Update 9:08 p.m. March 3: NBC Washington is reporting that the crime at 35th and T Streets resembles crimes perpetrated by the so-called “Georgetown Cuddler”:

“A woman claims a man entered her home at 35th and T streets at about 4 a.m. Sunday, climbed in her bed, sexually assaulted her and fled.”

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Update 8:34 p.m.: The Department of Public Safety has sent out a Public Safety Alert about the assault which took place in Burleith. It reads:

“On Sunday, February 28, 2010 between the hours of 4:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m., a sexual assault occurred inside a residence in the vicinity of 35th & T Streets. The suspect gained entry to the residence by an unknown means.

“DPS became aware of the incident on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 2, 2010. The victim is not associated with Georgetown University. The incident is under investigation by MPD and no further details are available at this time.”

The PSA gives the same description of the suspect that Vox listed below.

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This weekend saw two sexual assaults in the Georgetown area. One took place at the Georgetown University Hospital or Medical Center, another in a residence in Burleith near campus.

The little information available about the crime in the Georgetown Hospital comes from the Department of Public Safety’s Daily Crime log:

“[At 6:23 a.m.], an unknown male inappropriately touched the victim. Suspect was identified and arrested by MPD.”

The crime is listed twice in the log, and so it is unclear where exactly it occurred. Vox has not gotten responses from either University spokespeople, safety officials, or Metropolitan Police Department officers about additional information about this case, including whether a Public Safety Announcement should have gone out to students.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday, February 3, at around 11:45 a.m., three black males confronted a University employee and attempted to rob him. The victim repeatedly refused to comply with demands from the three suspects that he give them anything, and they left him without taking anything.

The Department of Public Safety has put out the following details in a Public Safety Alert:

At approximately 11:45 a.m. on Wednesday, February 4, 2010, a University employee reported to DPS that he was the victim of an attempted robbery in the 3300 block of M Street moments earlier. He reported that while walking to his classroom, which is located on the same block, three unknown males were walking towards him. Two of them passed him, then approached him from behind, while the third confronted him from the front. One suspect had his hand inside a black duffle bag. Another suspect demanded the complainant “give it up, old man.”

When the complainant did not comply, the suspect repeated the demand. When the complainant did not comply again, the suspects began walking away, at which time the complainant called DPS. The suspects then ran east towards Wisconsin Avenue. DPS notified MPD and responded to the employee’s office. MPD officers and detectives responded and the investigation was turned over to them.

Paragraphing is Vox’s. The PSA gives the following description of the three suspects: “The suspects are described as three black males. Suspect one: 5′7″, average build, wearing all black. Suspect two: 5′9″, average build, wearing all black. Suspect three: 6′, clean shaven, average build, wearing all black clothing and a hood over his head, carrying a black duffle bag. The hood has a blue stripe on the bottom portion and a yellow stripe on the upper portion.”

As relatively safe a D.C. neighborhood Georgetown may be, murder in Georgetown isn’t just a thing of Margaret Truman’s fiction. Just last week, a suspect was charged with murdering the resident of the 1600 block of 35th Street—well, in 1990.

First-degree murder charges brought against Frederick Morton on Thursday allege that Frederick Morton fatally stabbed Charles Caldwell Haupt, 62, in his 35th Street home in September of 1990, the Washington Post reports. When police were investigating the crime in 1990, they suspected that Haupt was murdered in a burglary or robbery.

Morton was being held in a D.C. jail for another crime when he was charged on Thursday. He has also been charged with the 1997 strangulation murder of Sharon Moskowitz, which occurred in Adams Morgan.

Via Georgetown Metropolitan.

Early in the morning on Sunday, January 17, a female Georgetown junior allegedly assaulted a male student who had just broken up with her with her, injuring his face with a set of keys. The woman was arrested by a Metropolitan Police Department officer who responded to the crime, which took place on the 3700 block of Prospect Street NW. Department of Public Safety officers and a GERMS ambulance also responded to the scene.

The incident report, which classified the crime as an intrafamily dispute, says the assailant also used her hands, feet, and teeth to assault him. Here’s a narrative of the crime from the report, as written by arresting officer F. Rretti:

I received a radio run for an assault in progress at the above location. Upon arrival, I was met with [a DPS officer] who stated that he was patrolling the area of 3700 Prospect Street NW when he heard an argument that was in progress. [The DPS officer] stated that he saw [the assailant] strike [the victim] her boyfriend about the face with a set of keys that were attached to a cloth keychain.

[The victim] suffered a small laceration to the right side of his chin and also a bloody nose. [The victim] stated the incident all was provoked because he wanted to break up with her and end their relationship. [An officer] responded to the scene and took photographs of the injuries and the Georgetown ambulance responded to evaluate the injuries. [The victim and the assailant] both refused to be transported to the hospital.

Neither the suspect nor the victim has responded to requests for comment, but the suspect’s lawyer said that charges against her have been dropped for lack of evidence.

