Part 13 -- Murder Capital

This is the thirteenth installment of a series (see the first installment here) summarizing the 1994 book Dream City: Race, Power, and the Decline of Washington, D.C.by Harry Jaffe and Tom Sherwood. This book has recently been republished as an ebook and a paper book. HBO has plans to use material from the book to make a movie about the life of Marion Barry.

Chapter 12: Murder Capital

Rayful Edmond's undisputed moment at the top of the drug-dealing heap was short-lived. By summer 1988, he faced two challenges -- one from locally-based Michael Salter (also known as Michael Frey or Fray) and the other from criminal gangs based in Jamaica via New York and Miami. The Jamaicans caused rival gangs to unite temporarily. Once the external threat receded, the gangs turned on each other.

"The number of murders shot up again in 1988 to set a record at 372. The rate of 60 killings per 10,000 residents put Washington ahead of Detroit as the murder capital of the nation. By comparison, New York's rate was 25. And it would get worse. On Valentine's Day 1989, 13 people were shot in one twenty-four-hour period" (Kindle location 3888).

"Eighty-nine percent of the victims were black; 96 percent of the assailants were black. Not one murder occurred in the white neighborhoods west of Rock Creek Park" (i. 3893).

" 'I'm not going to take full responsibility for all these murders,' Mayor Barry told Newsweek magazine. 'The city government didn't import this drug into Washington' " (l. 3899).

"The public read about two separate car accidents, one in the dead of night. His chauffeur-driven car ran a red light and collided with a car driven by a radio reporter en route to work at 2 am. 'I'm just a night owl,' Barry said to explain his early morning meanderings" (l. 3913).

"At least half of the people killed were African-American males under the age of 25, and numbers of juveniles arrested on drug charges climbed from 1,111 in 1986 to 1,658 in 1987. In 1984 there were no children twelve or younger arrested for drugs; by 1987 there were 35. Twenty-five juveniles were charged with murder in 1988; 52 would be up on murder raps in 1989" (l. 3938).

"Barry's dissipation placed his young aides in a wrenching predicament. They were talented, honest, highly-motivated African-Americans. They felt indebted to Barry for his leadership in the civil rights movement. They believed that Barry and his comrades ... had changed the world and paved the way for their success. They also were totally committed to the notion that balcks could run the city government. It was their city" (l. 3953).

"Barry's staff became one more layer in the wall of silence that protected the mayor. But the wall had many more elements. Barry's friends kept their silence; his cocaine dealers never squealed; [then-wife] Effi Barry witnessed the damage and kept it to herself. The city watched Barry slur his speech, sweat profusely in cold room, stare from dilated eyes. Call them facilitators or enablers, to one degree or another, dozens of people were culpable. The whole town knew that the mayor was falling victim to drugs. 'What's the surprise?' an African-American cabdriver said one day. 'Everyone knows Marion's a street monkey who's addicted to cocaine' " (l. 3967).

"...[B]y the late summer of 1988, even Barry knew that he was in grave danger. Some friends who suspected Barry's addiction suggested he 'pull a Betty Ford' and check himself into a clinic for alcoholism. Some suggested he needed to take a real vacation and stop his party lifestyle. Barry was too proud and too scared politically to go public and check into a hospital. He decided to try to heal himself" (l. 3978).

He checked into the New Age Health Farm Spa in Neversink, New York.

"Barry's plan was to spend the week quietly and return to Washington refreshed and released from drugs and alcohol. But his insistance, for the first time, that a trip remain a secret raised suspicions in the press... Barry stationed two security guards in a New York City hotel for the week to distract reporters. Their bill, paid by taxpayers, exceeded $2,500" (l. 3995).

Barry went on a special diet and had colonic irrigation. After returning, he told the press in October that his health had improved: "I'm more controlled, more contemplative, more reflective, more caring" (l. 4005).

Cheater's Guide to Dream City continues next week

Further installments will appear on successive Fridays. All posts will be cross-posted on Short Articles about Long Meetings.

Full disclosure: I have a commercial relationship with Amazon. I will receive a very small portion of the money people spend after clicking on an Amazon link on this site.

This is a great book and well worth reading in its entirety.

Read the next installment here.

Part 12 -- Crack Attack

This is the twelfth installment of a series (see the first installment here) summarizing the 1994 book Dream City: Race, Power, and the Decline of Washington, D.C.by Harry Jaffe and Tom Sherwood. This book has recently been republished as an ebook and a paper book. HBO has plans to use material from the book to make a movie about the life of Marion Barry.

