DCentric

Good morning, DCentric readers! While you were watching Top Chef, we were out foraging for links! To us, they’re as valuable as truffles.

Outsourcing Troubled Kids: D.C. is addicted to the most costly, most scary way of treating vulnerable youngsters. “Jumiya had come into the system as a victim, not a criminal. In July 2008, her grandmother called police after spotting jagged welts on Jumiya’s arms…The District’s safety net had caught Jumiya, but now it had to parent her. For a kid like Jumiya, this meant group homes and curfew checks, lots of tough kids but few nurturing adults. She ended up running away a lot. To her social worker and other government caregivers, this meant she was unstable, a liability. It didn’t matter that she always ran home to family.” (Washington City Paper)

GWU honors Gray’s athletic legacy from time of segregated sports “In the early 1960s, the varsity basketball team and the fraternities at George Washington University were all-white clubs, but change was in the air. A lanky black kid who came to GWU from the District’s Dunbar High School was literally barred at the door of one fraternity but then connected with Jewish students who were ready to break the color line. And that same black student, a fellow by the name of Vincent C. Gray who had a pretty layup, joined with other African Americans and Jews to make up an intramural basketball team that broke barriers and captured the imagination of fellow students.” (The Washington Post)

Metro train operator reprimanded after filmed chatting with rider “It’s the latest case of Metro workers getting in trouble through riders’ videos and photos. In July 2009, Metro officials cracked down on employees using their cell phones behind the wheel after riders photographed bus drivers and train operators texting and talking on the phone while in motion. The agency toughened its three-strikes-you’re-out policy, creating a zero-tolerance policy in which drivers would be fired the first time caught using a cell phone. The new policy is even stricter than the agency’s policy on drug and alcohol use.” (Washington Examiner )

Biddle is best of candidates for at-large appointment “He expressed a desire for more residents on Georgia Avenue to support the kind of retail he and his family want to be able to walk to. He fully understood the dynamic where development is necessary to attract retail. He unequivocally supports marriage equality, while many advocates are very nervous about Vincent Orange’s often-shifting position on LGBT rights issues. We also had a long discussion about education reform. Biddle agrees with the basic thesis of Waiting for Superman, that we need to look to the charter schools that work by replicating them and/or importing their practices into DCPS schools.” (Greater Greater Washington)

Detained American Says He Was Beaten in Kuwait “The teenager, Gulet Mohamed, a Somali-American who turned 19 during his captivity, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday from a Kuwaiti detention cell that he was beaten with sticks, forced to stand for hours, threatened with electric shocks and warned that his mother would be imprisoned if he did not give truthful answers about his travels in Yemen and Somalia in 2009…Mr. Mohamed, from Alexandria, Va., remains in a Kuwaiti detention center even after Kuwait’s government, according to his brother, determined that he should be released.” (The New York Times)

Revealing and preventing wrongful convictions in the District “IT’S BEEN a little more than a year since Donald E. Gates was freed from prison after serving 28 years for a D.C. rape and murder in the District that he did not commit. So appalling were the circumstances of his case – prosecutors failed to disclose information discrediting the main piece of evidence against Mr. Gates – that questions arose about the validity of similar evidence in other cases…Nonetheless, we continue to believe that a special commission is needed to bring together key stakeholders in areview of practices that can lead to miscarriages of justice like the one that befell Mr. Gates.” (The Washington Post)