Crime in Columbia Heights & some helpful DC links

Tonight I am home trying to motivate myself to write some business school essays. About two hours ago, I was feeling antsy and got the urge to go to Oh Snap! at the Wonderland. I made some calls and left a number of voicemail messages. No luck. I called my boyfriend, who's working, to chat and told him that I wanted to head down to the Wonderland. He told me that there was a shooting last night right near the bar, but didn't have any more details.

Out of curiosity, I did some Internet searches to find out more about the Friday night shooting in Columbia Heights. Washingtonpost.com had nothing. Crimereports.com, which I didn't know existed before tonight, had a lot of crime information but it was all a week old. I was starting to get frustrated when I stumbled upon a Yahoo group that the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) set up. Columbia Heights is in the MPD's third district, and the third district has its own Yahoo group. The discussion on the group is very active and helped me learn all about last night's shooting (5 men shot: 1 was grazed by a bullet, 2 are in stable condition, 2 are dead).

If you live in DC and would like to learn about what's going on in your MPD district, check out this site. Scroll down to the bottom of each district's page for a listing of corresponding Yahoo groups. Don't know which MPD district you live in? Type your address into the DC Citizen Atlas to learn all about your neighborhood. Not only will you learn which MPD district you're in, but you'll also find out where the nearest pool, library, and hospital are. This is some good stuff that I never knew existed.

DC, you're high tech and I love it.