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The Metro: DC’s Real Memorial
By Ben Schumin – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
I live in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC. I can get in my car and drive by the Lincoln Memorial or the Washington Monument within minutes. These sites and others are commemorations to the people and the ideas that shaped this great nation. They are beautiful, and like most people who live close to world-famous objects, I probably don’t appreciate them as much as I should.
Outside of the tourist gathering spots, however, there is the real Washington, a sad, dangerous city, destroyed by decades of Democratic Party rule (recall “Mayor for Life” Marion Barry). DC has memorials to Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King, but lacks a memorial to itself. I hereby name the DC Metro system as the official monument of our nation’s capital. The Metro perfectly encapsulates one of the city’s biggest problems: Broken people.
On March 29th, the day before Easter, 15-year-old Davonte Washington, a member of his school’s Navy ROTC, was at the Deanwood Metro Station with his mother and sisters on his way to get an Easter haircut. According to The Washington Post:
An older teenager clutching a white bag with carryout food walked by on the platform with friends. One of Davonte’s sisters looked at the young man after he had passed. He paused and tapped on the glass to draw Davonte’s attention.
Davonte stepped out.
They exchanged words. “What the [expletive] you keep looking at me for? You know me from somewhere?” the older teen uttered, police said. A split second later, without provocation or for no more reason than what the gunman may have taken as a disrespectful glance, “the suspect pulled a silver or chrome handgun and shot” Davonte, police said.
The police arrest affidavit says the gunman handed his food to a friend, tucked his gun in his pants and fled the station, with Davonte’s mother racing after him shouting: “Stop him! He just shot my son!”
The “older teenager” was merely two years older. Seventeen-year-old Maurice Bellamy was charged as an adult with second-degree murder. The Post article details Bellamy’s long history of problems during his short life. You know someone has major disciplinary problems when one of his Facebook picture captions says “SHOOTA MOE, AKA MOE CITY.” Yet, he had access to a gun, was out on the streets, and didn’t think twice before killing an innocent boy in front of his family. Washington’s funeral took place this past Friday.
Just a few weeks later, another 15-year-old boy, John Rufus Evans III, was killed, at the exact same Deanwood Metro station. While Evans wasn’t exactly as innocent as Washington, it was yet another senseless and brutal murder in DC. This series of tweets by Jennifer Donelan details the horrific murder:
WARNING (graphic): Sources confirm teenager killed at Deanwood metro today had throat slashed @ABC7News @ABC7Bri
— Jennifer JJ Donelan (@JJjenJDO) April 11, 2016
More: Murder was caught on tape. Sources also confirm the murder was caught on the victim's brother's cellphone. @ABC7News
— Jennifer JJ Donelan (@JJjenJDO) April 11, 2016
Sources: the teen told his brother to record with his cellphone before punching another teen who then slashed the boy's throat. @ABC7News
— Jennifer JJ Donelan (@JJjenJDO) April 11, 2016
The levels of dysfunction here peel back like those of a giant onion. Evans allegedly told his brother to record him punching a person, who then retaliated by slashing his throat, killing him. According to NBC Washington and arrest has been made. The article also, unbelievably, states that:
The mother of a 15-year-old boy stabbed to death inside the Deanwood Metro station Monday moved the boy to Richmond, Virginia, to get him away from their northeast DC neighborhood, she told News4’s Shomari Stone. John Rufus Evans III returned to Washington, DC, for a court appearance.
So, to sum up, a concerned mother moves her troubled boy away from Washington and — upon returning for a court date — he randomly attacks someone who then sticks a knife in his throat, killing him. I can’t even begin to wrap my head around that level of dysfunction. Sadly, this is par for the course in the broken city of Washington.
After today’s murder at the Deanwood Metro station, The Washington Post published an article entitled “Timeline: Violence on Metro.” In addition to the murders, it also details random attacks by groups of teenagers, which has also plagued the DC Metro system:
- Teen girl assaulted aboard Green Line; two Wilson High School students were arrested and charged in the assault of a teen girl on a Metro train.
- Teenagers arrested after rush-hour fight; six teens were arrested and 30 youths were taken off a Red Line train after a fight.
- Three teens attacked on Yellow Line train; eight assailants were involved in an incident that left three teenagers with facial lacerations.
- Man viciously attacked and called anti-gay slurs: joseph Cowart, 43, was punched, kicked and called anti-gay slurs on one of Metro’s Green Line train as the operator ignored repeated calls for help.
And on, and on.
After the murder of Davonte Washington, Metro’s police department said they would be stepping up patrols, but:
Neighbors said no police were around when Evans was attacked.
Ward 7 Council member Yvette Alexander said she was at the station earlier Monday morning to meet constituents and saw no police presence then, either.
“The Metro police really should have more increased presence here,” she said. “They said after the first tragic incident that they would, and I was actually out here this morning and I didn’t see any additional presence.”