Chapter 11: Crack Attack

The star of this chapter is Rayful Edmond III, "the capital's first cocaine king" (Kindle location 3475).

Edmond started as a street drug dealer. Starting in 1985, he built an wildly successful crime organization using members of his extended family and childhood friends. His first kilo of cocaine was a gift from his father, a small-time gambler. "With the profits from the first kilo, Edmond bought two more, and an empire was born" (l. 3509).

Edmond operated an open-air drug market on Orleans Place and Morton Place NE from his mother's home in Prince George's County. He favored expensive cars but was also a Robin Hood-figure.

"... He'd make sure neighbors had turkeys on Thanksgiving; he bought meals for the homeless, cars for his top staff, and clothes for his friends. He sponsored a basketball team in the Police Athletic League called 'Clean Sweep', the name of the police operation designed to get drug dealers off the streets" (l. 3556).

The unlikely love interest for the 22-year-old Edmond was 45-year-old white divorcee Alta Rae Zanville. Their first meeting:

"He ran into her one day in the summer of 1986 when he stopped by the Florida Avenue Grill for lunch. The restaurant at the corner of 11th and Florida... is Washington's most celebrated southern food diner. It was also the home of a fencing operation run by the owner's sons" (l. 3563).

"... Alta Rae Zanville was just what Edmond needed at the time. They may have had an affair, but he wanted her for business purposes. His drug-dealing money was piling up. He was not sophisicated enough to lauder the cash through businesses or hide it in foreign bank accounts" (l. 3578).

Zanville started by renting an apartment in Crystal City on Edmond's behalf. She went on to larger operations designed to hide Edmond's mountain of cash.

The media and government began to pay closer attention to drug abuse and dealing at this time, thanks in part to the death by drug overdose of Len Bias, a star basketball player at University of Maryland. But Edmond's business continued to thrive.

"At his peak in 1988, Rayful sat atop an organization of nearly 200 employees that moved an estimated $10 million to $20 million worth of cocaine and crack a month from Columbia..." (l. 3646).

Crack appeared in DC in 1986. "Adding crack to Washington dispossessed neigbhorhoods had the same effect as throwing a match into a bucket of gasoline. Crack tore through other cities, but its impact on the capital was far more destructive. From 1984 to 1987 the number of patients admitted to emergency rooms with with cocaine-related problems tripled, according to criminal justice reports. The number of adults who were arrested and tested positive for cocaine increased by 43 percent between 1984 and 1988." (l. 3652).

"...[C]rack was able to dominate the capital because the metropolitan police department was ill equipped, ill prepared, and morally corrupted by its commander in chief, Marion Barry" (l. 3657).

"Barry cut the number of police officers as soon as he could and kept reducing the force to a low of 3,612 in 1982. At the same time he kept slicing the police department's share fo the city's budget. When he took office the police department got 8.6 percent of the budget; by 1985 it was down to 6.5 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office" (l. 3666).

The police department operated on ancient equipment at shared desks. Top appointments went to Barry cronies or good police somehow beholden to Barry.

"Rayful Edmond was perfectly situated to take advantage of the coming age of crack. His organization was as slick and well run as McDonald's. Morton Place and Orleans Place became so crowded that on some days Edmond's lieutenants had to order customers to form lines that stretched 100 buyers long" (l. 3707).

"Any kind of serious response was more difficult when it became apparent that Marion Barry, the commander in chief, was on his way to becoming a pipe head" (l. 3710).

"No direct connection was ever established between Rayful Edmond III and Mayor Marion Barry, Jr., though there was the odd case of Edmond's beeper that turned up in Barry's possession..." (l. 3772).

Barry also continued to have a stormy relationship with Hazel Diane "Rasheeda" Moore. At one point she refused his sexual advances. He accused her of infidelity.

"Moore denied it. Barry slapped her once. She slapped him back. His second blow knocked her to the floor. He stood over her.

'I haven't hit a woman in 20 years,' he said. 'You bring out the worst in a man. Just get out!' " (l. 3797).

Cheater's Guide to Dream City continues next week

Further installments will appear on successive Fridays. All posts will be cross-posted on Short Articles about Long Meetings.

Full disclosure: I have a commercial relationship with Amazon. I will receive a very small portion of the money people spend after clicking on an Amazon link on this site.

