Ghetto Birds in the Sky...I Can Fly Twice as High...

If you live in the Trinidad Neighborhood, these signs have probably become familiar. Somehow, despite the people's Fourth Amendment Constitutional Right to be free from unlawful searches and seizures, the DC Metropolitan Police have found another way to take advantage of DC residents: the Neighborhood Safety Zone.

According to the MPD website:

The Neighborhood Safety Zone initiative has been developed to help increase security for those who live in high-crime areas around the city and to help residents reclaim their communities. The program will authorize the Metropolitan Police Department to set up public safety checks to help safeguard community members and create safer neighborhoods in the District by increasing police presence aimed at deterring crime.

So, the key to deterring crime is to terrorize the community? How successful have check-points been in the old Soviet Union? Are they stopping rockets from entering Jerusalem? Oh - maybe the goal is to re-enact Tienanmen Square?

How do residents reclaim the community if the police have turned it into a militarized zone? If and when these zones are demilitarized, will not the crime resurface?

How can anyone feel safe with "ghetto birds" buzzing overhead, peering through their windows? Several nights this week, I have witnessed these flocks of "ghetto birds" shining their bright lights as they circle various neighborhoods like vultures seeking their prey...waiting for someone to fall so they can feed on the community.

My father is a retired Chief Deputy US Marshall, former Chief of Police who designed a new police force. He has over 30 years of law enforcement experience. So, I trust his insights...

Police presence is needed - desperately. But, police presence is not helicopters with bright lights, sirens blaring, and domineering officers drunk with authority. Police presence is the old Police Athletic League (PALs). Yet, for some reason the District's PAL has not even updated any of its information since March of 2007. Police presence is officers living in the Police Districts in which they work, so that they are part of - and tied to) the community.

That is what Police Presence means in White communities...not so-called "Neighborhood Safety Zones." DC is Chocolate City, ya'll and we must demand better treatment.