It’s not just an out of control crime wave and horrific murders that just happen in the same location that make the DC Metro the perfect memorial for Washington. There could be an entire series of Ricochet posts on Metro’s crumbling infrastructure and massive safety issues. Recall that less than a month ago, “In Unprecedented Move, DC’s Metrorail Closes for Emergency Safety Inspection:”
Hundreds of thousands of commuters, visitors and residents of Washington, DC, are searching for travel alternatives Wednesday after the entire DC Metrorail system was shutdown for an emergency safety inspection.
Metro General Manager Paul Wiedefeld took the unprecedented step of shutting down the entire system at midnight and keeping it closed until 5 a.m. Thursday so crews could check about 600 underground jumper cables.
Even after the 29-hour total shutdown, subsequent headlines blared:
- Metro Could Shut Down Entire Rail Lines to Do Extended Maintenance, Board Chair Says
- Washington DC May Have to Shut Down Metro Lines For Months on End
- Washington DC Metro Closing For Six Months?
People around the country say that Washington, the capital, is broken. As our seat of government, it truly is. A seemingly lawless Obama Administration has done irreversible damage and brought the United States to a nadir, that only/hopefully/maybe a strong Republican can come in and fix. People in and around DC know that Washington, the city, is also broken, maybe more so.
Tourists will and should never stop coming here to see the cherry blossoms, the White House, and the iconic structures known the world over. I just recommend that while they are here, they don’t ride the Metro, the true monument to — and perfect embodiment of — the city of Washington.
Published in Culture, Policing
WASHINGTON METRO SHUTDOWN
President Blames GOP Congress
Republicans blame GOPe corruption and betrayal. Plus ça change.
Civilizational breakdown is reflected in this post. A lot of major cities in this country are as broken as DC. How many more cities will end up crumbling the way Detriot has? And those responsible will just walk away without a care as to the lives they have helped destroy with their policies. sad
I often use the DC Metro as the poster child for government waste. Unlike the subway systems of Paris and London and New York, which were financed and built privately, the DC Metro was publicly funded. Which made it obscenely expensive – as much as hundreds of millions of dollars per mile.
I would not be surprised if the 100+ miles of DC Metro, in inflation-adjusted dollars, cost as much to build as thousands of miles of Interstate Highways in the 1950s.
I’d agree, except there were plenty of featherbedded highway contracts in and around big cities.
The DC metro is like most of the left’s great ideas for collective living. I rode it in to work just outside DC near the Pentagon for a short while. It took more than twice as long as driving in ( even with horrendous traffic), fares cost over twice as much as gas, parking, and car payments, and yet still is heavily subsidized on top of fare income by DC, MD and VA.
Despite it burning through vast funds, it is very poorly maintained, it is nearly impossible to see any employees around, let alone any security, riders died recently due to poorly maintained equipment, and they now say they may have to close some lines for a month or more. In other words, it isn’t reliable enough to consider it your only way to work. So, even if you live next door to the metro station, you better have a car as well.
And now you might get mugged, molested, stabbed, or even shot and there is NOBODY around to help. Not one armed guard, even in a station that has had incidents nearly weekly for months.
But, remember, it is your civic duty to ride mass transit to save the environment.
DC can be a beautiful and patriotic place for a vacation. But sadly, I must warn you, it just isn’t safe to ride the Metro.
And to think the GOP thinks that working class people in dying towns just need to move to the city to make their lives so much better. I have my doubts.
Without disputing any of the above, my daughter and I had a good experience on the Metro in early February. Stations were clean and cars were well-kept, rides were silent and comfortable. I do wish there was service into Georgetown and more service in the late evening. On a Saturday night in 2010 it took me over an hour and a quarter to get from DuPont circle, where I had been sipping champagne with a Pretty Lady, to my hotel by the Library of Congress. The Pretty Lady had left three flirty messages on my room phone while I was in transit; by the time I arrived at my hotel she had fallen asleep and my return call to her room went unanswered. C’est la vie.
That’s par for the DC-dating course.
Very true. Baltimore, Detroit, DC. And all one common theme: Generations of Democrat party rule
Perfectly said, thank you.
Marion Barry alone did not create this horror. It has always been bigger than him, as bad as he was. Moynihan laid this all out 51 years ago (The Negro Family: The Case For National Action) but then and now the welfare system was politically useful and ideologically satisfying to white liberals so the ongoing destruction of inner city Americans persists.