This is a great book and well worth reading in its entirety.

Read the next installment here.

Part 11 -- Boss Barry

This is the eleventh installment of a series (see the first installment here) summarizing the 1994 book Dream City: Race, Power, and the Decline of Washington, D.C.by Harry Jaffe and Tom Sherwood. This book has recently been republished as an ebook and a paper book. HBO has plans to use material from the book to make a movie about the life of Marion Barry.

Chapter 10: Boss Barry

With the sentencing of his long-time aide and friend Ivanhoe Donaldson to seven years in jail in December 1985, Marion Barry lost "the last person who could rein him in" (Kindle location 3045).

Meanwhile, problems mounted on all sides. A prominent homeless activist mounted a hunger strike. A Deputy Mayor resigned while under investigation for kickbacks. Prisons were overflowing. Massive protests about schools and jail were frequent.

"The government's mounting crises could have chastened Barry; instead he celebrated his fiftieth birthday as if he were a gangster. At one of two parties a stripper dressed as a policewoman popped out of a cake, handcuffed the mayor, and performed for the guests. 'Free at last,' Barry said as 'Officer Goodbody' removed the cuffs..." (l. 3066).

The unenviable task of restoring order fell to new chief of staff Carol Thompson. She did what she could: arranging aides and chaperones to accompany Barry, planting allies at public appearances, replacing alcoholic drinks with ginger ale. "Thompson realized within a few weeks that on many levels, starting with his schedule, Barry was controllable" (l. 3076).

In Barry's heart, the authors say, he yearned for the approval of both the white power structure and the city's black elite, but he believed this would never come. "The strut, the late entrances -- even the women and the drugs -- were an expression of that essential conflict between what Barry needed and what he knew he could never have" (l. 3090).

Around this time, Barry met Hazel Diane "Rasheeda" Moore, a failed model and businessperson. "It was the beginning of a relationship that mixed sex and drugs" (l. 3112).

In 1986, Barry was easily re-elected. "The Republican party was powerless, in part because white conservatives shut out blacks. The local Democratic organization was an inept, petty debating society because Barry purged critics in 1979 and packed it with sycophants" (l. 3129).

"In other cities, politics was a way for ethnic minoirites to stake their claim to economic and political power, but Washington never developed a true local political class.... In Washington, congressional domination, disenfranchisement, and racism stunted the growth of homegrown politics. By the time an elective political ladder became available in the 1970s, ambitious black men and women who might have been interested in city government could command prestigious, well-paying job in the legal community, in the federal government, or in business. Municipal politics was a backwater" (l. 3141).

"The 1986 campaign turned into a besotted, drug-laden lark. Places in Barry's inner circle were taken by a fresh set of friends. The new crowd tolerated or encouraged the mayor recreational use of cocaine" (l. 3172).

But Barry was able to get big campaign contributions from Wall Street firms looking for a piece of DC's newly-established municiple-bond program. Since the campaign itself required little money, "Barry's campaign hired hundreds of low-level 'paid' volunteers to put on the semblance of a campaign. It was a private version of his summer jobs program" (l. 3181).

"Barry was doing so much cocaine during the campaign that he started having trouble coping with his daily schedule. It was at this time that he started taking Valium to bring him down from the cocaine. When the Valium proved too weak, he switched to Xanax, a stronger tranquilizer" (l. 3186).

Barry's opponent in the general election was Republican Carol Schwartz. Schwartz received no help from the national party. Barry got 61 percent of the vote, Schwartz 33. She lost everywhere but largely white Ward 3. White voters backed Schwartz over Barry, 76 percent to 15 percent.

January 1987 brought two blizzards totaling 26 inches of snow. Barry vacationed in California and watched the Super Bowl while the city failed to dig itself out.

"...[T]he city didn't actually know how many people were on the payroll. The 1988 census and an independent commission on budget and financial priorities put the count at 48,000 -- one worker for every 13 residents -- more government workers per capita than any other city or state government..." (l. 3240).

"...[T]he high cost and large number of workers didn't translate to high-quality service. Delivering a welfare check in the District consistently cost twice the national average, for example" (l. 3244). The book goes on to list many, many more instances of poor city services, including foster care, ambulance and fire, neonatal care, public housing and schools, with the poorest citizens often bearing the brunt of the city's ineptitude.

