February, 2007 |
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A well-justified case of "bordertown" nerves
Robberies in Old Takoma lead to calls for police action
Everyone who works in Old Takoma is on edge. Always vulnerable to criminal intruders who, within a few blocks, can flee across borders into two other jurisdictions, clerks and tellers suddenly find it hard to avoid the question: Will today be my turn?
In the past two months a pair of men armed with handguns and concealed by ski masks - from all indications the same men returning again and again to the scene - have seized money from four stores and a bank in Old Takoma. Subway was robbed twice. After the second robbery, on a Sunday morning amidst the usual milling on the sidewalks, the three Subway employees took stock of their situation and all three quit.
This is the news that greets Takoma Park's new police chief, Ronald Ricucci, on his arrival to town later this month. (See related story.) Unless the robbers are apprehended soon the winter-long crime spree is certain to be his first big test.
Meanwhile, the interim chief, Captain Ed Coursey, has dispatched more patrol cars onto Old Takoma streets. They are intentionally conspicuous. They idle in driveways or drive about in a slow scouting circle. He also has deployed officers in ways not as overt. "I can't go into details because we want to keep an element of surprise and not tip our hand," Captain Coursey says.
But several business owners have asked for an even greater scope of policing: officers posted to a new substation and assigned to walk a beat or patrol on bikes for much or all of the day.
"If we want a safe downtown, as opposed to a known cakewalk for criminals, we have to demand the police do a better job of protecting us," says Sam Kittner, who operates a photography business on the floor above Subway and owns the building with his wife Bobbi.
The dare-you-to-stop-us arrogance of the robbers who repeated their crime at Subway shook both Kittners. They are considering whether to erect a barrier in their back alley to block an escape route and feel they have no choice but to attach surveillance cameras to their building. Sam sighs. "Yeah, I know, to take pictures of men in masks."
Old Takoma merchants are now routinely reminding their employees about how to behave in encounters with someone able to kill quickly, and shoppers in the district are noticeably more wary.
A mom and her young daughter were trying to leave Subway the morning of January 14 th when the two robbers forced them back inside. For the next few minutes threats were directed at them as the means to secure compliance from the clerks. That bystanders were held hostage is the most unnerving of all to Sam. "Anyone of us could have been getting a sandwich at Subway, or walking by. It's too scary."
The following Friday morning the Takoma Cleaners up the street was robbed, apparently by the same men. They are also the prime suspects in the robberies of two stores in Hyattsville an hour earlier and of S&S Liquors, below the Metro overpass by the Takoma station, the following Thursday evening.
Either these men or others using a similar MO began targeting establishments in and around Old Takoma during the last weeks of 2006. The House of Musical Traditions and Sun Trust Bank were the first two hit.
The getaway car in the S&S stickup was a white van with Maryland tags. A witness was able to read "M07" off the back plate. In this and a few of the other robberies one gunman has been dressed in a black coat, black pants, black gloves and a black mask. Otherwise the police have few clues to go on.
D-day may arrive in February for long-postponed gym
In 1995 a gym under the Takoma Park firehouse that had been a roller rink, a soccer arena, an after-school playground, a dance pavilion, a summer camp and the court where NBA star Steve Francis played childhood hoops was declared unsafe. By the middle of this month the town's community of gym rats may learn whether a replacement gym will be built as a finishing touch to the new community center.
On the weekend afternoons of February 10 th and February 11 th , in separate but identical show-and-tell presentations, City Manager Barb Matthews and a couple of her top deputies will lay out the parameters of the decision: how large and decked out a new gym might be, how much it might cost, what the consequences might be for personal tax bills.
The next evening the Council will take up the subject, with the added benefit of the opinions, the chatter and perhaps the calculated wisdom -- what's the social value of a big box where kids (of all ages) can be at play? -- from people who attend and participate in the show-and-tells. The City sent a special invitation by mail to all residents to drum up attendance.
The Saturday session is to take place at Grace United Methodist Church on New Hampshire Avenue and the Sunday one at the community center. Both will run from 2:30 to 4:30.
Last December, after a professional designer recommended options for gyms costing in the range of $6-to-8 million, a citizens committee that's been dealing with the pros and cons of the debate asked the Council to authorize designs for a set of cheaper alternatives. Cost estimates for the new designs are expected to be available by February 8th.
Tom gets Cabinet position, goes to Annapolis anyway
Tom Perez, the town's best known politician not currently in elected office, has accepted a Cabinet appointment to head up the state labor department in the new O'Malley administration in Annapolis.
The position presents Tom with a chance to watch out for the "little people" in Maryland's economic scheme and to influence corporate behavior, much as he had hoped to do as state attorney general before his candidacy for that office was thwarted last year by the state's court of appeals.
The appellate judges removed his name from the ballot with a terse ruling that he had not practiced law in Maryland for the requisite ten years, though they have yet to publish a legal paper to justify their reasoning.
