National Airport is on track for a banner year for gun confiscations.
A Maryland man was the latest to try to take a loaded handgun through the security checkpoint at DCA. With that Tuesday incident, Transportation Security Administration officers have now confiscated 23 guns so far in 2023.
A man suspected of shooting two people outside of a taco restaurant in Merrifield was arrested in Arlington.
Arlington’s SWAT team arrested the 25-year-old man Sunday night at an address a block away from Wakefield High School.
More on Fallen Arlington Marine — “Life for the Collart family had already been hard these past three years before they learned of the crash off the Australian coast on Sunday that took the lives of Cpl. Spencer R. Collart and two of his fellow U.S. Marines. In March 2020, just when the coronavirus pandemic was settling in, the family’s Northern Virginia home burned down, leaving little more than embers.” [Washington Post, WJLA]
Arlington Pickleball Controversy on NPR — “Arlington County is one of the many communities caught up in the pickleball craze. That’s not without its problems. Denizens are fighting over sound ordinances and the use of public parks.” [1A]
A 7-Eleven store near Shirlington was robbed early this morning by a pair of suspects, one of whom was armed.
The robbery happened shortly after 2:30 a.m. at the convenience store on the 2800 block of S. Wakefield Street, just down the hill from the Fairlington neighborhood.
FLOTUS to Mark 9/11 in Arlington — “[President] Biden will not participate in any of the observances at 9/11 memorial sites in New York City, Virginia or Pennsylvania. Instead, the president will stop in Alaska for a Sept. 11 observance at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson… First lady Jill Biden will lay a wreath at the 9/11 memorial at the Pentagon.” [Associated Press]
Arlington Has Star Power — “Arlington may contain but 5 percent of Virginia’s population, but a new ranking says 60 percent of the top five living celebrities from the Old Dominion have roots in the county… Topping the list from Virginia was actress/producer Sandra Bullock, a graduate of what then was Washington-Lee High School.” [Gazette Leader]
Jail entrance at the Arlington County Detention Facility (file photo)[/caption]
Of the eight people who have died in the Arlington County jail in eight years, five appear to have been homeless, according to court records.
Most recently, Abonesh Woldegeorges, a 73-year-old Black woman with no fixed address, died in the detention center on Sunday morning.
She was found at Dulles International Airport four times between 2019 and 2023 and then, this month, at Reagan National Airport, where she was arrested by airport police and sent to Arlington's jail, the Washington Post reported. Although eventually granted bond, Woldegeorges remained in jail so she could be taken to Loudoun County for a hearing related to her Dulles charges.
Her case is not unique. Her death, however, returns the jail to the spotlight after previous inmate deaths generated a $10 million wrongful death lawsuit and a civil rights investigation by the Dept. of Justice, as well as a slate of changes by the Sheriff's Office, which oversees the lockup.
Over the past year and a half it changed medical providers, purchased biometric sensors for select inmates and made other protocol changes. All of this occurred amid changing leadership: Beth Arthur retired before the end of her term and appointed as interim sheriff her Chief Deputy, Jose Quiroz.
Quiroz campaigned on improving inmate well-being and, after winning the Democratic primary, is the sole candidate for Sheriff on the November ballot.
"Clearly, changing to a new medical contractor didn’t change anything," says Michael Hemminger, president of the Arlington NAACP branch, which requested the federal inquiry he says is ongoing. "What level of care do these human beings deserve? Is it okay to continue outsourcing to a for-profit provider?"
A holding place for people without homes and with mental disorders
Court records indicate three other deceased inmates, dating back to 2015, had no address listed or their housing situation was fluid, with an address that varied by the year of their offense. A fourth the Washington Post reported was homeless and suffering from alcoholism.
Of this group, Paul Thompson (died 2022), Clyde Spencer (died 2021) and Edward Straughn (died 2015) were in jail on trespassing or public intoxication charges. Anthony Gordon (died 2015) had been convicted of assault and battery of a family member and was sentenced to five years.
