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Tag: brooke pinto

  • DC leaders consider reestablishing youth curfew zones permanently – WTOP News

    D.C. Council members are hearing from members of the public and law enforcement on the effectiveness of last summer’s youth curfew zones and whether they should be put pack in place.

    D.C. Council members are hearing from members of the public and law enforcement on the effectiveness of last summer’s youth curfew zones and whether or not it should be put pack in place this winter.

    Ward 2 Council member Brooke Pinto, who chairs the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, assembled members of the public and local leaders for a roundtable Thursday on the subject.

    The council voted to let the curfew zones expire Oct. 5, ending the summerlong emergency legislation that gave the police chief the authority to declare certain parts of the city as expanded juvenile curfew zones.

    “Over the summer, during which seven juvenile curfew zones were declared, MPD reported that they had zero curfew violations and zero arrests,” Pinto said. “We also have to make sure that we have tools to prevent these limited instances of disruptive behavior before it occurs.”

    Those zones banned anyone under 18 from gathering in groups of nine or more from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m., with some exceptions.

    D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith testified that since the curfew zones ended, her department is seeing more instances of young people gathering in large groups and causing problems. She cited two recent examples that happened on Oct. 13.

    In one incident, she said a group of 100 or more teenagers and young adults gathered at the Navy Yard then went to Union Station, running into traffic along the way and damaging some road signs and trash cans. She said in that incident, a 14-year-old was struck by a car and received minor injuries.

    In the other incident on the same day, Smith said a group of 60-70 teenagers ransacked the movie theater at Gallery Place, causing property damage and stealing about $200 worth of candy. She said one person was struck in the forehead by a bottle thrown by one of the teens. She did not say whether any arrests were made.

    “As a result of this proactive effort, MPD did not cite any youth curfew violations in the zones during the active hours of 8 p.m. to 11 p.m., nor were there any large gatherings,” Smith said, adding the curfew zones should be in place permanently.

    She acknowledged some council members are against the curfews entirely.

    “But that is not where we are right now,” Smith said.

    “True public safety comes from addressing the root causes with robust youth programs and accountability,” Ward 8 Council member Trayon White said, adding that he saw curfews as a “short-term fix” and not a solution to youth delinquency.

    “I’m not inclined to support a permanent application of this curfew,” Ward 5 Council member Zachary Parker said. “It was supposed to get us through the summer or winter while we work on something more long-term, maybe it does not exist yet.”

    Pinto said the vast majority of city youth are doing well, and that should be encouraged. She said she supported funding to “create new recording studios for our kids, making sure that our D.C. public libraries have spaces for young people.”

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    © 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

    Alan Etter

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  • ‘People’s lives are on the line’: DC 911 reporting change sparks alarm – WTOP News

    D.C. promised more transparency from the agency that handles 911 calls and nonemergency communications. But a recent rule change may be doing the opposite.

    After receiving criticism over delays in 911 responses, D.C. promised more transparency from the agency that oversees the city’s emergency communications. But a recent rule change may be doing the opposite.

    The Office of Unified Communications, which handles all 911 and nonemergency calls in the District and dispatches police, fire and EMS services, now requires the 911 caller to include their own phone number in their error report on its website. 

    “Please note that an investigation will only be conducted in response to concerns regarding specific incidents,” the website reads.

    A red asterisk appears in the online form next to a box labeled “Phone Number Used to Call 911 or 311.”

    That’s raising alarms for safety advocate Dave Statter, who has tracked more than 40 incidents this year, including 26 wrong address errors.

    “So 40-plus incidents this year will go ignored … even though there were clear address mistakes in 26 of them, where they sent DC fired EMS the wrong way,” Statter said.

    In a response to WTOP, the Office of Unified Communications said the rules have “not changed regarding how issues overheard on 911 dispatches can be reported,” but did not explain why the feedback form now requires a phone number for an investigation into a 911 error to be launched.

    When asked why a phone number is required, an OUC spokesperson said in an email that the agency takes “compliance with privacy laws and safeguarding personal information very seriously.”

    “Investigations are conducted in response to concerns regarding specific incidents when feedback form users have completed all required fields,” the email read. “Once an investigation is complete, records and information may be disclosed to individuals directly involved in the incident.”

    When asked whether the agency is unable to locate a 911 record without a phone number, the spokesperson said that is not accurate. They also said the agency complies with all requirements of the Secure D.C. Act.

    But Statter said he believes the change contradicts that law, introduced by Ward 2 Council member Brooke Pinto. The Secure D.C. Act requires monthly reporting of 911 errors, which can be found on an online dashboard.

    Pinto defended the requirement for a phone number during a June 6 council budget oversight hearing. She said it helps balance the need to investigate concerns with the workload on an agency that is understaffed.

    “In order to make this dashboard that is updated every single day with an agency that is understaffed and working extremely long shifts, I’m trying to get the balance right of what I am asking them to report on every single day. And one way we can do that is to provide standardization that if they can look up the phone number,” Pinto said in June.

