THE LAST GUN BATTLE OF STAB ALLEY NEEDS A PLAQUE

The street where I still live had a different moniker when my husband and I first moved there in 1969. While our block was officially named Corcoran Street, it was then part of the inner city, and the scene of a considerable variety of unsavory criminal activities. It was known to the local felonious set unofficially, if not in the eyes of the Post Office, as Stab Alley. Enough lawless actions were going on for it to have earned its nickname. Luckily, I was not afraid of Stab Alley. I loved its vibrancy, its gaminess and most especially, its nickname.

One early summer morning, I was minding my children – ­a toddler boy and a baby girl – when I heard sharp, popping noises. I went to investigate their source and character, carefully clutching the baby to my chest. In this still dangerous neighborhood, such a sound could mean almost anything, but my urban experience suggested a gun fight, possibly a battle of significant proportions!

My excitement mixed with a smidge of fear as I looked out my back window to check out what was happening. The action quickly became clear; the MPD was mounting a significant gun battle against The Man Who Lived Next Door and Who Was Running an Illegal Numbers Racket out of his garbage lid. Quickly, I called my husband at work and stuck my phone out the window so he could share in the full flavor of whatever was going to happen.

Until the week before the incident, I had not known why there was so much activity at that garbage can. I had just found out that this garbage lid was the recipient of a striking amount of passerby attention because it was the deposit and collection point for a large numbers operation, a pastime common to the Inner City at that time. Many of the shabby men who slipped through our alley daily, and who occasionally appeared at our back door to beg a sandwich or a glass of something cold to drink were steady customers of the Numbers Man. The police, too, had just found out.

The recipient of the police action was indignant, and clearly not of an inclination to surrender peacefully or quietly. He pulled out his own shotgun, and began to accentuate his indignation with lively shotgun bursts though his front door. And then his back door. The police responded in kind, but were apparently no better marksmen than he.

In this best of all possible worlds, no one was killed or even wounded, but when it was over, the neighborhood changed forever. The number games racket ceased to exist here, soon to be replaced by high stakes speculation in real estate. Yuppies found Corcoran and began to buy on the block. Gentrification set in inexorably and wiped Corcoran clean of its lively history.

My husband and I have now lived here longer than anyone else, and we think it is a shame for our street to have lost its former infamous nickname. The house that once lodged the numbers racket in its garbage can lid is now a quiet residence for out-of-town actors playing at the Source Theatre. To our knowledge, I am now the only person still alive who actually knows where the bullet holes of the Last Gun Battle of Stab Alley are lodged. This history deserves a plaque.

All ANCs Should Hold Sidewalk Shoveling Forums

Let's face it - the regs on the books regarding sidewalk snow removal are irrelevant and unenforceable. We need a whole new approach. The City isn't going to take care of this matter, so let's bring it to a level where something worthwhile could actually get done. ANC-based neighborhood forums on how to help ourselves would go a long way to helping Washingtonians dig out after future snowfalls. The ANCs are well-set up to handle this kind of thing and the size of area of concern is about the right size, too. As a former ANC Commissioner myself, I know that the community needs some serious attention to be paid to this important issue.

What we have traditionally done, and what doesn’t work well, is to try to go it alone. As it is now, each new snowfall is a new event, unrelated to any other - no cooperation, no memory. Not good. Each snowstorm comes as a big surprise to us, and we think that we'll handle it by ourselves and as we see fit. That really is a lousy approach and needs to change! Everyone who lives or works here has a longterm interest in making sure that sidewalk snow removal is handled efficiently and speedily. City government, local residents, business and community groups, property owners, tenants and lessees, everyone has a mutual interest and need to keep sidewalks clear. It seems hardly necessary to have to point out this mutuality of interest, but taking the next step – to develop actions plans together that could address these mutual needs on a block-by-block basis for an entire winter snow season – can hardly be over-supported.

