Props to the Cops: “Series of Arrest and gun recoveries”

Photo by PoPville flickr user KJinDC

From MPD:

“Earlier tonight [Tues.], Third District officers made a series of arrest for robberies throughout the area. First, officers apprehended an adult male after he attempted to rob a complainant of an Apple I-Phone, at 1301 Clifton Street. Second, officers made the arrest of 2 additional males after they attempted to rob a complainant at 7th and Vermont Avenue.…In both cases, I-Phones were taken and recovered….

Additionally, in (2) separate cases, members of the Vice and Crime Suppression Team were able to arrest (2) males for carrying a pistol without a license and took (2) handguns off the street. The locations of those arrests were 8th and Berry and 5200 block of Illinois Avenue.

Anyone with information relating to these or any cases relating to robberies or guns are encouraged to call 202-727-9099.”

A message was also shared on the Shaw listserv from one of the mugging victims:

“Wanted to fill you all in on my experiences last night. I was walking south on Vermont Ave. between S and R St., when I was approached by two black males who demanded my phone and wallet while indicating that they had a gun in their jacket pocket. I gave both up immediately and they ran directly towards our neighborhood. After a few minutes I went in the same direction and called the police with the help of a couple I stopped on the street.

The police arrived before I was done on the phone with 911, and we immediately began driving around the neighborhood attempting to locate them. Since I have an iPhone, one of the officers let me use his iPhone to download the Find My iPhone app, which immediately indicated that my phone was north of the intersection of Florida and Rhode Island NW. We sped over there, tracked my phone into a dead end alley (the 3th/4rd/T St. alley NW), which the police apprehended the two men. They found my phone almost immediately (with a little help from Find My iPhone’s beeping sound), and I ID’d the two men. About an hour later, one of them agreed to show the officers where they’d hidden my wallet – which turned out to be in the 10th St. Alley at French St.

I want to thank Officer L. Garrett and Detective Jose Morales for their great work and courtesy last night. Overall, it went about as well as a mugging can go, but I am a little shaken up that both the crime itself and the wallet’s hiding place were so close to our homes.

One note: the computer in police cruisers appears to run only Internet Explorer 6 (as a digital strategist, we often make the decision not to support this ancient mess of a browser), which cannot run Find My iPhone. If the officers had not had iPhones themselves to track my device, this would not have had a happy ending. I would highly suggest that the Metropolitan Police invest in installing a browser in cruiser computers that can handle modern phone tracking applications.

It’s also worth noting that this is the third such crime I’ve heard about among my friends in the last week. It may be something about the time of year: be safe and alert out there.”