I'm back. A fascinating experience. I only arrived here today so for me it feels like 5am - so I'll post a full account in a day or so; I need sleep now. The two cops I was with gave me their contact details and invited me back for another patrol in three weeks before I fly home...I'm not so sure about that!
I'm back. A fascinating experience. I only arrived here today so for me it feels like 5am - so I'll post a full account in a day or so; I need sleep now. The two cops I was with gave me their contact details and invited me back for another patrol in three weeks before I fly home...I'm not so sure about that!
Alberta - British Colombia - Idaho - Montana - Wyoming - Utah & then back. Lots of driving - great!!
Ending up in Salt Lake City & taking in Real Salt Lake vs Chicago Fire which is an MLS game, not roller derby.
Been to some great places in Idaho (Hell's Canyon, Craters of the Moon, Stanley, Hailey), Wyoming (Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Jackson), and Utah (Arches, Canyonlands, Bryce, Zion, Capital Reef, Goblin Valley, Goosenecks, Muley Point, Mogi Dugway, SLC, Bonneville)...
Washington DC Police Patrols - Part 1 (sorry it's so long)
‘This may get ugly. You may want to wait in the car,’ said Officer Paul Gauss, turning to me, seated in the back of the patrol car. It sounded like an instruction rather than a suggestion so I remained where I was. We were halfway through my four-hour stint with the Washington DC police force, out on patrol in the Sixth District, not an area of the city which I imagine many tourists see, given that it is one of the most impoverished and one of the most crime-ridden.
* * * It was the first night of my USA trip and I had arranged beforehand from home, via e-mail, to experience a ‘ridealong’, something which I had previously done in Bangkok in 2003 and The Bronx, New York, a year later. Since then, I have advanced firmly into middle age so arguably should have grown out of unnecessary risk-taking but after some deliberation, I decided that at least once more, I wanted to take advantage of a scheme which few people seem to know about let alone experience.
The application form on-line allowed me to choose any time of day with a maximum duration of four hours and also allowed me to nominate a preferred district. I opted for 7-11pm as this would give me the opportunity of seeing the district both before and after dark and, as I was not familiar with DC, wrote that I would like ‘any challenging district similar to the Bronx’. To my surprise, my wishes were granted and I was e-mailed a response, instructing me not to wear ripped jeans or t-shirts, and that ‘under no circumstances shall cameras, recording devices and cell phones be used.’ The e-mail concluded with ‘Be safe and enjoy’.
So how dangerous is the Sixth District and how worried should I have been? I am not entirely sure and can only gauge it from what I was told at the time and from the crime statistics that I researched only today (nearly three weeks after my return to England). I’ll come to the anecdotes later but the statistics are these: so far in the city, there have been 92 homicides this year of which the highest number, 34, have been in the Sixth District (18 last year). Whilst homicide rates in DC are well down on the figures in the late 1990s, they have been climbing year-on-year since 2012. In the Sixth District there have been 734 reported violent crimes this year, lower than in 2015, and yet - as well as homicide - there has been an increase in sex abuse, robbery with a gun, assault with a dangerous weapon and theft.
What concerned me from the moment that my application was approved was the prospect of making my way back to the youth hostel in the city after 11pm. In the Bronx, the two cops whom I’d spent seven hours with on patrol, advised me not to take the subway back to Manhattan due to the late hour and instead we spent all night on a bar crawl of the Bronx. Here, in DC, the cops were again concerned, one officer in the station telling me that they would make sure that I did not have to make my own way out of the district - as it turned out, one of the officers I’d been on patrol with drove me to the hostel.
What I had given little thought to was the journey to the precinct. The safest option would have been a taxi but the precinct was a good half-hour drive from my hostel so I economised by taking the bus. At this point, I should note that at the end of this night’s patrol, both Paul and Mike gave me their contact details and invited me to accompany them on another patrol a fortnight later, after my tour of the Deep South. This I did and it was on the second occasion when I felt more aware of the risk that I was taking, as the bus took a different route and dropped me in an area which did not correspond with the directions I had been given. On the two occasions I caught a bus into the Sixth District, by the time the bus reached its destination, I was the only white passenger on board for this was almost exclusively a black neighbourhood. In the seven hours that I spent there, I only saw one white resident. I could not help but feel conspicuous disembarking from the bus and feeling concern about getting lost on my walk to the precinct. Consider this: on the MPD’s website, there is a page of advice to runners, walkers and cyclists - one tip reads ‘Wear an identification tag or carry a driver’s lisense. If you don’t have a place to carry your ID, write your name, phone number and blood type on the inside of your athletic shoe. Include any important medical information.’
I boarded the only other bus, idling nearby. The driver told me he’d be passing close to the precinct and when he saw that I didn’t have the correct change for the fare, said I could ride for free - I sensed that he felt it was unsafe for me to be in that area, a feeling that was confirmed by the police officers later when I explained where the bus had stopped.
Arriving at the precinct on my first night, after confirming my identity and signing a waiver which meant that the MPD were not legally responsible for my safety, I was introduced to police officers, Paul Gauss and Mike Bonnard, and almost immediately we were in the patrol car and away from the bunker-like precinct building.
The Sixth District lies south-east of the city centre and consists of ‘a mix of single-family detached and row houses, along with a significant number of public housing projects’, according to the Metropolitan Police Department’s website. It is a low-rise neighbourhood so it lacked the intimidating, looming brownstone high-rises of the Bronx, in fact it looked quite pleasant but it within minutes we were approaching a junction where a few prostitutes were standing back from the road and a small group of male youths were gathered near a car which drove away as we approached. I couldn’t help but be reminded of scenes from ‘The Wire’ at moments like these (a programme which Mike and Paul said had been very popular with the police) and later when, as we neared one housing estate, boys of about 10-12 years old, some on bicycles, acted as lookouts for the drug-dealers. ‘Twelve!’ they shouted up the road - the codeword for ‘the police are coming’ - as they scattered. A hundred metres further on, we rounded a corner to see a thinning cloud of dust, the only evidence of the car which had been there moments before. ‘Nine...six...twenty-three. Can’t you try another number for once?’ mocked Paul over the car’s tannoy to the boys. ‘Fuck you!’ came the response.
