Jeffery Carroll, executive assistant chief of D.C. police, addresses the media outside the Gallery Place-Chinatown Metro station on the new drug-free zones set up here and in Southeast and Northeast Washington. D.C. police on Thursday began implementing the District’s first three drug-free zones — areas where police are empowered to temporarily force out people when they are suspected of illegal drug activity.
Jeffery Carroll, executive assistant chief of D.C. police, countered that “this is not an anti-loitering law,” and that it is not illegal to be in a drug-free zone. He said police will target only people congregating for the purpose of “distribution or possession of drugs.” Police said they had made no arrests in the three drug-free zones as of midday Thursday.
On Thursday, police used that Metro station as a backdrop for a news conference on the drug-free-zone law. Traffic clogged the intersection at Seventh and H streets NW, horns drowned out speakers, and throngs of spectators headed south toward the arena and the ACC college basketball tournament, skirting a bevy of police, panhandlers and red signs on streetlight polls announcing they had entered an area being watched for its brisk drug business.
“I’ve never been arrested or cited for anything illegal down here,” the man angrily told the officers, shouting at them as he crossed H Street in the direction of the Metro station, holding two bags of chips in his hands. “And now I’m being stopped? Stop the madness. There are murderers who need to be locked up and you’re down here stopping people from smoking weed.”
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