The remaining inmates who have died were listed as D.C. or Maryland residents. This includes D.C. resident Darryl Becton, whose family sued Arlington County for wrongful death for $10 million and were awarded $1.3 million about three weeks ago, according to Hemminger.
That a majority of deceased inmates did not have stable housing comes as no surprise to Chief Public Defender Brad Haywood. He says the vast majority of inmates are indigent and his office has about a dozen clients right now with airport trespassing charges, specifically.
"People who have homes to go to never have to trespass. People who have money almost never steal. People who are urinating in public -- everyone I know would rather have a place to go inside," he said.
He added that more than half of jail inmates are also taking mental health medication. Statistics from the 2023 fiscal year indicate that psychotropic drugs were prescribed 1,582 times across 2,764 total commitments at Arlington's jail. Other signs of elevated mental health issues inside the jail include the 1,102 inmates assigned a mental health alert.
[caption id="attachment_302404" align="alignnone" width="1273"]
Jail statistics for the 2023 fiscal year (via Arlington County)[/caption]
That the jail has a large population of unhoused inmates with mental health disorders is both a funding issue and the result of a disconnect among the people and agencies reporting and arresting people for trespassing, he said.
"People don't think about the social conditions that lead to this," Haywood said. "It's just a combination of a lot of issues that no one really wants to confront because they're complicated and require a lot of resources."
ACPD is investigating a pair of incidents this past weekend that left two people with serious injuries.
The first happened around 11 p.m. Friday on the 3500 block of Wilson Blvd in Virginia Square. That’s the same block as a 7-Eleven and a tobacco store.
Last week, residents may have received a postcard outlining a new tax they can expect next year: a stormwater utility fee.
Like electric, gas, or water utility bills, this fee effective Jan. 1, 2024, would charge properties a fee based on use of and impact on Arlington County’s stormwater system. The new fee will replace an existing sanitary district tax calculated based on property assessments.
A few kids got an early start to the school year by allegedly burglarizing Yorktown High School.
A burglar alarm alerted police to the break-in early Monday morning, just after midnight, ahead of the first day of the school year.
Amazon Pushes Return to Office — “Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told company employees who defy his edict to return to the office for at least three days a week that ‘it’s probably not going to work out for you.’ Jassy made the comments during a meeting earlier this month during which he expressed frustration over the fact that some employees were not taking the return-to-office mandate seriously, according to the news site Insider, which obtained a recording of the CEO’s comments.” [New York Post]
ACPD K-9 Retires — “Please join ACPD in wishing K9 Astor a happy retirement as he finished his final tour of duty today. For over 10 years, he faithfully served the Arlington community and his fellow officers by making numerous criminal apprehensions, locating evidence, and protecting his handler. We are thankful for his years of service and wish him a happy and relaxing retirement!” [Facebook]
A 21-year-old man from Arlington was among three Marines killed in Australia over the weekend.
Cpl. Spencer Collart died after the MV-22B Osprey aircraft he was on crashed and caught fire on Melville Island, off the coast of Australia’s Northern Territory. It happened during a military training exercise involving forces from the United States, Australia, the Philippines, East Timor and Indonesia, news outlets reported.
Reminder: Back to School Today — From an Arlington County Police Department spokesperson: “Our Special Operations Section will be conducting traffic education and enforcement efforts in and around school zones to remind everyone of safe practices as they travel to and from their destinations during Back to School.” [ARLnow]
Senior Facility Plan Revised — “McLean-based Artis Senior Living, the assemblage’s owner and contract seller, planned to raze the site to make way for a six-story, roughly 163,000-square-foot 175-unit assisted living facility with a partially below-grade parking garage. McCaffery’s application proposes increasing the building size by about 6,400 square feet and adding an independent living component to the assisted living and memory care uses previously approved.” [Washington Business Journal]
