First ANC Meeting of 2024 Confronts Crime and Bagels
By • January 10, 2024 0 1561
The first 2024 meeting of the Georgetown-Burleith-Hillandale Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC 2E) on Jan. 8 dealt with last year’s continuing problems as well as looking to the year ahead.
Rising crime in Washington, D.C., included more incidents in the first days of 2024 that included at least two armed robberies at small shops on Q and P Streets NW – plus the 6 p.m. high-jacking on Jan. 5 of a jeep with its engine running and a four month-old baby inside, while her mother was in a store on the 3000 block of M St NW. The baby was dropped off in its car-seat at a stranger’s house in the 1500 block of 28th St. SE after one hour. Police have not found the stolen car nor the hijackers; the mother has not been identified. Police urged residents not to leave their cars idling or with things of value (like babies, perhaps?) in them. [See our recent Crime story on these incidents here.]
The live crime update included: Mass robberies reportedly down at local CVS’s and Safeway – perhaps because of increased police presence. Residents were asked to orient their surveillance cameras not only to cover their entrance doors, but also the street to better help police identify package thieves.
As for increased parking enforcement, Commissioner Daniel Chao was told by city officials that Georgetown had more enforcement officers than most communities (three instead of two), although one had been absent for maternity leave but was coming back soon. The same story of not enough resources to enforce laws was the focus of a report about the explosion in the amount of medical cannabis business applications. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office reported that the deadline to have an approved cannabis medical business license in D.C. is Jan. 29. No unlicensed shops are to be allowed after Jan 30. [See our recent story on Georgetown’s flourishing pot shops here.]
The spokesperson for Ward 2 Council member Brooke Pinto, chairperson of the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety for the D.C. Council, urged commissioners to push for support of the mayor and Pinto’s two new proposals to tighten up detention policies and to add more mediation training for police: the Active Amendment Act of 2023 and the Safer Stronger DC initiative. Money for recruitment of new police officers? Not clear.
The updates from governmental agencies this month were mostly incomplete so early in the year. The Department of Transportation reported that its exclusive Georgetown “Circulation and Traffic Study” that had gotten off to a fast start last spring and was supposed to be finalized in November of 2023, might not be finalized until February. An interim report showing new data is available.
The longest item on the ANC agenda was a proposed resolution dealing with resident complaints about the popular bagel shop, Call Your Mother, on the corner of 35th and N Streets NW. Its original application for a variance commercial permit in a residential area had been controversial in 2019, although the corner with the bright pink building also has Coffee Republic, which serves students and staff from Georgetown University. The problem now is that Call Your Mother is so successful that dozens of people line up on weekends to order, then stay and eat, sitting on the steps of private homes. “It’s not a typical corner store where people buy things and return home to consume them,” said Commissioner Paul Maysak. “The owners have cooperated with daily trash pickup, put up signs not to sit on private property, early closing hours and the like. But there is only so much you can do with crowds of customers.”
The matter may be coming up for a zoning complaint hearing at the end of the month, but the ANC does not have an advisory voice there on zoning complaints, ANC Chair Gwen Lohse said. Nevertheless, Commissioners voted 7 to 2 to pass a resolution voicing concern about other possible problems. “But this is really about the number of customers on weekends,” Maysak said. “I don’t have a solution for that.”