Tom's new job description includes oversight of workplace safety, licensing boards, unemployment insurance and worker training.
One door opens for Marc, but another one closes
Despite a party with congratulatory outpourings and high-fives and other pressing of the flesh "it was a hard day, sad, sadder than I'd thought it'd be," says Marc Elrich of January 5th. Late that afternoon, after his students and fellow teachers departed, he turned in his final papers as a fifth-grade math teacher at Rolling Terrace.
The moment he was elected in November to one of nine positions on the County Council in Rockville, a fulltime job (which will pay him about the same salary), Marc knew his days in the classroom were numbered. But he stuck it out an extra month after being sworn into office. He couldn't leave without preparing his kids better for future rounds of testing, but, too, he was reluctant to let go.
Notwithstanding Marc's deep aspiration for politics, the mainstay of his life has been teaching, for 17 years at Rolling Terrace and for three years before that at another local elementary school. "If you really care about the effect you have on kids, there's nothing more satisfying."
From among the students in his classroom last year three qualified for the elite math academy at Takoma Park Middle and two more for the special communications-and-arts program at Eastern Middle, a success rate for a teacher that is probably in the 99 percentile.
"I'm completely psyched about what can be accomplished in Rockville," he says, "but I will miss Rolling Terrace. A lot."
"New vibe" & loss leaders at the Food Co-op
Bob Atwood recruited the Main Street program for Old Takoma as part of his vision to make over the business district, but for his personal baby, the two-store Takoma Park/Silver Spring Food Co-operative, which he managed, he liked things the way they were.
Now that Bob has left, returning to his family home in the Carolinas in January, changes are happening even before the Co-op board hires his successor.
| Photo: Julie Wiatt |  | | John Mabbott, new face of the Co-op |
An ebullient troubleshooter from Seattle, John Mabbott, who specializes in moving about the country and putting vim and vigor into small groceries, has been brought in. "Not that the stores here are in trouble," he said after meeting with the board, "but I think everyone is ready for a new vibe."
To start with he intends to slash prices on a select number of items to entice bargain-hunters. "This isn't a radical idea. Supermarkets usually take a 20 percent loss on butter or eggs or mayo, whatever items are popular with their customers, but at the Co-op the policy has always been to do a standard markup across the board."
Then Mr. Mabbott will tackle the trickier matter of style. The face the Co-op staff puts on for customers has been called dry-lipped and diffident, almost ascetic. He wants them to loosen up and banish the gravity, especially at the Takoma Park store in the Junction. "That store seems a little like a child unwilling to be hugged. My feeling is you should embrace your customers and let them embrace you. And you should enjoy it."
As for the Silver Spring store, which opened a couple years ago on Grubb Road and is not well advertised, he is flabbergasted that the obvious slogan has not been employed to solve the identity crisis. "Get your grub on Grubb Road - it's perfect!"
A skatepark is coming to Hodges Heights
By definition teenage skateboarders are wild and zany daredevils, not the type to dress up nattily for political lobbying, but on a Monday evening four years ago Gus May, Sam Ricci and a few more of their skating pals spoke so persuasively at the citizens' podium that the Council was moved to add a skatepark to the City's to-do list.
It has languished on the list, and Gus and Sam, who live on Willow Avenue, are now grownup 17-year-olds with an eye on college entrance exams. But their pleadings on behalf of the adolescents who roam the town with a wheeled board and candles for waxing cement curbs were never forgotten, and at the Council meeting on January 22 nd the next generation of boarders was told they will reap the reward.
Assuming no new obstacles, they will be boogying and bombing on a surface of ramps, pipes and longboards this summer.
The thrill-inducing constructs are to be anchored to the dissolute tennis courts between Piney Branch Elementary and Takoma Park Middle. The skatepark is to operate on a trial run for about a year, then become a permanent fixture in that location after the entire playing space between the schools is spiffed up in 2008 and 2009.
Montgomery County's parks department, which owns the property, is paying for the equipment and installation. County officials had expressed a willingness to do so a year ago, but City Recreation Director Debra Haiduven objected to the County's insistence that the City take on the $75,000 annual cost of supervising the skateboarders.
Now the County has decided a skatepark without fulltime attendants is okay, in line with updated nationwide thinking that equates the skateboarding experience to pickup basketball games on outdoor courts.
Representatives from the County will meet soon with residents of Hodges Heights, who will be the nearest neighbors to the skatepark.
Who do you call? Start with a non-profit
When Roz Grigsby tried to "smoke out" all the nonprofit groups in town for a window display at the old Taliano's in November, she reached a dozen and then stopped. Says Roz, who is filling the niche of chief operative for Old Takoma's businesses, "I barely scratched the surface."
Since then three more nonprofits have moved into Old Takoma. They are (1) Handicap International, a group advocating to improve living conditions for persons with disabilities living in 60 post-conflict or low-income countries around the world and a co-winner of the1997 Nobel Peace prize for the international campaign to ban land mines; (2) Food for Life Global, an organization that distributes the world's largest vegetarian and vegan food relief; and (3) Hungry for Music, a charity founded in the District that gives away musical instruments to children unable to afford them.
