I was heavily involved in uncovering police corruption/incompetence issues in DC a few years back and it's almost amusing, if it weren't so sad and tragic, to read the headlines in the papers two and three years after I'd launched a one-man campaign to try to get the mayor of DC and the city council to actually do something substantive and real about the crime epidemic in our city.
To wit: today's news that the DC 911 phone system incompetence killed yet another DC resident. While it's all nice and good for the police and the city council to cry crocodile tears over the death of this man - who happens to be a friend of a friend - I was involved in exposing the incompetence of the city's 911 phone system, run by the police department, two and three years. Back then, the DC police's incompetent management of the system led to the death of a young man in a Dupont Circle house fire. Scores of neighbors tried to call 911, but no one answered.
The DC police and the mayor denied the calls even occured, until several months of investigating and prodding and interviewing witnesses uncovered that YES INDEED it was the 911 system that screwed up. Of course it wasn't the DC police or the mayor who uncovered the problem - they just denied it from the beginning, then tried to cover it up. It was me working a few city councilmembers who finally uncovered that the city contributed to the death of this young kid, and more importantly, that our 911 system was totally screwed up (more deaths ensued).
How many times do people need to die before the city council, the mayor, and the police chief actually give a damn and fix this city?
My guess is, it's never going to get better - at least not for a long while. This city is corrupt - not money corrupt, but incompetent corrupt. It won't get better because our politicians and leaders and police chiefs are simply unable to act like responsible adults and do something real. Sure, they pontificate a lot, but in the end nothing changes and more people die, while paying $500,000 for one bedroom for new condos in ghettos. Is this a great city or what?
And we call this the nation's capital.
There's a man -- incoherent -- covered with blood. That's the gist of the first call to 911, describing Gregory Shipe, who was shot in the head while walking his dog in Mount Pleasant.
An investigation has now revealed two emergency operators failed to give the incident proper priority. They didn't get police officers headed to the scene quickly enough -- even after the caller reported hearing a pop that could have been a gunshot. For 14 minutes that call was treated more like an accidental fall than a homicide, a city investigation finds.
Councilman Jim Graham tells The Washington Post that delay in getting police to respond may have hurt the murder investigation. Police believe the shooting was a botched robbery. No arrests have been made in the case.
