Police deny series of trail attacks 'a pattern'

WND ^ | 11/08/13 | Colin Flaherty

[Anila]

Washington Post writers know how to spot racial hatred: It’s all about the “pattern,” said Mary Curtis in a recent Post column. That is how she can “determine the motive” of white members of Congress who oppose President Obama. And whether they are racist.

But this pattern-seeking reporting has not yet made its way to the Post crime desk.

And the latest example of that came Halloween night, when a “large group of assailants” beat and robbed a 50-year teacher at the Metropolitan Branch Trail, a hiking and biking path from Union Station downtown to the suburbs in Maryland.

It’s one of dozens of similar mob attacks at the Metro Trail over the last several years. All the assailants are black. Most of the victims are not.

But not once has the Post ever examined this “Question of Race” at the trail, as the paper titled the recent Curtis column about racial motivation.

[Anila]

Now I believe it is impossible to stop these crimes. So just always make sure to keep yourself armed at all times.

[pepsionice]

I would question “impossible”.

One day...some guy will arm up with two pistols and just do the walk drown this trail just around sunset. A pack of eight thugs (male and female) will line up jump the prey. All eight will be laying there on the ground, as someone reports fifteen to twenty shots to the cops. Cops arrive, find all eight dead, and think it’s some massive gang hit in DC.

For some reason, after this type of event....the trail attacks will stop. The media won’t say how or why. The mystery of shooting will be discussed for years.

Sadly, all it’d take is six cops to rig up a decoy deal....get the local pack of thugs to come out and whack on one guy, and they’d charge everyone for a crime. Naturally, the DC cops do nothing....to upset the locals or the thugs.

So, why would any idiot live or work in DC? The logical question to ask.

[Gene Eric]

Best for the Country the ‘leaders’ call for an end to the tribal aggression.

[sphinx]

This is an interesting area, urban policy-wise. And obviously a place where one needs to be alert. I have never ridden the Metropolitan Branch Trail, but I have ridden through that area for many years on my bike with no problems, on the city streets. I used to do long loop rides, starting and ending on Capitol Hill. If you head north from the Hill, you have to cross this area. I never had a problem, or saw a threat, but I was on the street and not the trail. My guess, not having been on the trail myself but looking at the map, is that the problem is seclusion along sections of the trail.

If you go to MapQuest or some other similar tool, look at the area closely. You will see that the local street grid is a maze due to the railroad tracks coming north out of Union Station, running to the train yards just north of New York Avenue, and splitting there. To add to the mess, New York and Rhode Island Avenues were turned into commuter sewers decades ago, as part of LBJ's plan to destroy the cities, which further fragments the area.

The result is a tangle of streets that don't go through and a jumble of isolated mini-neighborhoods essentially walled off by the tracks and the arterial roads. These are interspersed with industrial and warehouse areas. To the south, you have Capitol Hill, which has now developed to the point that it is pushing gentrification north of H Street, across Florida, through Trinidad, past Gallaudet, and into Ivy City (!!!). Ivy City and Trinidad have for decades been among DC's most notorious areas. They are now flipping. To the north, you have the Catholic University/Brookland areas, which have had their problems but are generally regarded as reasonably habitable.

The area between "greater Capitol Hill" (i.e. the Hill proper up to Gallaudet) and Catholic U./Brookland is now getting squeezed from both sides. This MBT assault happened near the 600 block of Rhode Island Avenue. That is close to the Rhode Island Avenue metro stop and the Giant-Home Depot shopping complex just off Rhode Island. There is new development all throughout this area. The result is a mix of urban pioneers and the underclass residuals. In ten years, the transition will be complete and these areas will be considered desirable.

As in any urban area, it pays to keep alert. The MBT apparently has some stretches that are visually isolated, even though they are immediately adjacent to well-travelled areas. That's a recipe for trouble until the last of the thugs move out to the suburbs, where they belong.

[sphinx]

P.S. For those who don’t know the city, the DC rebound in this part of northeast has reached the point at which, in this instance, we are now talking about a fairly narrow (and rapidly shrinking) ribbon of blight — right along the transportation corridor — between two solidly middle/upper middle class areas that are much larger, growing, and doing quite nicely. This blighted area is the kind of place I would like to take suburban commuters to show them what their arterial roads do to other people’s neighborhoods.

