania Avenue where many alleged assailants have fled or are thought to live. (Full disclosure: I used to live two blocks from Potomac Gardens, and last year was robbed by four teens who dispersed into the large project.) A resident who identified themselves as “S & P” wrote in their posting:

Seriously, it just occurred to me, why not march through Potomac Gardens to protest and call attention to at least the following: the consistently awful management of PG and places like it in the city; the inherent unfairness of the disproportionate number of calls for police and ambluance service to — or as a result of — residents residing, on the dole, at PG; the childish absurdity and paucity of the “no-snitch” code embraced and perpetuated by PG residents; the ineffectual lip-service paid to those of us who fund, through our taxes, places throughout the city like PG, but who are constantly victimized by its residents and particularly by the children of its lease-holders; the absurdity of DC’s juvenile shield laws that seem to fly in the face of the 1st Ammendment when it comes to sharing information, even as a victim, about extremely violent juvenile offenders; and finally, the simplest, we’re just all sick of the crap we have been force-fed by our civic leaders, PC pundits, and apologists alike, that living in an economically, racially, and demographically diverse urban environment entails accepting that we should expect to be assaulted, stolen from, and abused by those among us who are deemed “less fortunate?”

Predictably, the idea provoked a heated debate that has continued over the last three days. While many residents applauded the idea, other expressed concern that it would only serve to marginalize residents in the project.

Image of Potomac Gardens taken from the D.C. Housing Authority website.