Comments
Ollie -"The South of where?"
Stan -"The South of London,"
Way Out West.
I'm all ears.
Have a great trip!
‘This may get ugly. You may want to wait in the car,’ said Officer Paul Gauss, turning to me, seated in the back of the patrol car. It sounded like an instruction rather than a suggestion so I remained where I was. We were halfway through my four-hour stint with the Washington DC police force, out on patrol in the Sixth District, not an area of the city which I imagine many tourists see, given that it is one of the most impoverished and one of the most crime-ridden.
* * *
It was the first night of my USA trip and I had arranged beforehand from home, via e-mail, to experience a ‘ridealong’, something which I had previously done in Bangkok in 2003 and The Bronx, New York, a year later. Since then, I have advanced firmly into middle age so arguably should have grown out of unnecessary risk-taking but after some deliberation, I decided that at least once more, I wanted to take advantage of a scheme which few people seem to know about let alone experience.
The application form on-line allowed me to choose any time of day with a maximum duration of four hours and also allowed me to nominate a preferred district. I opted for 7-11pm as this would give me the opportunity of seeing the district both before and after dark and, as I was not familiar with DC, wrote that I would like ‘any challenging district similar to the Bronx’. To my surprise, my wishes were granted and I was e-mailed a response, instructing me not to wear ripped jeans or t-shirts, and that ‘under no circumstances shall cameras, recording devices and cell phones be used.’ The e-mail concluded with ‘Be safe and enjoy’.
So how dangerous is the Sixth District and how worried should I have been? I am not entirely sure and can only gauge it from what I was told at the time and from the crime statistics that I researched only today (nearly three weeks after my return to England). I’ll come to the anecdotes later but the statistics are these: so far in the city, there have been 92 homicides this year of which the highest number, 34, have been in the Sixth District (18 last year). Whilst homicide rates in DC are well down on the figures in the late 1990s, they have been climbing year-on-year since 2012. In the Sixth District there have been 734 reported violent crimes this year, lower than in 2015, and yet - as well as homicide - there has been an increase in sex abuse, robbery with a gun, assault with a dangerous weapon and theft.
What concerned me from the moment that my application was approved was the prospect of making my way back to the youth hostel in the city after 11pm. In the Bronx, the two cops whom I’d spent seven hours with on patrol, advised me not to take the subway back to Manhattan due to the late hour and instead we spent all night on a bar crawl of the Bronx. Here, in DC, the cops were again concerned, one officer in the station telling me that they would make sure that I did not have to make my own way out of the district - as it turned out, one of the officers I’d been on patrol with drove me to the hostel.
What I had given little thought to was the journey to the precinct. The safest option would have been a taxi but the precinct was a good half-hour drive from my hostel so I economised by taking the bus. At this point, I should note that at the end of this night’s patrol, both Paul and Mike gave me their contact details and invited me to accompany them on another patrol a fortnight later, after my tour of the Deep South. This I did and it was on the second occasion when I felt more aware of the risk that I was taking, as the bus took a different route and dropped me in an area which did not correspond with the directions I had been given. On the two occasions I caught a bus into the Sixth District, by the time the bus reached its destination, I was the only white passenger on board for this was almost exclusively a black neighbourhood. In the seven hours that I spent there, I only saw one white resident. I could not help but feel conspicuous disembarking from the bus and feeling concern about getting lost on my walk to the precinct. Consider this: on the MPD’s website, there is a page of advice to runners, walkers and cyclists - one tip reads ‘Wear an identification tag or carry a driver’s lisense. If you don’t have a place to carry your ID, write your name, phone number and blood type on the inside of your athletic shoe. Include any important medical information.’
I boarded the only other bus, idling nearby. The driver told me he’d be passing close to the precinct and when he saw that I didn’t have the correct change for the fare, said I could ride for free - I sensed that he felt it was unsafe for me to be in that area, a feeling that was confirmed by the police officers later when I explained where the bus had stopped.
Arriving at the precinct on my first night, after confirming my identity and signing a waiver which meant that the MPD were not legally responsible for my safety, I was introduced to police officers, Paul Gauss and Mike Bonnard, and almost immediately we were in the patrol car and away from the bunker-like precinct building.
The Sixth District lies south-east of the city centre and consists of ‘a mix of single-family detached and row houses, along with a significant number of public housing projects’, according to the Metropolitan Police Department’s website. It is a low-rise neighbourhood so it lacked the intimidating, looming brownstone high-rises of the Bronx, in fact it looked quite pleasant but it within minutes we were approaching a junction where a few prostitutes were standing back from the road and a small group of male youths were gathered near a car which drove away as we approached. I couldn’t help but be reminded of scenes from ‘The Wire’ at moments like these (a programme which Mike and Paul said had been very popular with the police) and later when, as we neared one housing estate, boys of about 10-12 years old, some on bicycles, acted as lookouts for the drug-dealers. ‘Twelve!’ they shouted up the road - the codeword for ‘the police are coming’ - as they scattered. A hundred metres further on, we rounded a corner to see a thinning cloud of dust, the only evidence of the car which had been there moments before. ‘Nine...six...twenty-three. Can’t you try another number for once?’ mocked Paul over the car’s tannoy to the boys. ‘Fuck you!’ came the response.