Welcome back to work, Washington. Perhaps you're struggling to focus this morning, having only barely recovered from the weekend's Halloween festivities. Perhaps you just had a difficult time extricating yourself from your bed on this first cold morning of the year. Whatever the case may be, DCist recommends a strong cup of coffee with a dash of Rumbler to get your motor running today. The Rumbler is described as a "high-tech blaster" being used in......

UPDATE: Le sigh. This story was a total canard. Looks like the police were misdialing the phone number associated with the deductions, which may actually have been for legitimate insurance payments. So. Lame. Bless you, Mark Seagraves. The WTOP reporter tips us off to a new scandal from the Metropolitan Police Department's payroll department that actually involves porn. It's almost like Seagraves knew my birthday was coming up. Apparently, at least once MPD officer has......

>> The District has agreed to put a cap on the number of inmates at the D.C. Jail at 2,164. [WaPo] >> "Chapter Three: The Reason I Want to Get into the Right Lane is That It's Dangerous Over Here On the Left (And Not That I Have Failed to Sufficiently Appreciate the Grandeur of Your Magnificent Internal Combustion Vehicle)." [Megan McArdle] >> The Attorney for De'Onte Rawlings' family says he is going to......

>> Right there is the Laura Sessions Stepp Credo: Laura doesn't "get it" so the "social culture" is broken. [DCeiver] >> Don't miss the ABC News coverage of the 5-year anniversary of the D.C.-area sniper shooting spree. What do you think of Lee Boyd Malvo's apology? [ABC News] >> Oh c'mon, don't you get it? Kids can say they're going to "The Library" and not be lying! It's totally hilarious. [Free Ride] >> Regarding......

Written by DCist Contributor Fredo Alvarez In a 60-39 cloture vote, the U.S. Senate barely passed the Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007 (S 1105) today as an amendment to the FY 2008 Defense Authorization Bill (HR 1585). The measure would expand protection against hate crimes to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, and would enable the Federal government to provide assistance in the investigation or prosecution of......

Take a look at this map -- if you live inside the boundaries of the newly-named Police Service Area 208 (formerly PSA 306), you're now being policed by the 2nd Police District instead of the 3rd. The change actually took effect on Sunday, September 2, according to a Metropolitan Police Department announcement. The move was designed to resolve a workload imbalance between the 2nd District, which handles just 4.5 percent of emergency calls in the......

The annual National Night Out is set to kick off this evening, with a host of neighborhood gatherings sponsored by the Metropolitan Police Department to choose from. The yearly event is designed to raise awareness about street crime and encourage residents to meet their neighbors by joining in on any of the planned events, or just by staying outside in their front yards or porches late in an effort to deter criminal activity. Mayor Fenty......

Washington has had a love-hate relationship with the Segway for some time now. Certainly, they are useful modes of transportation -- who among us begrudges the UPS man, or even the tourists, from trying to zip around our city's streets in a more efficient manner? But at the same time, pretty much no matter what you do, if you're riding one, you look like a douchebag. This isn't to say the technology isn't cool, or......

In the area around the D.C. Courthouse on Indiana Avenue NW near Judiciary Square, and we suspect elsewhere in the city, there are massive plumes of steam coming from the grates in the sidewalk. We usually don't pay any attention to the steam that regularly comes up from the grates around town, but thanks to the cold, cold, Vostok-esque weather, these are reaching higher than the surrounding buildings. Walking through them is like flying in......

> > Gerald Ford, remembered. [WTOP] >> The Metropolitan Police Department alerts us that the FBI will be doing a "fly over" above Washington, DC tonight until midnight. No, we don't have the slightest idea what this means either, but why take chances? Tonight, conduct your illicit activity from the safety of your own domicile, where, as the courts seem to agree, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy. >> Of course, as far as......

When Mayor-elect Adrian Fenty announced last week that he'd chosen Cathy Lanier, a 16-year veteran of the Metropolitan Police Department, to replace Charles Ramsey atop the police force, local media didn't do much more than throw together a few details on her history and her ideas for fighting crime in the District. The City Paper, though, started digging. The paper trail they uncovered on Lanier makes for relatively interesting reading by City Paper standards, though......

Morning, fair DCist readers. How was your weekend? Did you do any of the numerous activities in the area, like the homeless walkathon, or celebrating an elephant's fifth birthday? Did you go on a fruitless hunt for the elusive Wii? Or perhaps you got married in a Roman castle? You could have signed with the Cubs for $136 million! Whatever you did, we hope it was excellent. The start of this week seems to......

Written by DCist Contributor Christopher Durocher. If the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community has a month to call their own, it’s October. The month begins with National Coming Out Day and ends with Halloween — the gay equivalent to Christmas. It’s fitting, then, that the Mayor’s LGBT Advisory Committee used this month to present to Mayor Anthony Williams its Committee Report and Recommendations, a nine page document highlighting issues of concern to the......

Maybe Marge Simpson was onto something when she noted that the best way to live your life is to set your goals so low that if you fail, no one will even notice. D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams should have taken note. It was one month ago that Williams promised to cut violent crime by 50 percent in 30 days. To do that, he pushed the D.C. Council to pass legislation that would allow a stricter......

Almost a month into the District's crime emergency, a stricter curfew is in place, surveillance cameras are being installed, and more police are working longer hours on city streets. But is the additional show of force being efficiently applied? Maybe not. One resident explained their grief with the beefed up police presence in today's edition of D.C. Watch's online newsletter, The Mail. Describing a recent experience on U Street, she wrote: By now, if you......

