MPD’s reassignment of police districts and boundaries is well underway, with two community meetings already held and five more planned.
Police districts and police service areas are periodically reassigned to reflect the changing populations and service needs. MPD’s last district reassignment took place in 2004.
Explained MPD:
With increasing business and residential development, and the thriving tourist and entertainment areas throughout the city, workload in the police districts has shifted significantly since the last boundary realignment. In order to equalize workload, provide the highest level of police service to all areas of the city, and ensure the safety of law enforcement officers, in 2011 MPD will realign police boundaries. The plan is based on an evaluation of crime, calls for service, development and road construction plans, community concerns, and other factors.
What does all this mean? DC residents may soon find themselves assigned to a different police district than the one they were assigned to at the start of the year.
Police Districts and PSAs also are important when we look at— and especially when we compare— crime statistics. Every year reporters and residents want to know which districts and which PSAs saw the most robberies, sexual assaults and homicides. Those numbers help tell us about our neighborhoods… who is safe and who is in danger, when and where.Read more
The Washington Post this morning has a story about Ramona Gray‘s sentencing yesterday for the stabbing death of Shemese Grant.
“You have stolen my baby girl. My Tinkerbell,” Grant’s mother said, standing only a few feet from Gray, who was shackled and wearing a gray prison jumpsuit and white cross around her neck. “I can’t judge you. I can only pray for you.”
Gray tearfully interjected: “I’m sorry, Ms. Grant. I know sorry is not good enough.”
Later, Keith Alexander spoke with the families.
Outside the courtroom after the hearing, the families of both women hugged each other as Gray’s mother apologized to Grant’s family.
“What’s so frightening is the cycle of urban decay continues,” said Lisa Whiteside, Grant’s aunt. “We now have five young children who are going to grow up without their mothers.”
Here at Homicide Watch we’ve been busy working behind the scenes on a relaunch of the site. You saw the first public roll out of that this week with the new comments system. More changes and features (all positive, we hope!) will be appearing over the next few weeks.
Part of what we’ve done to prepare for the changes is go through our data, clean it up and start to fill in the holes. To that end, I’ve cleaned up our Google spreadsheet of suspects. There were several court appearances today, so there are several updates that are already due, but I wanted to share the sheet with you sooner rather than later. It’s a resource that we rely on here to do a lot of reporting, and that means it should be in your hands, too.
A small version of the spreadsheet is below. On it you’ll find the names of those arrested on murder charges in 2011 (and some 2010 cases, too). The spreadsheet records the defendant’s date of birth, next court appearance, purpose of that court appearance, custody status, race and gender. Information comes from DC Superior Court and VineLink.
Click on the spreadsheet for a larger view of it.
Reach Homicide Watch at HomicideWatchDC {AT} gmail {DOT} com.
Signaling that the Grand Jury could take the full nine months allotted by law to indict the Latisha Frazier murder case, Judge William Jackson set the next hearing date for the case for Oct. 21.
The date is one day before the nine-month deadline to indict the case against Brian Gaither, the first of six suspects arrested in connection with Frazier’s death.
Assistant US Attorney Chris Kavanaugh, who is prosecuting the case, said that the status hearing date could be moved up if the Grand Jury is able to indict the case earlier.
Kevin L Clark and Donald Crosland were arraigned today on one charge each of first degree murder for the shooting death of Ricardo Vondell Minger in a SE DC apartment in January.
Minger was 17 years old.
Clark and Crossland both pleaded not guilty to the charges today. A jury trial is scheduled to begin in October. The men are each also charged with possession of a firearm during a crime of violence, carrying a pistol without a license and unlawful possession of a firearm.
Read the indictment after the jump. Read more
Ramona Gray, a 31-year-old DC woman who pleaded guilty to stabbing to death a woman she believed was in a romantic relationship with the father of her children, was sentenced today to 25 years in prison for the crime.
Shemese Grant, 31, was killed Aug. 31 in a parking lot in the 1700 block of Good Hope Road in Southeast D.C. An autopsy on Grant revealed 18 stab wounds to her neck, torso and extremities, according to the government’s proffer of evidence. Witnesses described the murder weapon as a long knife, with a blade of at least 7 inches.
When entering her guilty plea in January, Gray said that the government’s account, that she spotted Grant’s car in the Good Hope Road SE parking lot, waited inside a local shop for Grant to appear, then, when Grant’s back was turned, attacked her, stabbed her multiple times, then fled the scene in a friend’s car, is true and accurate.
“I just want to say I’m sorry to the Grant family,” Gray said in January. “I’m sorry for taking away a loved one.”
Judge Gerald Fisher’s sentence falls at the high end of the 22 to 26 years incarceration outlined in Gray’s plea agreement.
A press release from the USAO is after the jump.Read more
Two men, one wheelchair bound, one who walks with the aid of a cane, pleaded guilty this morning to voluntary manslaughter while armed in the death of 28-year-old Gregory Joyner in Southwest DC last November.
The defendants, Carl Purvis and Timothy Foreman, both told Judge Thomas Motley that they each were armed the night of Nov. 15 and that they each shot Joyner possibly more than once.
Prosecutors had sought a first degree murder against both men, alleging in charging documents that Purvis and Foreman were upset that Joyner had robbed Purvis’ brother. When Joyner approached the men seeking to purchase marijuana, they shot at him and continued to shoot at him after he fell to the ground.
Read more
Each Friday Homicide Watch brings you a tickler of which murder cases are coming up in the DC courts.
This information is current as of Thursday June 9 at 7 p.m. Please remember that court dates can change, even at the last minute. To view the docket of a case please go to the D.C. Courts website and search by the defendant’s name. To add an item to the calendar, email homicidewatchdc [at] gmail.com.
Details on scheduled court appearances are after the jump.
Read more
To detectives, Patricia Ann Cave described a tumultuous relationship with her boyfriend. The pair fought frequently, she said, and he had been arrested for assaulting her. When yet another disagreement turned physical on June 2, Cave picked up the phone to call 911, but her boyfriend slapped the phone out of her hand. Shortly after, Cave’s boyfriend, Lamont Warren, was dead.
“That bitch stabbed me… call 911,” Warren pleaded with a neighbor before he walked out of the apartment building and collapsed.
That’s according to charging documents citing a video interview Cave recorded for MPD homicide detectives after Warren died.
Read more