[kearnyirish2]

“P.S. For those who don’t know the city, the DC rebound in this part of northeast has reached the point at which, in this instance, we are now talking about a fairly narrow (and rapidly shrinking) ribbon of blight — right along the transportation corridor — between two solidly middle/upper middle class areas that are much larger, growing, and doing quite nicely.”

Any place looking for a “rebound” knows that some people play no role in the future of such an area. People with money won’t tolerate it, and the money will go elsewhere. Here in NJ Jersey City gentrified areas by simply pushing them out; when Asbury Park (one of the closest shore points to the NYC metro area) tried to sell itself as a playground for rich queers, the plans died when said queers realized that the permanent underclass was blocks away from their “zone”. They recently demolished a half-built hotel/condo that was born of wishful thinking before reality struck.

[sphinx]

Location, location, location. I don't know anything about Asbury Park, but in northeast DC, the MBT attacks are occurring in a rapidly gentrifying area. The problem area centers around the DC rail yards, where the tracks split with lines running north, south, and east. The area has always been light industrial, warehouse, and commercial, with late 19th and early 20th century working class housing interspersed. When the city crashed, this area was among the hardest hit. Neighborhoods like Eckington, Ivy City, and Trinidad are hard by the rail lines and once upon a time were home to many railroad workers, and blue collar folks working in the kinds of businesses that rail yards attract. Then they became slums.

But they have one saving grace. They are a little more than a mile north and northeast of the Capitol Building. Capitol Hill has gentrified. The Union Station area and the H Street corridor are redeveloping. Bloomingdale, which runs along North Capitol Street and borders the area to the west, is looking up. Catholic University and Brookland are solid anchors to the north. In a city in which suburbanites are spending two to four hours a day in their cars, these neighborhoods are becoming attractive.

I moved onto Capitol Hill over 30 years ago when that was considered a chancy decision. I've watched the boundaries of civilization march steadily out. I think it will continue. In this instance, we are looking at residual pockets of blight surrounded by strong and growing neighborhoods. They will flip. The question is how fast, and where will the displaced people go?

I always say that the poor should move to the suburbs, and that's not just being snarky. They need to move where there are job opportunities, which means the great concentrations of the very poor need to be broken up. In this instance, some of them can stay put because redevelopment is generating more retail and commercial jobs than the area has seen in many years. But rising housing costs are going to push the permanently unemployed out. Nudging those folks towards areas that have job opportunities is the challenge. People need to be willing and able to move to jobs. Welfare policy has tended to fix poor people in place, and that is part of the problem.

[central_va]

No great lover of Europe here, but the do seem to keep the riff raff on the out skirts and keep the inner cities clean ans ship shape.

[I want the USA back]

They need to boost the illusion that all minorities are peace-loving, kind, tolerant, non-violent upright citizens, while Whites are evil, hateful, racist, intolerant violent bigots.

To justify the repression of Whites.

[Travis McGee]

The police could stop them by using aggressive decoy ops.

But they won’t.

[justa-hairyape]

Does this idiot writer even realize Obama had a WHITE mother ?

[kearnyirish2]

“I always say that the poor should move to the suburbs, and that’s not just being snarky.”

It doesn’t work; the suburbs can’t afford to feed, clothe, and house people who won’t do it for themselves (there are economies of scale achieved when the lazy & shiftless are housed in tenements). As long as they aren’t looking for work, they simply loot & pillage wherever they are; better to contain them on the welfare reservations than turn them loose on hardworking taxpayers.

“But rising housing costs are going to push the permanently unemployed out. Nudging those folks towards areas that have job opportunities is the challenge. People need to be willing and able to move to jobs. Welfare policy has tended to fix poor people in place, and that is part of the problem.”

In the cities where poverty has become an industry unto itself, there are low-income housing requirements that ensure others will always have a supply of drugs and prostitutes nearby.

[Georgia Girl 2]

Maybe time to give Bernie Goetz a season pass on the Metro.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Maryland “Freak State” PING!