One nonprofit on Roz's list, Center for the New American Dream, which Betsy Taylor started in Takoma Park a few years ago, gained a new executive director on January 4 . She is Lisa Wise, who has a resume of work for nonprofit groups, including one she started.
The eleven others Roz discovered in town ("Their issues are all over the map, literally, from the folks trying to save Sligo Creek to the folks doing animal rescue in Mexico") are the Institute for Environment and Energy Research, Art for the People, Compassion Over Killing, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Friends of Sligo Creek, Friends of Takoma Transit, Paws Across the Borders, Historic Takoma, Save Our Sky, FairVote and Takoma Park Alternative Gift Giving.
Note to readers: If you know of a nonprofit in town not mentioned here please send an e-mail to kohn@erols.com.
Other comings & goings
- If all proceeds according to plan, as many as 20 vendors of vegetables and fruits fresh from farms within 125 miles of the city limits will be set up in a new outdoor market near or at the Takoma-Langley Crossroads on Wednesday evenings this summer. Some vendors undoubtedly will cater to Latin tastes. Funding is being provided by private foundations that want to see farmers' markets in neighborhoods characterized socially as "shifting sands."
| Photo: Tisha Tryens |  | | Some of the Takoma Voice and Silver Spring Voice staff at their new digs below the Takoma Park Post Office. Shown, L-R: Editor Eric Bond, Liesl Groberg, Cheryl Brand, Emily Prevo, Rashid (the sign painter), Laney Park and Julie Wiatt. Not shown: Karen Krueger, Diana and Howard Kohn, and our contributors. | - Two Old Takoma shops, The Big Bad Woof and The Culture Shop, made their way into a new booklet "Unique Places in DC: An Insider's Guide to Shopping the District's Indie-Boutiques," published by Crown Guides.
- Universal Solar Design, a shop selling energy-efficient light bulbs, has moved into a portion of the space at Sangha in Old Takoma.
- Local guy Sam Stokes does not ordinarily get his name in the papers nor get lucky in contests, but he pulled out a ticket in PNC Bank's Ultimate Big Game Getaway sweepstakes that sent him on a free trip to the Super Bowl. He had never before seen the big game in person.
- The desks, computers and cabinets being lugged by hand across the main parking lot in Old Takoma on January afternoons constituted a one-block shift in addresses for the Voice, from second-floor digs above Video Americain to a spacious, well-lit basement below the Post Office. Editor & publisher Eric Bond denied he had decided it was easier to move the entire office than to clean up his notoriously unkempt desk.
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Familiar faces in new jobs
Ward Five elects Reuben Snipper for post-Elrich era
After a month of door-knocking in January weather and a turnout of candidates and voters that eclipsed recent standards ,Reuben Snipper is the new Council member for Ward Five, the area of town between the Adventist hospital and the Long Branch shops and eateries. He will serve the remaining nine months of a term that Ward Five legend Marc Elrich relinquished when he moved on to the County Council.
A federal policy analyst and the oldest and most seasoned of the three candidates, Reuben won 107 of 202 votes cast in the January 30 special election. But the two relative newcomers to town politics who also jumped spiritedly into the race, Eric Hensal (72 votes) and Ali Barrionuevo (23 votes), made a good showing.
The previous ten elections in Ward Five had consistently attracted fewer candidates and voters as a general sign of contentment with Marc, who won all ten. "I think it's encouraging that three hard-working candidates stepped to the plate and campaigned extremely vigorously," Reuben said after the election.
He and his wife Cheryl Morden, parents to three sons who went through the local public schools, have worked on a variety of civic causes since moving here in 1984. Reuben is a social liberal with the same concerns for the less well-off as his predecessor - the two are old friends - but he is eager to push initiatives of his own for more youth recreation and a bigger police presence in the ward. "Nine months isn't a lot of time, but I hope to make progress," he said. 
Police Chief Ronald Ricucci back on familiar ground
It will be a homecoming for Ronald Ricucci, the City's new police chief, when he begins the job officially on February 20, but don't be surprised if he has acquired a little drawl.
Chief Ricucci has hung his hat in three southern states since ending a 27-year career with the Montgomery County police department in the mid-1990's.
He comes here from Hillsborough County in Florida, where he was handling security for the school system, and he has also worked in the past decade as police chief for Jefferson County in Kentucky, as public safety director for Louisville, Kentucky, and as police chief for Front Royal, Virginia.
With Montgomery County he started as a dispatcher and worked his way up to the rank of deputy chief.
City Manager Barb Matthews chose him from a pool of 90 applicants. The previous chief, Cindy Creamer, left for a job with WSSC last July.
The Voice is planning to publish an interview with Chief Ricucci in an upcoming issue.
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