Detectives were wrapping up an investigation into a shooting in a McDonald’s parking lot in Northeast Washington when police in unmarked cars swooped in. Officers confronted people leaving the restaurant, a witness said, grabbing one.
“What’s going on?” Ashley Renee Ruff, an advisory neighborhood commissioner for the area around Benning Road and Minnesota Avenue, said she asked a D.C. police officer on Wednesday.
She said the officer replied, “You know, this is a drug free zone.”
Temporary drug free zones are part of a public safety law called Secure D.C., which took effect March 11 to help combat a historic spike in violent crime. It is meant to give police more authority to confront people suspected of illegal drug activity in the designated areas.
One such zone had been established around the McDonald’s. But its five-day limit expired Tuesday. That officers appeared to be citing it as a drug-free zone one day later while stopping people raised concerns for Ruff, a middle school teacher. She worries that officers are using the law as a pretext to return to a more confrontational style of law enforcement, harking back to random stops by police “jump out” squads decades ago.
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A D.C. police spokesman could not confirm the exchange that Ruff recounted with the officer. In a statement, the department said it is adhering to the strict limits of the new law and that drug-free zones are established only after a detailed analysis of crime trends and 24-hour notice to residents in targeted areas.
Questioned about the incident at the McDonald’s, D.C. Police Chief Pamela A. Smith told WUSA (Channel 9) that she is “not concerned about heavy-handedness in those spaces.” She said supervisors are aware of what police can do after the drug-free zones expire. D.C. police declined to make Smith or other department officials available for interviews with The Washington Post.
The encounter on Minnesota Avenue is indicative of the challenges police face amid pressure to restore order, seize firearms and prevent shootings following the worst year for homicide in D.C. in more than a quarter-century. Residents have demanded police clear areas where drugs are openly sold and used, and many people interviewed support the initiative. The first three drug-free zones expired Tuesday at Minnesota Avenue and Benning Road NE, Woodland Terrace in Southeast and Chinatown.
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Two zones active through Monday morning are in parts of Trinidad in Northeast and Petworth in Northwest, where seven orange signs were taped to light poles and trunks of barren trees at Georgia Avenue and Upshur Street. On each were big block letters: “WARNING. DRUG FREE ZONE,” defining a small triangular-shaped area of about two square blocks designated by police as a hotspot for crime.
On Friday, the neighborhood was waking up as it would any weekday morning. Two men waited for the doors to open at the public library. Kids and their parents made their way to one of the six schools nearby. Joggers jogged. A bus came and went. An advisory neighborhood commissioner waited for coffee with his husky, Minnie.
In other words, the neighborhood did not feel like the draconian “drug-free zone” some feared it might become when police gave it that designation two days earlier.
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At a 7-Eleven, Matrice Vines, 51, opened the glass door for a woman walking inside.
“Good morning,” he said. She smiled. “Have a nice day.”
Then he closed the door behind her, hoping for a tip.
Vines, who said he spends a lot of time outside of the 7-Eleven, had heard about the drug-free zones through the neighborhood grapevine. Then he noticed more officers walking around the convenience store. They had been nice to him, he said, and asked him a few times how he was doing. He also noticed “the drug crowd” was gone from behind the store.
“It’s a good thing,” he said. “It’s safer and more secure here.”
Down the street and around the corner, the area’s ANC commissioner, Stephen Marencic, and his dog were waiting for coffee from Lulabelle’s, a cafe and ice cream shop. Marencic said most people in the area felt relatively safe before the drug-free zone was imposed. He was skeptical of its effect.
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Marencic said he believes the District needs to take action to address crime but is concerned that the drug-free zone designation is a “short-term solution for a long-term problem.” He said he and other commissioners in the neighborhood are watching how police enforce the law — particularly whether officers racially profile Petworth residents.
“It’s a matter of wait and see,” he said. “ … It’s just too early to tell.”
In front of him, four men sat at a bus stop, smoking and peeling hard-boiled eggs. Asked about drug-free zones, one man, who declined to give his name, spoke strongly against them. “I’ve been here for 60 years and we want our neighborhood back,” he said. “Everyone wants to come around here and mess it up.”