    Statter responded, “It’s ridiculous that OUC claims they have to have the 911 caller’s number to find the incident.”

    “When I report an incident, I give them the date, the time, the location, the units that responded. That’s all the information that’s needed,” he added.

    In one case, Statter documented a cardiac arrest call delayed by more than 10 minutes due to a wrong address. He warned that the consequences of ignoring these reports could be deadly.

    “People’s lives are on the line because OUC doesn’t respond effectively to a 911 call,” he said. “I don’t understand why … they wouldn’t want to investigate all of them.”

    Statter said he will continue submitting reports using the general form, despite the new restrictions.

    Pinto’s office told WTOP she values and prioritizes transparency within the agency and rigorous oversight.

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    © 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

    Mike Murillo

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  • DC Council’s Brooke Pinto running for Del. Norton’s congressional seat – WTOP News

    D.C. Council member Brooke Pinto told WTOP Monday she has entered the race to become the city’s next congressional representative.

    Ward 2 Council member Brooke Pinto tells WTOP she’s challenging Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton for the District’s congressional seat.

    D.C. Council member Brooke Pinto told WTOP Monday she has entered the race to become the city’s next congressional representative, after releasing a video online earlier in the morning.

    Pinto joins Robert C. White Jr., her council colleague, in the campaign for Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton’s seat, which Norton has held for over 30 years.

    The seat representing D.C. in Congress is a nonvoting position.

    In a news release, the Ward 2 council member and chair of the D.C. Council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety pledged to “fight for DC’s autonomy” and the city’s safety.

    She also touted her years of service on the Council and the bills she has shepherded into law, including the public safety package Secure D.C.

    Regarding Del. Norton, Pinto said: “What she has done for the District has been so important. … And that’s what I want to build on.”

    Listen to the entire interview at the top of this post.

     

     

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    © 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

    Diane Morris

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  • Can you hear me now? DC trying to figure out why this carrier kept dropping 911 calls – WTOP News

    Can you hear me now? DC trying to figure out why this carrier kept dropping 911 calls – WTOP News

    Officials said Verizon, one of the biggest cellphone carriers, would keep hanging up on 911 when someone is calling for help in D.C.

    Last month alone, more than 10,000 calls to D.C.’s 911 went unanswered. Sometimes, the person calling would hang up quickly because they made the call by accident, or maybe they’d be disconnected because they were walking into a building or someplace where the signal would drop.

    But anecdotes about 911 calls being disconnected as soon as someone is moved into a queue to speak to a call taker have been pouring into city leaders offices for months, and after further investigation they found one common denominator — the cellphone that was used to make the call used Verizon as a carrier.

    This week, the Office of Unified Communications and D.C. Council member Brooke Pinto confirmed there has been a problem with Verizon dropping calls, and the city is working with the telecommunications carrier to fix the issue. While it hasn’t been solved yet, OUC director Heather McGaffin told the council during an oversight hearing on Monday that a workaround has been put in place in the meantime.

    “When you call 911 and we are experiencing a spike in call volume, you are getting a queue that says, ‘You’ve reached D.C. 911, please don’t hang up,’” said McGaffin. “That is considered a delivered call to D.C. 911. As long as you don’t hang up, you’ll stay in that queue. If you do hang up … we’re going to call you back. One of the vendors was not considering that a delivered call. They were dropping callers.”

    McGaffin said it was during a meeting with Pinto’s staff when they were going over call logs that the anecdotal evidence turned into something more substantive.

    “I said, ‘Well, this is strange, this person hung up right at this mark.’ And then the next one, I was like, ‘This is not a coincidence.’ I don’t believe in those, and so we need to do a little bit of extra digging,” she said.

    After the hearing on Monday, McGaffin was hesitant to go further into details, vowing to offer up something more substantial in the future. Pinto also spoke, adding that it’s a national problem that’s affected other cities, too.

    “The carrier was dropping many of those callers once they entered the queue line,” said Pinto. “And so we both need the public to know if you’re in the queue line, wait and don’t hang up. But we also need the carrier to know that call is not finalized yet, and you cannot be dropping those calls.”

    A spokesperson for Verizon confirmed the carrier is working with D.C. to address the issue, adding that it “reliably delivers” wireless calls to 911 “in accordance with industry and public safety standards.” But follow-up questions about how long this has been a problem, and how often it’s occurred, have not been answered.

    “That carrier will have to make fixes on their end so that they’re delivering the call the proper way,” said McGaffin. “We’re meeting with them almost every other day to say, ‘Where are you?’”

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    © 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

    John Domen

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  • New pressure put on DC’s troubled 911 call center by Council member Pinto – WTOP News

    New pressure put on DC’s troubled 911 call center by Council member Pinto – WTOP News

    More pressure is being put on D.C.’s troubled 911 call center, which has been plagued by errors and questions about whether the public is able to get timely help in an emergency for years.

