DC Government

Photo by PoPville flickr user Rusty Shuffelton

“Dear PoPville,

My wife, cats, and I aren’t sure how to get help for this situation. We live in a quad-plex apartment in Kingman Park and we work from home. The quad-plex next door to us has been undergoing renovations including a full basement dig out. The contractor did not take any steps to ventilate the carbon monoxide from the building. Since he operated the excavator equipment inside the empty shell of the building, the carbon monoxide built up to a level high enough that it set off the carbon monoxide detector in my apartment.

Despite the firewall between our “buildings”, there’s a pretty clear airflow between our carpet and baseboard running the length of the common wall between our buildings. I noticed it initially a couple months ago when the neighboring building was gutted, so their air was suddenly much colder and we could feel it seeping into our apartment.

If my combo smoke/CO alarm is to be believed, it doesn’t alarm until it reaches 400ppm. I very unwisely attempted to silence the alarm the first time it went off. It went off on 3 separate days, usually for several hours at a time. I bought a dedicated CO alarm from Amazon as validation and immediately it read 66ppm inside my apartment. On multiple days since receiving this dedicated alarm, I have observed readings in the 50 to 60ppm range inside my apartment.

I have gone next door and explained to the foreman that they are creating an extremely dangerous situation. I’ve tried to explain that it’s even more unhealthy for his crew. (more…)

“Dear PoPville,

The last three mornings in a row MPD has pounded on our door at 5:45 a.m., 6:45 a.m., and 7:10 a.m. They are looking for someone who has an outstanding warrant for a domestic abuse charge. We do not recognize the name and know the last three people that have owned our home. We have owned it since Nov. 2016. Each morning the police say they will remove our address from their records. The person they’re looking for must have given this address by mistake or purposefully. Yesterday I had a long exchange with the commander of 3D but he was ineffective as the police came again this morning looking for the same person. Again, they said they’d cross our address off their list. But when we called the officers’ sergeant she said that we would have to go through the court system to get the address stricken from the record. How is this our responsibility? And, is there anything else we can do?”

Update from MPD:

“OP first contacted me on Thursday morning regarding the 2 incidents in which MPD officers knocked on her door looking for an individual early in the morning. Unfortunately, OP was unable to obtain the names of the officers and indicated that the officers were different on both dates. She was able to give me a description of the officers from Thursday and a review of our Third District personnel that morning revealed no members matching that description. The name of the subject that the officers were looking for was a very generic name, and as such I could not ascertain the warrant or other information. At that time I advised OP that I believed that the officers were from another unit and I would begin making inquiries to identify them and their officials. I also advised her that if they returned for a third time, to get their names, car numbers and request that they have a supervisor respond.

Today (Friday), OP contacted me via email to say that the officers responded for a third time this morning. This time she was able to provide me with the names of the officers and it was determined that they were trying to serve DC Superior Court papers on an individual. With the names of the officers now known, I was able to loop the commander of that unit into our email conversation. It turns out that the individual who had petitioned the court, not the MPD, had provided the OP’s address as the subject’s address in their court filing. The commander of that unit has reached out to his team officials to make sure that the officers do not return to that location again looking for this individual. In addition, he and his team are working with the DC Superior Court to update their records indicating that this individual does not reside at the location. While we are making contact with DC Superior Court, it was relayed to the OP that they could also notify DC Superior Court of the issue, but this was never intended to be in lieu of MPD doing it. Although I was not there when that conversation took place, I believe that is where the confusion came from.

I am certain that this was a frustrating situation for OP, but I can assure you that once we obtained sufficient information to identify the officers and the subject that they were looking for, we began working to make sure that we do not respond to this address again for the same individual.

Stuart Emerman

Commander, Third District

Patrol Services North

Metropolitan Police Department”

From Fattys Tattoos and Piercings:

“Friends and fans,

The DC health department has yet again published body art laws that are unnecessarily onerous and costly to small business, vast yet unclear, and unacceptable to the body art community as written. These laws are almost identical to the laws that were proposed in 2015 that were overwhelmingly rejected by the body art industry and public. If these regulations are allowed to stand as is this will negatively effect your access to and cost of receiving body art in DC.

We are asking for your support and hope that you will email and/or write DC officials to oppose the DC Department of Health Body Art Establishments Final Rulemaking. The comment period ends Feb 5th so please send your comment by then. Just let them that you oppose the DC Department of Health Body Art Establishments Final Rulemaking as written.

Here is their email: [email protected] & [email protected]

Here is their mailing address:

441 4th st, NW
Suite 520S
Washington, DC
20001

Thanks again for your support and please spread the word!
Fatty and the Crew

To view the 66 pages of regulations go here. The site is difficult to navigate but in the “Agency” search box type “Department of Health” and type in “body art” in the next search box. They definitely don’t make it easy to find the regulations!

In Maryland we have a basic, comprehensive 6 page set of standards in place that have been in effect since 1997. These standards have kept the public safe and have given the industry clear guidelines to follow for over 2 decades. These standards are all you need to keep body art clean.

Please understand that according to DCHD there has NEVER been a reported case of disease transmission in DC from professional body art practices. These regulations are not a response to a disease outbreak or unsafe practices from the professional body art community. These harsh regulations are an overreaction to DC officials lack of action on providing the public with simple, comprehensive body art standards which we as an industry would support. Comprehensive body art standards protect the public and the body art industry.

We hope that after you read this follow up you will have a clearer understanding why it is important for you to act and contact [email protected] and [email protected] and oppose the Body Art Final Rulemaking as written. We only have until Feb 5th so please act soon!

History: (more…)