drug use on the Unit Block of U Street NW

From a resident who lives near this area:

I was wondering if you might pass this on to the community so other folks nearby can keep their eyes out for similar activity and report to the police - especially considering this happened at 9am on a Sunday morning!

Easter Sunday, around 9:00am on the Unit Block of U Street, I was outside and noticed an out-of-place-looking white couple digging through an older red pickup truck. When I went inside, I pointed them out to my husband and we kept our eye on them. After about 15-20 minutes my husband saw them sitting in their truck, smoking something through a little glass tube. At that point I called the police and described what we`d seen and gave a description of the car. About 10 minutes later a cop car drove by but didn`t stop. The couple immediately drove off. Later, we were outside and found a tiny ziplock bag next to where the truck had been parked. I was glad the couple left, and encouraged that the police responded to the call but disappointed that the police didn`t take any action. It seems possible that the source of the drugs is nearby. This is not the first time we`ve noticed suspicious drug-related activity, though it is the first time we`ve seen obvious drug use.

What`s the best way to work/communicate with the police to address such activity?

drug supply demand management

From a resident on the unit block of W Street NW:

I see lots of email traffic about arresting drug dealers…interrupting drug supply…. and I’m fine with that, but we need to understand that drugs is like any other market, as long as demand exists there will always be someone there to respond to that demand. Once demand for drugs is curbed in our community, then the drug dealers will no longer find the place interesting for business and they’ll move on. Once the hassle of doing business in Bloomingdale exceeds the profit, they won’t care about sticking around…it’s an opportunity cost …they could be making more money elsewhere.

I think that demand inside our neighborhood is probably waning among the general population. I may be wrong, but I think there is lower demand for drugs (at least the hard core drugs) than in the past. But two sources of demand remain…one is traffic that is coming in from outside our community via North Capitol-- the users from the burbs who make quick trips into the city’s open air markets to make rapid purchases from their cars and then use North Capitol to make a quick exit. The other is the nearby Universities (Catholic, Howard, Trinity)….there will always be some low level of demand rom young people at these Universities who live in our areas that will continue to fuel the drug trade here. We need to figure out what to do about two significant sources of demand…as well as addressing the local demand among our general population. As long as there is money to be made and market to be had, there will remain drug dealers in our centrally located community to service that market. That’s just the simple economics of it.

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1) Identify yourself. A full name would be best, but at least include a first name.

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BOTH name and neighborhood name are required! Thanks for honoring the rules

the drug dealers are back in Bloomingdale

See this 10/27/2009 message from Bloomingdale resident Todd Crosby:

Was it my imagination, but I had thought that the street hoodlums that hang out on the corners had abandoned Bloomingdale last spring... until just the past few weeks. It was such a nice spring and summer: no bullets flying, no loitering drug dealers on the corners -- a great community. I thought that we had turned a corner and that those guys had given up on the drug markets in this community and had moved on.

However, in the past, literally, 3 weeks they've all returned.

Drug dealers hanging out in the old haunts, shootings in the same places...the helicopters...it's all back. What happened? Anyone know what the word on the street is? Did the police release a bunch back of the crew back into the community? Did some gangs just decide to retake the corners? It's like night and day.

It was a nice preview of what Bloomingdale can look without these street thugs plying their trade here. I'm a bit disappointed to see them back.

PCP bust in bloomingdale.

oh junk.
check this out