He inhaled and said, “We ain’t bothering nobody.”
Nearby, a worn piece of white paper hung between two signs. In barely visible writing, it read, “WAR ON DRUGS IS A WAR ON US.”
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Five miles away in Trinidad, Salvador Sauceda-Guzman, chairman of that community’s Advisory Neighborhood Commission, said he believes police will use the law to “break some of the bad habits we have had in the neighborhood.”
He said people typically gather along Mount Olivet Road NE. “They’re just sipping something, smoking something, minding their own business,” he said. “But sometimes, it brings out the worst in people, and that brings guns. That is what we want police to focus on.”
Khadija Watson, an ANC representative in Woodland Terrace, a compact, historically high-crime neighborhood in Southeast, said police need to follow the law, but she also said life in the community has become untenable.
“People are shooting and robbing and taking cars,” Watson said. “It’s dangerous. … We really need the new law, if it’s going to help better this community. … The mayor should let the police do what they have to do.”
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The Secure D.C. bill, championed by D.C. Council member Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2), chairwoman of the public safety committee, passed nearly unanimously on March 5. In addition to drug-free zones, the law includes tougher penalties for illegal firearms and expands pretrial detention.
Pinto has defended drug-free zones, saying constituents feared police didn’t have enough tools to disrupt drug dealing and other criminal activity. In a statement, she said she is monitoring “to ensure officers fairly, safely, and appropriately implement” the initiative. She added that “continued training and oversight are crucial to ensure officers are all clear on the boundaries of this tool.”
Establishing drug-free zones was among the more contested parts of the legislation, and activists and civil rights groups likened it to police tactics during the war on drugs that led to mass incarceration.
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Council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8), who represents neighborhoods with some of the highest violent-crime rates in the city, said he has been receiving calls from residents concerned about aggressive policing since the bill passed. He cited complaints about officers using the term “drug-free zones” as an excuse to stop people unjustifiably.
White, the only council member to vote present on the bill, said he had long worried that the legislation would confer to police powers that could be abused. The other 12 lawmakers supported the legislation. White said he didn’t cast a no vote because of amendments he introduced, one of which was designed to maintain measures of police transparency in their disciplinary process.
“I just want to make sure they are following the law,” White said of D.C. police officers. “The law doesn’t give them rights to stop people without probable cause.”
D.C. police have said the drug-free-zone provision is “not an anti-loitering law,” though it does allow officers to confront people congregating with the intent to distribute or possess illegal drugs and evict them from the area under threat of arrest. Police said they arrested just two people in the first three zones from March 14 to March 19, both outside the Gallery Place Metro station.
Jay Brown, an activist who runs the Community Shoulders nonprofit counseling program, said he sees little evidence of social workers and counselors in drug-free zones helping people who are experiencing drug addiction and mental health issues.
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But Barbara J. Bazron, director of the D.C. Department of Behavioral Health, said her agency, along with community-based groups, are in the zones linking people to services and helping with medical issues, such as drug overdoses.
“The mayor’s approach is to make sure that services are available to residents in those areas,” Bazron said.
The area around the McDonald’s near Minnesota and Benning has been a challenge for some time. In July, it was among the first areas Smith toured after being named acting police chief. She passed by a low, red-brick retaining wall in front of the restaurant that had become a troublesome gathering spot.
A resident implored Smith at the time: “Please clean this up. Something is going to happen.”
Then came Wednesday’s shooting, which police said occurred during a daylight robbery in the McDonald’s parking lot. The victim survived and police arrested a suspect.
Ruff, the advisory neighborhood commissioner, said she had worked with city officials to remove the retaining wall, calling it “detrimental to the community.” She said people who gather there need help for addiction and mental health, not the type of police action she said happened after Wednesday’s shooting.
Ruff said she watched officers in plain clothes but wearing marked police vests drive onto the lot, search vehicles and briefly detain a young woman. She said one officer told her they had seen “something earlier that looked suspicious.”
For all the good that some people think the drug-free zones will do, Ruff foresees a negative outcome.
“It has tore the relationship” with their Sixth District police station, she said. “Police are trying to put fear in the Black and Brown community.”
Lauren Lumpkin contributed to this report
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