However, "[t]he African-American poor- and middle-class communities credited Barry with improving basic city services that most people take for granted: accurate water billing, street repair, garbage collection. These services didn't work totally efficiently, but they worked better than they had before" (l. 3294).

"From the African-American point of view, Barry had dramatically improved city services for the elderly and provided thousands of summer jobs for young people.... A typical black family might have one or two extended family members working for the city government, an elderly person in a city-subsidized home, a child in a summer jobs program, or a relative working either for the government or for a company that held city contracts" (l. 3307).

"...Barry's political machine was fueled by the fear in the black community that whites would take it all away if they could" (l. 3309).

In May 1987, a top Barry official named Larry Rivers was arrested in a 17-month-long sting operation. The arrest led to FBI raids on many friends and colleagues of Barry's, including a former girlfriend, Karen Johnson. After the raids, a TV reporter "obtained Johnson's private diary and disclosed the early 1980s sex and drugs spree that she had so carefully documented" (l. 3375).

Johnson had served "eight months in jail on contempt charges for not talking about the mayor's cocaine use with her in the early 1980s" (l. 3374).

Now, "Karen Johnson seemed to be a different person. With guidance from her attorney, G. Allen Dale, she told law enforcement authorities that she had received much as $25,000 from Barry's close associates.... The two businessmen first denied and then acknowledged giving money to Johnson..." (l. 3380).

Johnson resisted the blandishments of media heavyweights Katie Couric, Mike Wallace and Bob Woodward. She would not give interviews.

"Enough facts leaked from the Johnson affairs to paint a convincing picture for most Washingtonians that Barry used cocaine and tried to silence a potential witness. But for all the leaked details, graphic news accounts, and innuendo, [US Attorney Joseph DiGenova couldn't bring charges."

Barry marshalled allies for a counter-attack, including Cathy Hughes, owner and on-air personality of radio station WOL-AM. But he was soon fighting on another front as his then-wife, Effi, after a long period of avoiding the news media, gave a TV interview in which she criticized her husband's "indiscretions".

Despite promises to friends and supporters to change his ways, Barry took a vacation to the Bahamas in the company of women other than his wife. He was followed by a Washington Post reporter, who published details.

Cheater's Guide to Dream City continues next week

Further installments will appear on successive Fridays. All posts will be cross-posted on Short Articles about Long Meetings.

Full disclosure: I have a commercial relationship with Amazon. I will receive a very small portion of the money people spend after clicking on an Amazon link on this site.

This is a great book and well worth reading in its entirety.

Continue reading the next installment here.

Part 9 - Greed City

This is the ninth installment of a series (see the first installment here) summarizing the 1994 book Dream City: Race, Power, and the Decline of Washington, D.C.by Harry Jaffe and Tom Sherwood. This book has recently been republished as an ebook and a paper book. HBO has plans to use material from the book to make a movie about the life of Marion Barry.

Chapter 8: Greed City

This chapter chronicles the DC real estate boom of the 1980s.

Developer Jeffrey N. Cohen started buying and renovating Dupont Circle brownstones in the 1970s. In 1979, Cohen and partners bought the dilapidated Parkside Hotel at 14th and I Streets NW, then a district of flophouses and strip clubs.

"Enter Marion Barry. The new mayor awarded Cohen a contract to shelter homeless families... for $507,000 a year, more than enough to cover the mortgage" (l. 2513).

In spite of appalling conditions, the city increased the contract to $530,000 and bought three surrounding buildings. In 1985, Cohen sold the property for $12 million. Two years later, it was re-sold for $39 million to a developer who put up an office building.

This pattern was repeated many times both in downtown DC and in many Maryland and Virginia suburbs. "Revenues from commercial property taxes doubled and then tripled.  The questions became how the new black political structure could ensure that the city's African-American community shared in the economic boom" (l. 2546).

James Gibson was Marion Barry's first planning director. Gibson "saw the potential in moving the central business district to the east, into the one hundred city blocks immediately north of Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol" (l. 2561). Developers levelled the structures that were there and put up office buildings.

"The city owned some choice pieces of property, especially over the downtown stations of the new Metro system" (l. 2585). In 1980, the city sold a parcel over Metro Center at $133 per square foot. At the time, comparable properties went for $500 a square foot. One of the partners in the firm that bought the property was the city's Democratic party chair and had gone on a trip to Africa with Barry. Other firms, with minority partners, got similar deals.