The standard pompous leftists narrative for this kind of tragic teen slaughter narrative is that it is my fault for supporting the 2nd Amendment. The correct response to that is:
“No, you created the monster who killed him. You knowingly destroyed the structure of African-Americans families because their eternal dependency is satisfying to you as a white liberal. You shut down any attention to the destruction of the family as an institution because your BS post-modern, narcisso-feminist ‘it takes a village’ wet dreams of white bureaucratic rescues are more satisfying than the truth. If you support the creation and maintenance of the welfare-based dystopia, you killed that kid and thousands of others like him and made owing a gun a necessity, not a protected option for many Americans. Damn you for you crimes against the poor and against this nation, you selfish, racist pig.”
Barry’s predecessor, Walter Washington battled every vested interest in DC to establish zoning laws designed to make almost every Metro stop a neighborhood center. The goal was to have retail, office and residential mixes in new centers all over town to revitalize the whole city.
Barry came into office and hated any plan that would encourage middle calls and upper middle class community development–those were not his voters. He made a deal with the big developers who also hated those rules: They gave him campaign cash and a promise to build low-income housing in poorer wards (mostly Ward 9) “when suitable sites became available”. Barry got his cash, told his voters he shook down The Man for them. The developers got to build what and where they wanted downtown. Somehow the “suitable sites” never became “available.” Shocker.
The poorest residents of DC got eyewash and empty promises from Barry but kept voting for him. He got rich. His administration set records for indictments of top officials in any city in the US in his first term alone. Snow removal was a disaster but the route from the mayor’s house to the mayor’s office was plowed first and continuously.
The African-American voter as sucker is a topic that needs a book.
I ride metro occasionally (I live in DC). In general I concur with Doctor Robert in that the metro is usually clean, usually reliable. But not all metro stops are created equal. Bethesda station on the red line at 9:00 AM on a Wednesday is guaranteed a nicer experience than Anacostia station, green line, 11:00 PM on a Saturday (which did have lots of police protection, but also had some very unruly travelers as well). I agree that it is too bad that Georgetown never got a metro stop, as that is where my office is located and as a result there are no easy commutes (rush hour traffic is horrendous) – as as result it is faster for me to bike to work.
I have no doubt, though, that it was way too expensive (although those plush, roomy seats are nice). And all that exposed concrete does not age well.
What I am really baffled about, though, is this whole streetcar nonsense. It makes no strategic sense. It is basically a super expensive bus that can’t drive around an obstacle. At least metro has a dedicated track so it never has to slow down because there is traffic. Instead of spending that money essentially re-making existing transport routes that already exist but now with less flexibility, the city should be either fixing things that really are broken, increasing the frequency of service of public transit, or else not spending the money in the first place!
Large great cities can’t be fed by only autos; they need mass transit of some kind so let’s not confuse the issue of dystopian liberal created inner city populations, government funded and run transportation and the need for efficient ways to move millions daily.
Like. Could you please find a way to fit that on a bumper sticker?
So I guess Hillary has never used the DC Metro either.
Katie and I used these stops, all of which were copacetic: Reagan Airport, everything from Courthouse to Eastern Market on the orange/gray, everything from L’Enfant to Shaw-Howard on the yellow/green, everything from Union Station to Cleveland Park on the red. Typical tourist stuff.
And hey, what’s with Woodley Park being designated for the National Zoo? It’s all uphill from there to the Zoo and no closer than Cleveland Circle, which is level with the Zoo.
I first started to use the Metro fairly regularly in 1980, when it was a terrific new system that was much needed to carry the traffic for which the streets had no room. The problems are threefold- it is a jobs program for the transit unions; security is poor at certain stations (a bunch of people now driving the trains should instead be security guards); and the zeal for shovel-ready infrastructure projects does not extend to maintenance. Hence the very long “Up”escalators are frequently turned off and the track needs work.
But I don’t disagree at all with the idea of building it. Cronyism and featherbedding certainly escalated the cost, but that has been going on since the Erie Canal around 1800 and Pres. Lincoln’s transcontinental railroad construction 60 years later.
“The Metro perfectly encapsulates one of the city’s biggest problems: Broken people.” Artfully stated, though it serves more as a present working model than as a memorial; sadly, it scales up perfectly to include the entire populace of the formerly United States of America.
Now, how does today’s progressive approach this problem? First, quash reporting of the incidents as much as possible. Then, blame the tool used in the violence: “knife control”, “gun control.” Never question the individual broken-ness of a society which has and blithely continues to destroy the single most important socializing unit – the family.
Never assign blame to the failed public school system which no longer exists to socialize children but to somehow effortlessly infuse them with self-esteem, in part by reinforcing their pervasive sense of victimization – most of which derives in the first place from growing up with less than a full complement of parents. They are indeed victims of these broken families, which, in turn, have been intentionally created over and over for generations by cynical progressive politicians who have had all but absolute power over virtually every inner city since at least the mid 20th century.
Add this to the growing list of problems in America which are not sustainable.
Michael Barone tells more.
But I repeat- the concept of building a Metro is not bad, anyone who has used the tube in London or Taiwan can say that this is by far the superior way to get around town.