Now that Snowmageddon has gotten stale and dirty, (even if it hasn’t yet disappeared), but before we've forgotten about it, it’s time to take a look at ways we could more easily make it through any further blizzards Mother Nature (an oxymoron if there ever was one!) may choose to hurl in our path. Individualists that we Americans are, we have not made significant use of available neighborhood-based group activities in the face of horrendous weather. This has left the politicians free to respond fairly ineptly without much in the way of repercussion. Surely that alone must leave us unsatisfied! Nor can we be entirely satisfied with how homeowners, lessees and tenants, in residential and commercial areas, have responded. While some responded heroically, others did nothing, certain that they would not be penalized. Because what seems fair in terms of shoveling has varied so much and has required little if any joint effort, sidewalk cleaning responses have in too many cases been ineffective and even infuriating.

We can do better, folks. We can organize, and we can plan. Washingtonians are good at that. It may be a first time we've ever made ANC-wide, season-long plans for dealing with winter weather, but it is long overdue. We can come up with many better ways to manage than what we have been doing until now.

NOTE: Our plans need to cover an entire winter season. Let’s accept once and for all that snow, ice, having to shovel and dig ourselves out cannot be counted on happening only once a year. If we could count on that, perhaps we could get away without a solid plan, but we still would be a lot more uncomfortable than we need to be.

To handle winter well, we have to be ready to respond at planned levels over an entire winter season. Our plan needs to be flexible enough to handle a range of winters, whether it be a warmish winter with only one big storm or a winter that keeps pounding us. Let’s start right now, because winter isn’t over yet by any means.

SHOVELING NEEDS AND SERVICES – FOR THE COMMUNITY, FOR INDIVIDUALS. FOR THE WHOLE WINTER

ANCs need to work at developing local plans to provide, over an entire winter season, locally-owned equipment and locally-staffed shoveling services on a timely and cost-effective basis to both businesses and residents. These cooperative shoveling agreements will need to cover an entire winter season. This would go far to make snowfalls less hazardous. It's overdue for business and community organizations of all kinds to start working together on a season-long snow plan.

Good planning starts asking the right questions. Here are a couple of general questions that need to be raised, as plans are being developed, followed by some more specific ones.

GENERAL QUESTIONS:

What should the city do and what should we be doing in terms of creating pedestrian pathways? We know that there are certain actions for which the City does bear responsibility. They include

• Cleaning up the sidewalks in front of its own property

• taking care of sidewalks at street intersections

• plowing entrances to alleys in such a way that they can be crossed by pedestrians

• cleaning sidewalks when property owners or lessees or persons in charge, don’t do itl (Hell will freeze over before this happens, of course!)

According to City Code, property owners,tenants, lessees and “persons in charge” (i.e., whoever is “in control” of the property) are equally responsible for cleaning sidewalks and taking care of hazardous tree conditions within 8 sunlit hours of the ceasing of a snow fall. it’s that simple. Practically speaking that means – at the absolute latest – no later than sundown two days after a late day snowfall. Or is it really so simple? How do we get more cooperation when those “persons in control” don’t do what they’re supposed to do?

•What are reasonable expectations of the business and residential communities in terms of speediness and thoroughness of shoveling? Leaving aside the City Code, what needs to be done, by whom, how well and how quickly? Can we work this out for the entire winter season?

•What can and should residential areas consider to be their responsibility, and equally importantly, what can and should commercial areas consider to be their responsibility? Are these levels of responsibility the same, and if not, how do they differ? Does responsibility stay at a constant level, or does it vary as time elapses after a snowfall? When and how can we be satisfied with what we have done, and what could we do better next time?

• Who needs shoveling help and can’t afford to do it? Who or what organization can take the lead job of identifying such people? What are fair criteria for getting placed on such a list, How will we reach them to let them know that help is available? One we have such a list, what will the ANCs do to get those who need help the help they need? And how will we make the help safe for those doing the work, ans well as for those receiving the aid?

•Can a useful list of critical sidewalks be developed? How would this be done fairly? If you made such a list, how would it be used? ? How do we want to handle snow shoveling of critical sidewalks - do we make others wait while we get the critical ones cleaned first?

Some specific questions to think about in developing a plan could include:

• Are there any existing plans for cooperative sidewalk snow shoveling? Do any local business organizations have an overall snow plan? If so, what is it? What does it include and what does it leave out - for instance, have any businesses united to buy shoveling services?

• Are there any similar plans in place in residential areas? What’s out there? Would the ANC be willing to do a survey to find this out?