With the terrific news that five suspects had been arrested over the weekend on charges of being behind a string of robberies and violent assaults on the National Mall this summer, Saturday should have been a banner day for the Metropolitan Police Department's PR staff. But the U.S. Park Police, which took the lead on the multi-agency investigation, has ended up getting the lion's share of the credit. Police said they are a group of......

I was surprised to see a man as liberal as Matt Yglesias argue that expanding the size of the Metropolitan Police Department from its current 3,800 officers to the proposed 5,100 would effectively help decrease crime in the District. I suppose I rarely expect liberals to be on the side of such dramatic increases in police power, given that militarizing a city or country doesn't often track well with pacifying it. Last week Matt claimed......

The recent increase in violent crime in the District has once again exposed what may be the District's most obvious Achilles Heel -- the continuing racial insecurities and tensions that exist between affluent newcomers (who tend to be white) and a dwindling yet historic African American community. Two murders in the last week -- Andrew Senitt, white, young, in Georgetown; Chris Crowder, black, older, around Mount Vernon -- have brutally exposed the city's racial anxieties,......

Forgetful drivers be warned -- this is not the week to not wear your seatbelt. The Metropolitan Police Department has announced that through June 4 they will be stepping up enforcement of the city's seatbelt laws, violations of which can result in a $50 fine and two points on your license. The District Department of Transportation has reported that seatbelt usage in the District stands at 89 percent -- leaving 11 percent of drivers......

Over the last few months, a number of people have found ways to plug the District's criminal incident reports into online mapping programs, allowing us a visual snapshot of criminal activity from area to the next. First came incidentlog.com, followed closely thereafter by Post's own crime map. Today our friends at Gallery Place Living tipped us off to a new crime map they've introduced, this one mixing weekly incident reports from Crimereports.com and the usual......

It was in April 2000 that tens of thousands of anti-globalization protestors marched the streets of the District, protesting the secretive meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank and the policies that emerged from them. Police presence was heavy, given a nervous sense that Washington could go the route of Seattle, which just months prior had been the scene of an epic battle between protestors and police that had provoked an imposition of......

While the D.C. Council debated the smoking ban for restaurants and bars over the course of last year, civil libertarians intoned against using the power of the state against lifestyle choices, be they smoking, drinking or fatty foods. Last week some of their worst fears briefly came true. On Friday the Examiner reported that the Metropolitan Police Department had to order its officers not to enforce the smoking ban -- which went into effect in......

If you're like us, you tend to spend a good amount of time hoofing it through our fair city. And if you're also honest about it like we are, you probably go ahead and cross the street (when it's safe) even when the light isn't green. This, according to law.dictionary.com, is considered jaywalking and is therefore illegal. jaywalking n. walking across a street outside of marked cross-walks, and not at a corner, and/or against a......

In response to Damon Ward slaying near 12th and U Streets on February 25, friends and supporters have grown increasingly frustrated with the lack of leads in the case. Though District police have their share of crimes to deal with, some witnesses have claimed that their offers of information have been dealt with slowly or not at all. This upcoming Sunday, March 12, starting at 2 p.m., friends and other who knew Ward are taking......

Written by Jason Linkins Editors Note: We have changed the title of the post to reflect the fact that the witness did not see the killing itself happen. The Post reported as early as Wednesday that the Metropolitan Police Department is still looking for any information that could lead to an arrest in the slaying of Damon Ward, who was shot early Sunday morning, February 26. Ward, an architect from Arlington, Virginia, was apparently an......

If you click your way to the Metropolitan Police Department's website, you'll find a sidebar on the right side of the page labelled MPDC News. It is there that the police proudly proclaim that agressive speeding dipped below three percent in January, thanks to extensive investment in photo radar enforcement technology. One click in a different direction, however, takes you to the crime statistics page, where the rosy lows the police have achieved for moving......

Don't get too comfortable on that bus -- it might not be around for too long. WMATA is set to announce a series of service changes today, including cutting 28 of 57 bus routes that run after midnight. Those cuts -- 12 in the District, seven in Maryland, and nine in Virginia -- would allow WMATA to save $2.4 million, notes the Examiner. The transit agency is also looking to free up $4.3 million to......

Just last week, we worried that recent downward trends in violent crime might be difficult to maintain, as statistics from the MPD showed January jumps in assaults and robberies. With Washington's homicide count already sitting at three above the total through this date last year, police investigated two separate shooting incidents on Sunday, one of which resulted in a fatality, and neither of which have brought an arrest as of now. Yesterday afternoon, police were......

If you're sick of pulling in a measly paycheck that doesn't seem to go very far in the District, you may want to think of a change of careers. And as Fox 5 reported recently in two separate investigative pieces, some of the biggest money may be in the District's government. According to their investigation, Fox 5 found that government workers putting in overtime may end up costing the city more annually than simply hiring......

Crime levels in the District improved, for the most part, in 2005, continuing a 15-year trend of improved public safety in Washington. While the capital's surrounding municipalities all experienced an increase in homicides from 2004 (with Prince George's County posting its highest toll ever at 168), the District saw a drop for the year to 195 homicides, down from 198 in 2004. It was the lowest number killed in the city since 1986. The Metropolitan......