Today in D.C.: Headlines to start your Monday in D.C., Maryland and Virginia
Good Monday #GoodMonday
Good morning — it’s Monday. Grab your coffee or tea. Forget what happened this year? Here’s a run-down.
7:18 AM: Bad drivers in D.C. could get a warning message from the city
Bad drivers in the District could soon get a serious warning sent straight to their cellphones.
The city is working to identify drivers with a history of traffic violations, such as speeding and red-light camera tickets, to send messages alerting them of their history of infractions while warning of their risks of getting into a fatal crash.
City officials say they hope the pointed messages will deter dangerous road behaviors.
“We know that there is a subset of drivers that are putting others at serious risk with excessive speeding and red-light running,” said Jeff Marootian, director of the District Department of Transportation, one of the agencies leading the effort. “We’re hoping that this creative approach can ultimately reduce serious injury and fatality crashes.”
A team of city data experts is analyzing traffic citation data to identify drivers at a high risk of involvement in a serious crash. The “tailored messages,” they say, will be sent to a sample of those drivers next year. At the end of the 18-month pilot, officials say, they expect to know the answer to a key question: Can targeting messages to high-risk drivers prevent crashes?
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By: Luz Lazo
7:01 AM: Prince William County sheriff fires deputy for ‘disturbing comments’ on social media
A Prince William County sheriff’s deputy has been fired for posting “disturbing comments” to a conservative social media website, the county sheriff’s office announced Saturday. But the former deputy said that he didn’t make the comments and that his account was hacked.
Prince William Sheriff Glendell Hill said he was alerted to the comments on Christmas morning and promptly launched an internal investigation.
Several of the comments advocated violence, including against Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts Jr. for allowing the dismissal of a case seeking to overturn the results of the presidential election.
“I find them very despicable, and that’s why I took the action that I took,” Hill (R) said about the comments in a brief interview. “I certainly don’t approve of that, and, of course, it’s against our policy.”
The deputy, Aaron Hoffman, said in an interview with The Washington Post that he did not post those comments, saying the account he had recently opened on Parler, a social media website that has become a favorite among conservatives, was hacked.
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By: Antonio Olivo
6:45 AM: Residents in a D.C. retirement community give back to staff by tutoring their children
This past spring, a few weeks into the pandemic, Monique Sparks’s work supervisor asked how her kids were doing.
Sparks didn’t sugarcoat it. “This socially distant learning is not the best,” she said. It was particularly hard on her older son, Cameron Chance Jr., who was in 10th grade when the virus struck.
“Cameron has always been very quiet, and he’s very shy. He’s not an outgoing person,” she said, adding that the Zoom classes and meetings with teachers online were out of his comfort zone. Even worse, the basketball court, where the teenager felt most at ease and where he had hoped a college recruiter might spot him, had fallen silent.
Sparks is a concierge at Ingleside at Rock Creek, a retirement community in the District, and as it happened, other staff members there were expressing similar concerns. Their jobs required that they show up for work in person, often leaving their children with few resources to navigate remote education.
“This is a real daunting task, trying to do home schooling when they’re not trained to do that,” said Kiersten Parsons, the facility’s independent living administrator. “They’re not able to work from home; they’re in a front-line position.”
After hearing from staffers and from the executive director, who was asking about ways to help them, Parsons had an idea: Why not use valuable resources right there at Ingleside?
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By: Tara Bahrampour
6:29 AM: D.C. man arrested for intentionally inflicting injuries on 2-year-old
A 25-year-old man has been arrested and charged with intentionally inflicting life-threatening injuries on a 2-year-old girl Wednesday evening in Northeast D.C.
Quanice Meniefield from Northeast was charged Wednesday with second-degree cruelty to children. There is also an arrest warrant out for first-degree cruelty to children for Maurice Meniefield, a 28-year-old from Northeast.
The young girl is being treated for her injuries and is in stable condition, according to D.C. police.
Police said an investigation determined that the offense was domestic in nature.
On Wednesday around 5:30 p.m., D.C. police detectives and family services received a report that a 2-year-old child had been physically abused and was at an unknown location. They found her in a residence in the 1200 block of 49th Street NE suffering from life-threatening injuries. She was transported to the hospital for evaluation.
An investigation into the incident is ongoing.
Neither Quanice nor Maurice Meniefield could be reached for comment.
Read more from The Post:
By: Emily Davies
6:10 AM: D.C.-area forecast: Mild today, cold midweek and then a big warm-up to ring in 2021
The Capital Weather Gang rates today’s weather an 8/10: Sunshine and 50 degrees. A somewhat subjective rating of the day’s weather, on a scale of 0 to 10.
Today: We may awaken to a good deal of cloud cover as a cold front slides through, but we should see increasing sunshine by the afternoon. Cold air is slow to follow the cold front, and highs should still top 50 in many areas. Winds are from the southwest and west at about 10 mph. Confidence: Medium-High.
Tonight: Skies are mostly clear, and chilly air spills back into the region. Lows range from the upper 20s to low 30s, with winds from the northwest at 5 to 10 mph. Confidence: Medium-High.
Tomorrow (Tuesday): A bright and sunny but cold winter’s day. Highs should climb to around 40. Winds from the northwest around 10 to 15 mph make it feel several degrees chillier. Confidence: High.
For other forecasts and more on weather in the Washington region, sign up to receive the Capital Weather Gang in your inbox. (Or, on your smart speaker.)
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By: Jason Samenow
6:03 AM: As hospitals swell, nursing students are tapped to join the front lines for the second time
The past eight months within the University of Maryland Medical System have been challenging, said Stuart Barnett, a nursing assistant and recent Towson University graduate. The demand on hospital staffers hasn’t waned since the pandemic started.
“Nurses, they’re still dealing with the same stuff, if not worse,” Barnett said. “There is somewhat of a stressful atmosphere.”
Before he finished nursing school, the 32-year-old was picking up hospital shifts between classes and working at a coronavirus testing center and field clinic in Baltimore. He had been eager to finish his program so he could devote more time at the facility where “there definitely is a need for nurses,” he said.
People need coronavirus tests. And some infected patients need to be monitored in case their condition worsens. But there aren’t enough health-care professionals to handle the crisis, according to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), who this month encouraged colleges and universities to grant health-care students who are in their final semesters and have satisfied graduation requirements an early exit from their programs.
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By: Lauren Lumpkin
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By: Teddy Amenabar