The people in the bars drinking are affluent urbanites and people from VA.

Definitely watch yourself after midnight on the weekends – don’t walk side streets around totally intoxicated, oblivious of your surroundings or you might get jumped. Avoid confrontation because the kids are dangerous.

As far as solving the problem, the cops definitely could step up the presence. I don’t see a lot of patrols on the side streets. They could also probably stop, search and question more people.

Finally as far as guns, I personally would like to like to legally own and defend my house and neighborhood. The bad guys already have them why can’t we?

Washington Post
http://voices.washingtonpost.c....._rise.html

Just last week, in the wake of two shootings in heavily trafficked nightlife areas — in Adams Morgan and at 14th and T Streets — we were asking how safe you felt when you went out. Then, around 1 a.m. on Sunday morning in Adams Morgan, an unknown person fired six shots in the alley between the Suntrust bank and Julia’s Empanadas, near the corner of 18th Street and Columbia Road, with one of the bullets flying across 18th Street and striking a light fixture on the porch outside Madams Organ. Although the gunplay happened right next to a police substation, the shooter got away.

As a result, you’ll see more police on the streets in Adams Morgan this weekend, including the city’s elite Crime Suppression Unit. But according to Brian Weaver, the head of the Advisory Neighborhood Commission, these two shootings are just the tip of the iceberg of rising crime in Adams Morgan: There have been 30 violent crimes in the last 30 days, primarily muggings and armed robberies, along with 14 confirmed incidents of shots being fired. “I view this as a scary jump,” he says. “[Residents of Adams Morgan] tolerate drunk people fighting in the pizza line,” Weaver says. “This is a little bit different.”

(As a comparison, in August, there were 11 muggings and two assaults with a deadly weapon, which can be anything from hitting someone with a beer bottle to a shooting.)

The rise in shootings looks troubling. Weaver says police have determined that almost all are part of a long-simmering feud between rival teenage gangs, and the majority of those shootings are not happening on Adams Morgan’s busiest streets. What’s more worrying for visitors is that huge spike in muggings.

These robberies aren’t happening on the 18th Street strip or Columbia Road, either, says Weaver; instead, the muggers and thieves are hiding out on deserted sidestreets like “Lanier Place or Champlain Street, waiting for people to come back to their car.”

So while there will be more cops on the streets, consider this your public service announcement for the weekend: Park in the garage, take a taxi, grab the Adams Morgan-U Street Link bus to and from the Metro and just be extra vigilant. That way, there’s less chance you’ll turn out to be a statistic.

You get the ANCs to not grant any more liq licenses, and you take up some of the suggestions long time observer just made.

This might just be the straw…

This is the result of years of policy in never saying no to a liquor license.

DisneyWorld of Drunk.

http://crimemap.dc.gov/present.....nt%20Crime

also~i totally agree that Admo has become a jail that serves alcohol at night. How can residents feel safe if shootings become a weekly trend? I know that this sort of violence can happen anywhere but I seriously think that there needs to be some sort of solution that the residents can be a part of i.e. hand out free flowers whenever passing through the crowds to make folks less hostile…

You stop granting liquor licenses, period. It’s not about little signs.

Also, although the Meskerem suicide cannot be categorized as the same type of violence as that of this past weekends, it reflects the fact that people seem to find AM to be a comfort zone (for a lack of a better expression) for committing acts of violence and that can be addressed. I propose we stage a nonviolent demonstration perhaps one weekend night where the residents take over the streets and practice nonviolence through protest… any thoughts?

I agree that AM is definitely different during the day then at night. I used to hang out there at night years ago, but things eventually got out of hand and I simply found better and safer places to spend time. AM is not the center of the nightlife universe in the DC area and in fact, it’s slowly becoming the armpit.