What was that chop chop chop you heard last night? Was it a medevac helicopter landing at Howard University Hospital? Was the president swinging by on Marine One for a nighttime tour of the Gage-Eckington mud pit?

Neither. Last night the MPD, equipped with air support, arrested two people at the illegal casino running out of a house on Fourth Street between Elm Street and Oakdale Place. As early as this summer we heard complaints about the illegal games going on inside. In fact this Las Vegas-upon-Fourth was so popular that its patrons clogged the parking spaces on the surrounding streets. It was only a matter of time before the house (and neighborhood in general) became a target of a violent casino heist.

Neighbors had complained of patrons loitering outside each afternoon waiting for the house to open and for the games to begin. The gambling hosts, for all the nuisances they caused, observed a self-imposed blue law, closing shop on Sunday.

But just as a roulette wheel eventually comes to a stop, the casino’s business had dwindled over the past month. Last night the MPD swooped in to stop it for good. Looks like the two arrested had rolled snake eyes.

The Metropolitan Police Department, Councilmembers Jim Graham (D – Ward 1) and Harry Thomas, Jr. (D – Ward 5), and the local ANC commissioners are hosting a public safety meeting tomorrow (Tuesday) night at 7 pm at the Mt. Pleasant Church at Second Street and Rhode Island Avenue.

The meeting will address some of the recent violence in the two neighborhoods.

Soon after we moved to the neighborhood, we playfully nicknamed the 600 block of T Street (in front of the Howard Theater) as the “Block of Blight”.  Boarded-up and decaying buildings, garbage on the street, visible idleness, public drinking, bullet-proof glass at the store counters.  The 600 block of T Street is the scene of constant littering and loitering— both clearly on display even when the Google Street View car drove by this summer (see photo above).  It wasn’t until the latest listing of MPD Third District arrests that our suspicions were confirmed: the block is the site of drug dealing, too.

On October 1, 10, and 30, three different people were arrested for “Distribution of a Controlled Substance”, and those are only the cases the police actually uncovered.

The MPD has posted a sign on the light post reading

WARNING
Persons coming into this area to buy drugs are
subject to arrest & seizure of their vehicles.

We certainly hope that this is the police department’s policy citywide regardless of whether or not there’s a sign posted.  It’s the law.

According to the MPD’s crime map, within 500 feet of that block within the past 365 days, there have been no homicides.  However, there have been two burglaries, one case of sex abuse, twelve unarmed robberies, nine armed robberies, six assaults, thirteen thefts, 46 thefts from cars, and eleven cars stolen.

The Howard Theater’s rebirth and reconstruction will at least repair the physical infrastructure (lumpy sidewalks, cracked curbstones, crumbling façades), but we also hope it fixes the social ills with it.