Shortly before midnight on a Friday in July, 26-year-old Jason Kinney was killed in a drive-by shooting on the 1500 block of East Capitol Street SE. The shooting occurred right in front of a D.C. police surveillance camera. Apparently, the camera has been as helpful in solving the crime as it was in preventing it — officers recently distributed flyers offering $25,000 for information on the murder.

In October, D.C. police announced they had installed a new camera on North Capitol Street NW, bringing the city’s crime camera total to 73. How many crimes have been solved thanks to this citywide sprinkling of surveillance technology? Not many.  

As of March, surveillance cameras had not helped the Metropolitan Police Department make a single arrest. The MPD admitted this in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the American Civil Liberties Union for the National Capital Area (ACLU-NCA), which has opposed the installation of cameras since the program was reported in 2001.

“We have always believed cameras are not effective in deterring crime, stopping crime or preventing crime,” said Johnny Barnes, executive director of the ACLU-NCA. Barnes said the MPD ought to shut the camera program down, or at least reduce its funding. “It’s better to spend the millions of dollars on proven law enforcement techniques,” he said.

MPD spokeswoman Traci Hughes, however, said the cameras are not useless and have helped police make at least two arrests since March. She pointed to a Nov. 2 incident in which a 2007 Chevrolet Trailblazer struck an officer in view of a camera on Sherman Avenue NW. The MPD attached video of the scene to its news release later that day and it got results, according to Hughes. “We caught that guy.”    

That D.C. police responded candidly to a FOIA request is remarkable. Barnes said Chief Cathy Lanier made it happen. At a recent D.C. Council hearing, Barnes told the council that his organization had two longstanding FOIA requests with the MPD. His testimony got Lanier’s attention.

“As soon as I got up she called me over,” he said. “She took me to [MPD General Counsel Terrence Ryan] and said, ‘He’s going to answer your questions tomorrow.’ ” Barnes got his response the next day.

D.C. police have 12 crime cameras throughout Ward 6, each with a large white box bearing the MPD logo. In contrast, the U.S. Capitol Police have dozens of unmarked and inconspicuous cameras of their own throughout the neighborhood, but the agency has never publicly discussed exactly what its closed-circuit network is for.

When the MPD camera went up at 15th and East Capitol streets on a “crime emergency” basis last year, it got plenty of attention. Store owner Kashif Khawaja said it deterred some of the teenagers who congregate in front of his store every afternoon. “They were scared as hell of it,” he said. But the fear has dissipated, Khawaja said, and lately the corner in front of his store is as unruly as before.

A man apparently clad in Ku Klux Klan regalia caused a stir on the east side of Capitol Hill over the weekend.

Hill resident Bo Huttinger noticed the hubbub early Saturday morning while driving by E and 16th streets SE. He was tired, hadn’t had his coffee, and thought he saw somebody in a Harry Potter outfit. Then he remembered Halloween had already happened — and noticed that the man was wearing full-fledged KKK regalia without a mask covering his face.

“This guy — he’s got to be insane,” was Huttinger’s thought. Southeast D.C. is an especially bold choice of venue for a one-man KKK march. Huttinger said neighbors were out on their porches, and it seemed like people driving by were giving the man a hard time. Somebody called the police.

“Officers received a call for a male subject dressed in what appeared to be a KKK outfit,” wrote First District Cmdr. David Kamperin in an e-mail to Hillscape. “They stopped him, and after the contact he was released. Other than noting who the subject was, there was no further action taken by the police.”

WJLA-TV (Channel 7) reported the incident on Saturday evening. 

The D.C. Department of Health is interested in getting the city to drop a requirement that D.C. couples pass a blood test for syphilis to obtain a marriage license.

“This is something the administration has been discussing and will be looking into in the coming year,” said department spokesman Calvin Carter. Health department officials talked about dropping the requirement back in 2002, but nothing happened. Alternatives would be nixing the requirement altogether or maybe updating it by making it a test for HIV/AIDS.

The law is a relic from back when syphilis was incurable. Despite the requirement, the District ranks among the nation’s most syphilitic areas, easily outdoing every state,  according to a 2005 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most states have dropped the requirement.

The powerhouse Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) for Northeast Capitol Hill has called for a meeting later this month to gauge the public’s sentiment on the following question: Should there be a limit on the number of bars on H Street NE, or should the Atlas Entertainment District be allowed to develop and expand?

The incipient revitalization of H Street is owed largely to the success of several bars that have opened along the corridor in recent years, attracting lots of young people at night. But some residents worry that it could wind up like Adams Morgan, which is so crammed with partiers on weekend nights you can barely walk through without puke splashing on your shoes.

Local blogs are atwitter over the prospect of a new bar cap on H Street. No proposal is yet on the table — the ANC called the meeting only to hear what people think. Anyone with opinions on the matter is invited to show up at the Sherwood Recreation Center at 10th and G streets NE on Nov. 20.

A moratorium on sales of single containers of alcohol went into effect last month to reduce public drunkenness, urination and littering. Hillscape predicted back in March that the “rules brigade” would focus its “crosshairs” on H Street’s more upscale revelers after it vanquished the bums who drink malt liquor on the sidewalk. Does Hillscape see the future through a crystal ball? To be continued …