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Anyone familiar with the Trinidad neighborhood ?
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Anonymous
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OP,
I feel bad for you because you are probably already committed to the home, and so many posters have said so many scary things. That must be pretty alarming. The unfortunate truth is that this neighborhood had a lot of gunfire and homicides recently, and I wouldn't feel comfortable there, either. I assume that by now you are searching Washington Post to read up on the problems in Trinidad, and so you don't need to hear more about it from me. So in an attempt to make the best of it: 1. You are really near the National Arboretum. It is beautiful, especially in the springtime. They do special events, and you have plenty of space to run around there. 2. You are near Gallaudet University, and there may be family-oriented things you could look for there. 3. On the other side of Gallaudet is the metro stop. Anyone near a metro stop has a short ride to the National Mall, and the museums are great for the kids. I live in Northwest, and my son and I go to the museums all the time. Anyone else have thoughts on what to do with kids in the area? |
Anonymous
Did you buy a place there? or rent? Is there any way you can get out of your lease? Check the Washington Post. Trinidad is in there all the time with homicide reports. Chief Cathy Lanier was just quoted in either today's or yesterday's paper about how concerned she is with homicides in Trinidad. You'd be better off moving to Baghdad. |
Anonymous
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OP, earlier poster here. I reread your post and it sounds like you have already settled on a place where you'll be living. I imagine all these cautionary posts must fill you with anxiety. I just want to say, you do want to be cautious but if you are already locked into this address, do not panic before you get there and see what the neighborhood is like. It's a block by block situation.
Check out http://crimemap.dc.gov/presentation/intro.asp and you can find out about the crimes near a particular address. You may be surprised at what you find if you plug in different addresses. For example, if you look at crimes over the last year at three locations: the front gates of Gallaudet (800 block of Florida Ave NE), a corner within the Trinidad neighborhood (Oates and Trinidad Sts, NE) , and the center of the business district in wealthy and stylish Georgetown (Wisconsin and M Sts, NW), you will find that the front gates of Gallaudet over all had the fewest number of crimes within 1500 feet. Of course, when you break it down to specific crimes, it varies. Gallaudet gates had 31 robberies, the center of Georgetown had 22 and the corner in Trinidad had 38. Overall violent crimes, Gallaudet had 53, Georgetown 42, and the corner in Trinidad 99. Georgetown had a huge number of property crimes which gave it a high overall score for all crimes (573), while Trinidad had 320 and Gallaudet gates had 256. Do remember that these are crimes within 1500 feet of a particular address, not for the whole neighborhood by any means. But it demonstrates that it does matter what block you live on so don't panic when you read all our cautionary comments. The big concern about Trinidad this year though has been the murders. There were 9 murders within 1500 feet of Oates and Trinidad streets in the last year. But in the entire year before that there were no murders. It is possible that next year it will go back to 0. Additionally, speaking as someone who lives in a neighborhood where there have been 8 murders in the last 6 years, this is a concern and you may choose to try to get out of Trinidad as soon as you can but you may also find that you can survive all right in the short term. In my neighborhood, there have been 4 shootings by young men quarreling over drugs and money, two women killed by boyfriends, a toddler killed by a family member, and one unsolved stabbing of a woman in her apartment. It's horrible. I attend the candlelight vigils for the victims so I'm well aware of the loss of human life. But it's also true that things are just fine here on a daily basis and we are not dodging bullets every day. Sorry everyone to go on for so long but I realized that if I were the OP I would be terrified by our responses and I wanted to put them into context. Good luck, OP! Welcome to DC! Let us know how things go in Trinidad! |
Anonymous
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You may also want to checkout a blog called frozen tropics...it deals specifically with Trinidad and the Atlas district and you may actually be able to find someone who lives there with kids, which I doubt you will find on DCUM.