Reporting by Will Sommer.

A comparison of crime levels in Georgetown from 2008 to 2009 shows that there wasn’t much difference between the two years.

In Georgetown Metropolitan’s analysis, for which he used the information the Metropolitan Police Department provided to OCTO, he found that thefts—most of which, he notes, are shoplifting incidents—took up most of Georgetown criminals’ time, with a fair number of robberies (stealing by force or coercion, often involving residents) and burglaries (entering a residence or business with the intent of committing a crime) taking place, too.

Total crime dropped by 34 incidents last year, but on the whole, it wasn’t a significant reduction. No homicides took place this year—in fact, none have since a violent attack in 2006—and car theft was way down.

According to information from OCTO, violent crime has gradually decreased over the last three years, with 503 such crimes in 2007, 489 in 2008, and 475 in 2009. Property crimes in Georgetown the Second District, however, which include most thefts and burglaries, have been steadily on the rise for the last three years, according to information from OCTO—from 4,364 in 2007, to 4,821 in 2008, to 5,097 in 2009.

The cumulative result in the shifts for Georgetown, GM found, is that crime rose at a not insignificant pace from 2006 to 2008, but dropped in 2009.

New information about the sexual assault that occurred on the 3800 block of Calvert Street this Sunday makes the crime appear more serious than it was described by the Metropolitan Police Department e-mail which first reported it.

Jason Cherkis of the Washington City Paper reports that the police report about the crime says that the suspect “thrust[ed] several times” against the woman before she screamed and he ran out of her house.

The e-mail, sent by Lieutenant Kim Gregory, said that an unknown suspect entered the victim’s house, the victim woke up to find him “cuddling her” in her bed, and then the victim screamed and the suspect ran out the back door of her house.

Cherkis pointed out that the extent of the suspect’s crime calls the perp’s nickname into question once again. The “Cuddler,” which MPD officers have said may be several suspects, digitally penetrated one of his victims and put his penis on the thigh of another victim.

Of course, whether inappropriate or not, nearly every news outlet that has reported on this incident has used the “Cuddler” moniker. But how do we make the switch to the “Georgetown Sexual Assailant”?

A “burglary with sexual overtones” took place early this morning on the 3800 block of Calvert Street, NW. The incident is similar to the many sexual crimes perpetrated by the suspect known as the “Georgetown Cuddler.”

According to an e-mail that Lieutenant Kim Gregory of the Second District Metropolitan Police Department sent this morning, an unknown suspect entered the victim’s house between 4:30 a.m. 6:00 a.m., and the victim woke up to find him “cuddling her” in her bed.

The victim screamed and the suspect ran out the back door of her house. She was not harmed and nothing was taken from her house.

The victim described the suspect as male with short hair, and MPD is investigating the crime.

On Wednesday at 1:45 p.m., five subjects entered The North Face store at 3333 M Street, took “a large number of garments from the displays,” and exited the store without paying for them, according to Metropolitan Police Department Lieutenant John Hedgecock, who wrote an e-mail to the MPD Second District listserv about the crime.

As they exited the store, Hedgecock wrote, the security officer employed by the store pursued and confronted them as they were getting into a four-door Mercury Marquis that was black or dark in color. When he confronted them, the driver of the car pointed a silver handgun at the guard and said, “Back up.”

No one was injured in the robbery. Hedgecock did not make any other details available about the vehicle or suspects. A daily summary of crimes in the Second District reports the robbery and gun incident as happening within a minute of each other, suggesting that between the two incidents, the suspects and the security officer were running like the dickens.

Photo from Flickr user Jason Pier used under a Creative Commons license.

Last Friday morning, two women who are property managers at Paul Associates were assaulted by a woman who had a complaint about a property.

The assailant, whom a Metropolitan Police Department incident report described as a middle-aged, slender white female, hit one employee on the arm with a cane and another with her hand. She fled on foot.

Reporting by Will Sommer

But will the new recruits have cool hats?

At a community meeting on Friday, Lieutenant John Hedgecock of the Metropolitan Police Department’s Second District told community leaders in Georgetown that crime had dropped very slightly in Georgetown in the past year, by 2 percent.

However, to date, robberies are up by 8 percent and thefts from autos are up by 18 percent, Hedgecock told leaders, according to an e-mail from Diane Colasanto of the Citizens’ Association of Georgetown Public Safety Committee. Hedgecock told community leaders that arrests had risen too, but did say by how much.

Hedgecock also said that the Georgetown area is now up to its full force of police officers, “with none detailed to other areas for special assignment and only one on extended leave,” Colasanto wrote, adding that full staffing has been a problem for Georgetown in the past.

“In addition, our regular force will soon be supplemented with one officer and five newly trained recruits starting next week and continuing until early January,” she added. “This group of recruits-plus-supervisor will, at least initially, focus on the panhandlers.”

(Their police bicycles will also be outfitted with training wheels).