    Speaking outside the headquarters of the D.C. Office of Unified Communications, Council member Brooke Pinto said she will make unannounced visits to the agency every two weeks and hold public oversight hearings monthly. (WTOP/Kyle Cooper)

    More pressure is being put on D.C.’s troubled 911 call center, which has been plagued by errors and questions about whether the public is able to get timely help in an emergency for years.

    After a tour Monday of the Office of Unified Communications in Southeast D.C., Ward 2 Council member Brooke Pinto announced she would be returning to the center every two weeks unannounced, and will hold public oversight hearings monthly.

    “We are the nation’s capital, we absolutely have to have a 911 call center that every resident and every visitor can rely on when they … dial 911; (that) someone’s going to pick up quickly, that they’re going to get help,” Pinto said.

    Pinto also said she’s introducing new legislation to enforce more transparency at the agency. The bill requires the agency to release after-action reports when incidents happen “or there is a separation from protocol or an error that takes place,” she said.

    Under the legislation, the after-action reports would have to be released within 45 days of any incident where errors may have led to serious injury or death.

    Other D.C. Council members have expressed frustration with the performance of the 911 call center. In July, Ward 1 Council member Brianne Nadeau said that she heard about more disturbing incidents involving the call center in a 10-day period than she typically does in a year.

    Pinto also said she does not think the plan that OUC director Heather McGaffin announced earlier this summer involving paying bonuses to workers who show up for all their shifts is a good idea.

    “To me, that’s the wrong message. You should be showing up to work because your salary is sufficient to show up to work,” she said.

    However, Pinto added that she thinks the call center’s staff are underpaid.

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    © 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

    Kyle Cooper

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  • DC Council approves sweeping anti-crime bill – WTOP News

    DC Council approves sweeping anti-crime bill – WTOP News

    The D.C. Council is set to vote Tuesday on anti-crime legislation that will toughen city laws against crimes such as carjackings, retail theft and drug dealing.

    In response to troubling crime trends, the D.C. Council voted nearly unanimously on Tuesday to approve a sweeping bill that covers carjackings, gun crimes and DNA collection, among other things.

    Council members voted 12-0 in support of the legislation, with Ward 8 Council member Trayon White voting “present.” Tuesday marked the second vote on the bill, which was created as lawmakers face mounting pressure over how the city is responding to violent crimes.

    Now, the legislation heads to Mayor Muriel Bowser’s desk.

    In a statement, Mayor Muriel Bowser praised the lawmakers for taking a “critical step in the work to build a safer DC by rebalancing our public safety and justice ecosystem in favor of safety and accountability.”

    “This bill is a serious commitment from the council to our residents that we take your safety seriously,” Ward 6 Council member Charles Allen said before the vote. “And that action is more productive than finger pointing.”

    What’s in the bill?

    The legislation, called the Secure DC Omnibus Amendment Act of 2024, expands the definition of carjacking and increases penalties for gun crimes. It also enables D.C. police to engage in chases under certain circumstances, and makes it easier for judges to keep adults and juveniles accused of violent crimes detained while they’re awaiting trials.

    U.S. Attorney for D.C. Matthew Graves has said several times that a small group of people are responsible for the majority of crimes in the city.

    Graves said parts of the bill “will provide crucial tools to police and to prosecutors as we collectively work together to hold those who commit crimes in our community accountable.”

    “This is the biggest challenge,” Ward 3 Council member Matt Frumin said.

    Council members also voted to support a change in the package that allows for people charged with a violent crime to be swabbed for their DNA after a probable cause hearing.

    The Council had previously approved an amendment to the bill that would prohibit police from collecting DNA samples from individuals who have been arrested before conviction.

    Under the approved legislation, D.C. police will also be able to establish drug-free zones in crime hot spots.

    “This drug-free zone policy is a narrow tool,” Ward 2 Council member Brooke Pinto said. “There are a couple of spots in the city that have become real hot spots of crime, of illegal activity, of weapon sales.”

    An effort to change the threshold for the felony offense of retail theft from $1,000 to $500 failed Tuesday, and some council members argued the bigger concern is that theft cases aren’t prosecuted often.

    What’s to come?

    “There is a tendency to demagogue and say, ‘I have the solution to crime, we’re going to make mandatory sentences, we’re going to make longer sentences, we’re going to make everything a felony.’ The research is clear — those are not what actually reduces crime,” Chairman Phil Mendelson said.

    But in pushing for the change, Pinto said the council should “send a really strong message that that status quo cannot be tolerated any longer.”

    Critics of the legislation, such as the ACLU of D.C., said it gives too much power to police while scaling back on accountability.

    “Some of today’s amendments provided some relief, but we’ll keep fighting to see true public safety in the District,” the organization wrote in a social media post.

    Several council members also criticized the way Mayor Bowser has promoted the bill as the ultimate solution to solving the city’s crime crisis.

    “I’m going to be a little harsh here … that the mayor has passed the buck and misled the public that the solution to crime in the District is the Council,” Mendelson said.

    Council member Zachary Parker said the package has unfortunately been “framed for residents as a panacea for D.C. crime in some ways.”

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    © 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

    Scott Gelman

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