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CRACKDOWN
Inspections, new rules order D.C. pay phone improvements
(Published January 12, 2004)

By KATHRYN SINZINGER
Staff Writer

The D.C. Public Service Commission has begun a systematic crackdown on operators of outdoor pay phones, hastened by resident complaints that lax maintenance in some neighborhoods helps to enable crime.

The effort began with a recent inspection of all 59 pay phones in Mount Pleasant, Adams Morgan and Columbia Heights following complaints about their condition. All of the phones were found to be tagged by gang graffiti, otherwise defaced or dirty. Seventeen of them were found to be illegal and were ordered removed.

As a result of the survey, the commission also has proposed new regulations to explicitly define "adequate maintenance" by payphone operators and to require frequent inspection to ensure phones are "aesthetically and hygienically presentable for public use." The new rules are expected to go into effect within the next 60 days.

"These payphones had become street signs for which gangs control which blocks and posters for recruiting new [gang] members," said Terry Lynch, executive director of the Downtown Cluster of Congregations.

Lynch and Mount Pleasant Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Dominic Sale filed the formal complaint that prompted the initial crackdown in the three Northwest Washington neighborhoods that have been frequent victims of gang violence.

Linda Jordan, director of the commission’s Office of Consumer Services, said the next round of inspections in the Petworth area and along Georgia Avenue already have begun.

"We are shifting our focus to areas where there are gang-related problems," Jordan told The Common Denominator. She said additional neighborhoods will be targeted after work in the Georgia Avenue Corridor – where there are 93 outdoor phones – is completed.

Jordan and other members of the Public Service Commission staff are scheduled to make a presentation about the proposed new pay phone rules and her agency’s crackdown at the next ANC Assembly meeting at 10 a.m. Jan. 24 in the lobby of One Judiciary Square, 441 Fourth St. NW.

Last October the Public Service Commission ordered the 17 illegal phones it discovered along Park Road, Mount Pleasant Street, 14th Street, Columbia Road and 18th Street to be turned off by the telephone company and to be removed by the D.C. Department of Transportation (DDOT). The phones did not have public space permits, were unregistered and their operators were not certified by the Public Service Commission.

Lynch said DDOT workers did not begin removal of the illegal phones until he questioned the city’s inaction last week. He assailed the slow response as showing "a lack of understanding of the deadly impact of gang activity in these neighborhoods."

"There must be a zero-tolerance approach to gang activities if we are to succeed in taking back our neighborhoods," he said.