Metro Police Crackdown

First, let me make clear that I am not a dog person. So what follows is purely objective.

The last few weeks the Metro DC police have been cracking down, hard, on folks walking their dogs in Logan Circle. They're out there every night, citing those with dogs off leash.

Now, that's against the law--there's a leash law, after all. But on Thursday night, around 7.30 pm, there were two police cruisers in Logan Circle, citing . . . dog walkers.

Is this the best use of Metro DC police resources? I mean, isn't there an open-air drug market somewhere in the District that they could be cracking down on?

The really interesting point here, from a sociological point-of-view, is that the Logan Circle neighborhood is rapidly gentrifying. So just two years ago, the folks out in Logan Circle were loitering, and many of them looked pretty down-trodden. Some of those folks still hang out in Logan Circle, especially during the day. But in the evenings and on the weekends, there's a whole new crowd in the circle. It's still a long way from Dupont, but things are moving in that direction.

My guess is that the police used to cite folks drinking out of bown paper sacks in Logan Circle. Or, since they still do, I mean, that's how the citing dog owners with dogs off-leash started. The police were there, anyway, enforcing minor regulations (like, say, no open containers), and they moved from that to the dogs-off-leash thing.

But the cops who enforce those rules tend to be on bicycles. (Especially on weekends.) But Thursday, two police crusiers. That seems extreme to me.