• How can the needs of persons with disabilities be handled fairly and adequately? (This has been an entirely unaddressed area, and deserves recognition as a real problem; persons in wheelchairs or with crutches, for example, are pretty much totally confined inside, as sidewalks are seldom shoveled widely enough to enable them to emerge safely or even at all.)

• Where can we find reliable and reasonably-priced, locally-available shoveling services? How do we find this out? What local community-based organizations can provide help, and how can we make use of their services?

•is anybody willing to share (or loan or rent) existing equipment? Is there any local private or public organization that could share its existing equipment on an as-needed basis? If so, could a formalized and systematic arrangement be developed? Is there some place where people could donate and borrow shoveling equipment? What would the cost of warehousing and stockpiling be, and what about bonding and insurance? Would these be needed,and if so, would they be prohibitive?

• What’s a fair price for digging out sidewalks? Should it vary depending on terrain and size, age, weight and iciness of the snow, the amount of usage that sidewalk gets, or only by the ability of its owners/ lessees to pay? At what point should the sweeper get paid?

• Would the local business community be willing to go in together on buying snow-blowing equipment, paying to hire some kind of service to take care of sidewalks for an entire winter season, or organizing employees to jointly shovel? is a plan to buy snow-blowing equipment realistic? Would business areas be receptive to doing this? Would community-based organizations be willing to consider this as well for use in residential areas?

• What are the local sources for snow-clearing materials? Where do residents and businesses buy their snow-clearing needs? Could these businesses be asked to get together to provide a plan that would have enough assets to cover the winter? It's not easy to shovel when the hardware store runs out of shovels within a day, and doesn't re-supply quickly.

• How can alleys be made more accessible, given that a wall of snow engendered by a plow is a terrible setback to car owners? Is there some way to flatten the snow in the alley without making these walls?

• How do we handle dog poop when trash collection has essentially ceased? Is it fair for homeowners to find little blue bags or even worse, unbagged poop thrown onto their shoveled snow banks? That has been happening, and it just isn’t acceptable behavior.

BRINGING THE ISSUE TO THE PUBLIC

While only the District Government can issue a fine for non-shoveled sidewalks, and most likely will not do so, there are other ways of making an effective protest.One of the most galvanizing tools is the threat of public shame, or conversely the pleasure of public approval. When businesses were made aware that if they didn’t make a real effort to shovel that their lack of effort would be written up and published on the web, they hopped to it quickly and effectively. They didn’t want their lack of effort made public, at all, and quickly took care of the problem.

Praise is just as effective a tool, and businesses that did a good job of cleaning up were cited positively on the Web. Those businesses swiftly made this information public. Moral? A carrot and a stick both have their place, especially when the results are certain to be made public.

FINAL THOUGHTS

If we can organize quickly and highly effectively for an enormous snowball fight, surely we can use the same communications methods to help us deal with more seriously needed forms of labor – digging ourselves, our neighbors, our communities and businesses out of snow on an ongoing basis throughout the winter. Let’s give it a try. If we succeed, we’ll be much better prepared to develop and carry out plans on how the community can best react should there at some time be a serious incident involving danger to our homes or the city as a whole. Living in the District, we know it is wise to be prepared. Shovel away, fellow citizens!

Getting Caught Up: First; SNOW REGS –First and last word

Given that snow removal is just about all that anyone is talking about these days, Mme. Magpie thought you might make good use of her thoughts on how the regs do or do not work in actuality, and accompanied by the ACTUAL CODE ITSELF. That should end some arguments,!

OVERALL REQUIREMENTS – . DC Code requires that sidewalks be cleaned within eight hours of the end of a snowfall. It doesn’t care who does it – it simply requires that the job to be taken care of, quickly and safely. It hopes you will want to do the right thing. And if you don’t, it will do the job and sue you.

Of course, the certainty of disapproval and anger by neighbors forced to make use of uncleared and dangerous sidewalks ought to be an even greater spur to doing the right thing than the failure to adhere to city code. And whether the City is going to clear and sue if you don’t do the job is unclear, unspecified – and unsupported in city history. At least, on paper, it has a requirement to do so.