Another choice parcel was Gallery Place. A DC government agency valued the land at $31 million, the developer paid $17 million in July 1981. "In exchange for a low price, they promised to build offices, a hotel, shops, and apartments for low income residents" (l. 2594).

"But a decade later not a spade of dirt had been turned, the grand notion of building apartments was history, and Gallery Place was dead in the water" (l. 2608). It was sold to Oliver Carr, the city's biggest developer.

"What started as an attempt to broaden the economic base of the city soon proved to be a rich source of political favors. The city would sell land at fire-sale prices to development teams that boasted minority partners, who always seemed to be the same people with strong social and political connections to Marion Barry" (l. 2612).

" 'I call them the chosen ones,' said John Wilson, whose Ward Two council district encompassed downtown. 'What started out to benefit the minority community at large has meant some politically influential blacks can move out to posh suburbs like McLean or Potomac' " (l. 2620).

Meanwhile, the city paid increased prices for basic goods and services (e.g., heating oil, corn flakes, trash collection), supplied by influential friends and political contributors. The goods and services were often delivered late, or not at all.

"The most egregious examples were in housing and the treatment of the homeless" (l. 2654). A well-connected man named Cornelius Pitts got $3300 a month for every homeless family he shelter and fed inadequately. He also got the city to lease office space from him at $97 a square foot, when prime office space cost $25 a square foot. "Between 1985 and 1989, ....  Pitts received approximately $16.4 million in contracts" (l. 2673).

Another friend, Roy Littlejohn "came back in 1987 to go into the shelter business and opened two, Urban Shelters and the R Street Shelter, with millions of dollars in contracts. He charged the government $2800 per apartment per month and furnished small, dingy rooms with metal folding tables and chairs, or nothing" (l. 2680).

A DC city auditor explained it to Congress: "... the financial flexibility needed to carry out the agency mission is too easily subverted to the agenda of greedy, corrupt, highly placed individuals ..." (l. 2690).

"No matter how many millions of dollars in city contracts flowed to Barry's friends, it was chump change compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars that enriched the white community during the real estate boom" (l. 2693).

Oliver Carr and Barry did not get along, and Carr supported Barry's challengers for mayor in 1978 and 1982. However, Barry needed money for his campaign warchest, and Carr needed city permissions to develop land, so the two eventually met and, although not friendly, established an uneasy peace.

Investors from England, Holland, Japan, and Canada bought standing buildings in DC's downtown. Developers from Texas and Massachusetts moved in to challenger Carr and other locals.

However, many areas still bore the scars of the 1968 rioting. "To his credit, Barry chose the corner of 14th and U Streets, where the riots began, to build a new municipal center" (l. 2737).

"The only white developer who tried to bridge the gap between Washington's two worlds was Jeffrey Cohen, and he did it by attempting a major redevelopment in the Shaw neighborhood" (l. 2742).

"Cohen first scored on the abandoned Children's Hospital building at 13th and V Streets NW. He and a few partners had bought it for $5 Million in 1978 and promised to build a new rehabilitation hospital..." (l. 2747). Barry helped Cohen get a "certificate of need" for the hospital.

"Cohen never built the rehabilitation hospital. Instead, he sold the coveted certificate of need to the Washington Hospital Center for $8.7 million. As part of the deal, Cohen's group received $5.7 million in architectural and legal fees. In all, Cohen's group made $14.4 million for not building a hospital. Shaw got no jobs and no nearby health-care facility. Cohen then turned around and sold the Children's Hospital property to the city for $5.8 million, for an $800,000 profit on the land" (l. 2755).

Cohen used connections to finance further deals in Shaw throughout 1985. He also took on Barry as a 10 percent partner in a commercial development on Nantucket. "Cohen then created a dummy corporation to hide Barry's stake" (l. 2772).

"Four months later, on December 2, 1985, the mayor sent city council chairman David Clarke a bill that would float $9 million in tax-exempt bonds for Cohen to use in the renovation of the Manhattan Laundry, a sturdy structure that Cohen wanted to turn into offfices for himself. The bond passed, and once again the city picked up Jeffrey Cohen's tab" (l. 2776).

Cheater's Guide to Dream City continues next week

Further installments will appear on successive Fridays. All posts will be cross-posted on Short Articles about Long Meetings.

Full disclosure: I have a commercial relationship with Amazon. I will receive a very small portion of the money people spend after clicking on an Amazon link on this site.

This is a great book and well worth reading in its entirety.

Continue reading the next installment here.