Neighbors claimed that the gang was selling drugs. The police confronted the young men repeatedly for weeks, but the group took to mocking the officers who showed up. Then the police started telling those who complained that young men in black hoods have constitutional rights too. In the uncertainty of the moment the convenience store closed for good. The group's survivors switched their gathering spot to the playground of Payne Elementary School, which has long been surrounded by this obscene violence.
Violence can addle the mind.
We don't always know. Additionally, police officers have shot and killed three alleged assailants in this area. I also remember many killings before 1992 and others a block or two away that were not in Police Service Area 109. There could indeed be fifty murders weighing on my thoughts, and maybe a few more. PSA 109, which is like a police precinct, extends eleven blocks from the Eastern Market, where vendors sell farm-fresh vegetables, homemade sausages, and great salty Virginia hams, to the D.C. jail, where many young men of my neighborhood have passed time.