Public safety

A confluence of timely reports and pending personnel appointments could impact the future of law enforcement in the city. If elected officials constrain their base political ambitions and instincts, District residents may ultimately…

DC Council member Charles Allen’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety held a public roundtable with advocates and experts last week to explore alternatives to traditional policing. It was an interesting conversation; as many as 30…

As COVID-19 spreads across the District, stakeholders are warning that the coronavirus outbreak within DC Department of Corrections (DOC) facilities could have a detrimental and far-reaching impact not just on its inmate population but…

On March 14, nearly two months after the first reported case of the new coronavirus in the United States, activist Taylar Nuevelle went to the DC Superior Court to watch room C-10. There, new detainees are processed after being arrested by…

Last week’s DC Council oversight hearing into the District’s 911 call center — normally a banal annual meeting — instead revealed that the agency is falling short on some critical standards and had failed to give the Washington…

The worry is palpable. At the post office, at the supermarket where I shop, inside my own apartment building — really wherever I went over the weekend — DC residents wanted to talk about President Donald J. Trump’s order to use a…

A year ago this month, Tom Marmet was shot and killed while driving across DC in rush-hour traffic. He was heading home from his job as a social worker for local nonprofit So Others Might Eat. Tom hoped to dedicate his life to serving the…

On July 19, Ahkii Washington-Scruggs, a 17-year-old high school football player about to enter his senior year at Dunbar High School, was found shot and killed alongside his father in their apartment in Northeast DC. Their deaths were two…

So many places to die in dc in a car on the bus on the corner with a mother only a whisper away… Those are words from a poem titled “Dying” that I wrote in the 1980s. I pulled it out this week after learning of the murder…

Given his joyful nature, it’s hard to believe Imhotep Newsome routinely works 15-hour days between a full-time job and volunteer tasks. Newsome’s job as the language access program manager for the Metropolitan Police Department is all…

Immediately following the mass shooting in Virginia Beach on May 31, the eyes of the whole country fell on Southeast Virginia to mourn yet another tragedy. Twelve people were murdered on a beautiful sunny day in an all-too-common act of…

A sinkhole has opened outside the District’s $215 million crime lab and nearly two weeks after its appearance city officials still don’t know what’s causing it, The DC Line has learned. The hole opened sometime around May 21 near the…