RESPONSIBILITY - Who is responsible for the cleaning? The city’s broom sweeps wide here (pun, pun) It does not limit this requirement to owners; tenants, occupants, lessees or even “otherwise” are all included in this requirement. The key words are “in charge or in control” The specific language reads as follows: (The words below in bold are ones which are defined in the code.)

DC ST § 9-601 (Snow) Removal from sidewalks by owner or occupant of abutting property.

It shall be the duty of every person, partnership, corporation, joint-stock company, or syndicate in charge or control of any building or lot of land within the fire limits of the District of Columbia, fronting or abutting on a paved sidewalk, whether as owner, tenant, occupant, lessee, or otherwise, within the first 8 hours of daylight after the ceasing to fall of any snow or sleet, to remove and clear away, or cause to be removed and cleared away, such snow or sleet from so much of said sidewalk as is in front of or abuts on said building or lot of land.

ALTERNATIVES - What if you are facing fifty feet of solid ice because you waited too long and it is just too much and too dangerous? Are there any alternatives? Yes, there are – at least temporarily. If you can’t remove it because of ” hardening”, you still have to make it reasonably safe for travel. You will have to put out sand or ashes within eight hours, and then clean up as soon as possible. The specific language reads as follows: (The words in bold are defined in the code.)

DC ST § 9-604. Temporary use of sand and ashes.

In case the snow, sleet, and ice cannot be removed from so much of the paved sidewalks within the fire limits of the District of Columbia as front upon or abut such buildings or lots of land as are not owned or held by lease by the District of Columbia or the United States without injury to said sidewalks, because of the hardening thereof, the person, partnership, corporation, joint-stock company, or syndicate in charge or control of such buildings or lots of land, whether as owner, tenant, occupant, lessee, or otherwise, shall, within the first 8 hours of daylight after the same has formed, make reasonably safe for travel, or cause to be made reasonably safe for travel, by the sprinkling of sand or ashes thereon, said sidewalks, and shall, as soon thereafter as the weather shall permit, thoroughly clean said sidewalks.

IF YOU DON’T CLEAN, WILL THE CITY? - It says it will. The City has the duty of removing snow if those in charge or control don’t do it. The Code doesn’t say what part of the City Government will be responsible for identifying, reporting, ranking or cleaning untouched sidewalks, but DDOT seems like the logical agency. (Perhaps ANCs could be asked to give the city some help in identifying and ranking critical neighborhood paths. ) The specific language reads as follows: (The words below in bold are ones defined in the code.)

DC ST § 9-605 Failure of owner or occupant to remove--Removal by Mayor.

In the event of the failure of any person, partnership, corporation, joint-stock company, or syndicate to remove or cause to be removed such snow or ice from the saidsidewalks, or to make the same reasonably safe for travel, or cause the same to be made reasonably safe for travel, as hereinbefore provided, it shall be the duty of the Mayor of the District of Columbia, as soon as practicable after the expiration of the time herein provided for the removal thereof, or for the making of the saidsidewalks reasonably safe for travel, to cause the snow and ice in front of such building or lot of land to be removed or to cause the same to be made reasonably safe, as hereinbefore directed to be done by such person, partnership, corporation, joint-stock company, or syndicate in charge or control of such building or lot of land, and the amount of the expense of such removal or such work of making the said sidewalksreasonably safe for travel, shall in each instance be ascertained and certified by the said Mayor to the Corporation Counsel of the District of Columbia.

CONSEQUENCES – If the City does end up cleaning up the mess, the code says it will sue the owner or occupant for the cost and add a $25 penalty.

Not one of the world’s more terrifying penalties, and who knows if the city will actually do any of this? Probably nothing will happen if no cleaning is done – unless someone falls and is badly hurt after the eight hours has passed. And bad publicity ensues. Then it just might. It’s better to do the right thing to begin with. The specific language on consequences reads as follows:

DC ST § 9-606. Failure of owner or occupant to remove - Suit to recover cost.

The Corporation Counsel is hereby directed and authorized to sue for and recover from such person, partnership, corporation, joint-stock company, or syndicate, the amount of such expense in the name of the District of Columbia, together with a penalty not exceeding $25 for each offense, with costs, and when so recovered the amount shall be deposited to the credit of the District of Columbia.