Gunfire Incidents in Shaw Rattle Residents, Prompt More Patrols

In a Northwest Washington neighborhood where residents finally were getting accustomed to sleeping through the night, gunfire has erupted again, with at least six people wounded this year.

Police attribute the violence in the Shaw area to warring street "crews" and have stepped up patrols. In one incident, four teenagers were hit at a bus stop by drive-by gunfire. In another, a white Cadillac was pumped full of bullets in broad daylight.

Grandmothers are afraid to leave their homes; children are being kept inside. Longtime residents are saying, "Not again," while newcomers are posting items on blogs about the outbreak of violence, including many nights when gunshots can be heard in the area.

"This week, it's worse than it has been in a while. Our seniors don't feel safe to go out to the store," said Barbara Curtis, a community activist. "Something has to be done. What, I don't know, how, I don't know, but we have to do something."

The trouble appears to have started the night of Jan. 9, when two people were shot in an alley in the 1200 block of Seventh Street. Four more teenagers were shot about 9 p.m. Feb. 18 in a drive-by by the bus stop at Seventh and N streets, police said. Then, at 2:30 p.m. Feb. 23, someone began firing at the white Cadillac in a parking lot near Eighth and R streets. No one was hit in that attack, police said.

Residents have weathered years of feuds. They remember the drug wars of the 1980s, as well as a shooting rampage at the old O Street Market in 1994 in which one person was killed and eight others wounded. In the more recent past, crews from various streets occasionally traded shots in the area, located in the shadow of the Washington Convention Center.

A breakthrough appeared to come last summer -- a truce between two crews. The crews from Seventh and O streets and Fifth and O streets shook hands, and the old rivals even went on field trips together, said Tyrone Parker, executive director of the Alliance of Concerned Men, one of the nonprofit groups that brokered the deal.

"We went from being woken up several times a night by gunfire last summer to being able to sleep through the night without having to wake up," said Alexander M. Padro, who has lived in Shaw for 11 years. Like Curtis, he is an advisory neighborhood commissioner.

Despite the recent trouble, the peace agreement is holding, Parker said. What's changed, according to police, is the return to the area of a man who until recently had been locked up. A reputed 7th and O crew member, he appears to be a target of another crew, police said.

"It's not a new phenomenon. Most of these crew things are not," said Assistant Police Chief Diane Groomes. "This one goes back to a murder from January of 2007."

On Jan. 27, 2007, Deon A. Peoples, 29, was shot several times in the stairwell of an apartment building in the 1500 block of Seventh Street NW.

The returning prisoner was at the scene of that killing, Groomes said. Now rivals from the Lincoln-Westmoreland crew -- not part of the truce -- are trying to exact revenge, she said.

Instead of laying low, Groomes said, the man "was down there, flexing. They also call it 'mean mugging' " -- throwing dirty looks their way. That made matters worse, she said.

Groomes said police are talking about putting gunshot detection technology in the area, which would alert them and identify the location of shootings. Meanwhile, they have set up a 24-hour watch at Seventh and O streets.

"I'm hoping that will immediately curb the violence," said Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2).

"When the convention center opened five years ago, I thought we had solved the problem back then," Evans added. "The frustrating part for me is that we went through all of this a couple years ago."