At the beginning of the 2008-2009 school year, the Metropolitan Police Department began party patrols to monitor Burleith and West Georgetown from 8:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. five nights a week, including weekend nights,  according to e-mails exchanged between Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners and MPD Second District officers.

Michelle Milam, who at the time was lieutenant of the PSA in which Georgetown is located (PSA 206), said that the patrols were concentrated in Burleith, where the majority of complaints were coming from. That concerned ANC Commissioner Ron Lewis, who said his West Georgetown constituents were just as disturbed by the noise as Burleith residents. He wrote:

[P]lease, let’s end these back and forth e-mails … Just tell us, please, short and simple, that there will be equal patrolling by the “party patrol” officers in west Georgetown and Burleith.”

Milam replied, “Yes, there will be active patrolling in all parts of Georgetown by PSA 206 members.”

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Looks like our neighbors are tired of hearing about how awesome our slices of Philly P’s are. In response to a large number of neighbor complaints, DPS officers have been patrolling the Prospect, 35 Street, and 36 Street corridors to crack down on late-night student noise.

Denise Cunningham, President of the Citizens Association of Georgetown, first referenced the patrols in the May 2009 CAG newsletter [PDF]:

Community representatives meet with Georgetown personnel monthly and this topic has long been on the agenda. It was also discussed at great length with President Jack DeGoia at a recent meeting where very candid and helpful dialogue took place. The topics at the top of the list are student housing, student behavior and transportation.

A very positive recent result from these meetings is the installation of roaming Department of Public Safety officers on the Prospect, 35th and 36th street corridors to shut down late night noise from students making their way back to campus.

In an e-mail, Associate Director of the Department of Public Safety Joseph Smith confirmed that DPS officers have been patrolling all areas of West Georgetown that are University-owned.

Smith wrote that when the officers come across students being too loud, they will “diplomatically seek their compliance.”  He also said that officers do not routinely issue citations for noise, but may take down a student’s information “when appropriate.”

This is the first of seven installations of  “Better Know an ANC Commissioner,” Vox’s interviews with the representatives that comprise Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2E. The ANC is Georgetown residents’ primary voice in local government. When the average student marries a homogenous conception of “the neighbors” with “the Man” that puts him or her down for making noise, he or she is thinking of the ANC.

Ron Lewis’ kingdom (above) sits Northwest of the University in the middle of the Georgetown neighborhood. The former CAG member was reelected to his second two-year term on the ANC in November. Students may know the new ANC chair’s name: last year, he co-sponsored the unpopular off-campus keg ban.

Below, Lewis, an attorney who has moved between government jobs and business ventures discusses changes ‘the neighbors’ would like to see in GUTS bus routes, noise violations, community safety, and said keg ban.

You co-sponsored a controversial off-campus keg ban with [former student ANC commissioner] Jenna Lowenstein [COL '09]. What was the rationale behind that?

Our position was very clear—was that there should be the same rules about kegs on campus or off campus, and that it wasn’t fair for either the students or the community to push parties off campus, which having stricter party rules on campus does. Since the University had decided on a keg policy on campus-what we were saying was that you need to make it fair.

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Georgetown’s student body didn’t exactly receive a warm welcome back in their inboxes this Wednesday. In a campuswide email and in typical no-notice style, Georgetown administrators told student that the Metropolitan Police Department “are again authorized—and intend—to issue 61D Citations for excessive noise”—which land for any rowdy students unlucky enough to cross MPD with a fine and an arrest record.

When they say “again authorized,” they mean of course the MPD crackdown that accompanied the administration’s monstrously harsh alcohol policy last September. The crackdown included a flurry of alcohol and noise violation citations. But where did the pressure for MPD to resume handing out noise violations come from?

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