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Anonymous
| i don't want to scare you but i would want someone to be honest with me. that is a REALLY bad area. i wouldn't move there. there were several murders and shootings there this summer. seriously it is not safe. there were drive by shootings and even a curfew or something. i'll get flamed but i'm not going to worry about offending other people when you are asking about this. good luck! |
Anonymous
Looks like you can find an email discussion list at: http://trinidad-dc.org/joomla/ Also the frozen tropics url is: http://frozentropics.blogspot.com/ Here is a yahoo group for Trinidad. You can read the general traffic on it. Also, try posting yourself: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TrinidadDC/ |
Anonymous
First let me say I was not going to comment on this thread at all, but I will. People have to live where they can afford to live period. My mother lives in Trinidad and has for 3 years. The neighborhood itself is not bad, its just a few people that give it a bad name. During the shooting spree in July my brother was robbed and shot 15 times. He is still to this day in the hospital recovering. My brother did not sell drugs, he has no children/baby mamas, does not hang out in the streets or have any type of "beef" with anyone. He was class Valedictorian and home for summer break from his first year away at College. He just happened to be out, got robbed and shot. Many other people were injured as well and one kid died. Its just a few people who give the area a bad name. The area will get cleaned up, and it will be nice. Believe it or not, I grew up in Columbia Heights, and it was NOTHING like it is now. It was crime ridden, crackheads sitting outside my door, dirty, rat infested neighborhood-now look. Same as when I lived over by the Navy Yard when I was little, it gets cleaned up. OP if this is where you want to move than do so. Like a PP said the Metro is close by, You're by the University, not to far is a brand new shopping center so go for it. FWIW the crime spree was not over that side of Trinidad it was on the other side. |
Anonymous
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OP, please reconsider moving to this neighborhood. A good friend of mine bought a home here over a year ago. Her second night, her house was ransacked. I went to visit her about a month after she moved in. We took the bus around dusk and walked a few blocks from the bus stop to her home. I've visited all types of neighborhoods in DC and grew up across the street from public housing....but I have NEVER felt so unsafe in my life as when we walked those several blocks. I am (unfortunatley) usually naive to my surroundings, so that's really saying something.
PP, I pray your brother recovers soon |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
The tone of the posts range from "Trinidad is bad to Trinidad is really super awful bad-ass bad." Though it seems to me like a couple posters are trying to be encouraging because it sounds like it is possible OP is already stuck with this situation. |
Anonymous
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I don't believe anyone could truly be "stuck" in HAVING to live somewhere. Would you rather die in a random shooting... or deal with the hassle of finding another place?
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Anonymous
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Hi OP: I live in in NE in the Brookland/Brentwood neighborhood, and it sounds like you have already signed a lease or bought a house in that neighborhood. I track crime statistics very closely in the 5th District (which covers my neighborhood as well as Trinidad) to follow trends and to separate hype (which I heard plenty of when I moved to Brookland) versus reality. You can subscribe to the MPD Yahoo Group by going to MPD_5@yahoogroups.com
Many posters have pointed out the spate of crime in Trinidad this summer. My observation from reading the daily crime postings for a couple of years now and looking at the statistics is that you will need to be careful in Trinidad (lock your doors, consider a security system, no walking in the dark) It is in Police Service Area (PSA) 504 and this area as 3 xs the total crimes as my PSA (502) which is to the north of Galludet near Catholic University. That said, I have not seen many random violent attacks, or homicides directed at civilians during daytime hours. These aren't personal judgements, they are based on the police data. Trinidad is higher crime than many neighborhoods in NE, but there are people living in this neighborhood who are normal, law abiding, good citizens working to make it better. Good luck. |
Anonymous
| Anyone else think the OP could be a troll? |
Anonymous
I was JUST thinking that. But then, I always think that when an OP sets off a ton of comments, and then never comes back to participate. |
Anonymous
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Yeah, I almost wrote on my response "are you for real?". For one thing, who would lock into moving somewhere and THEN do the research into the area? If she had just googled Trinidad, she would have learned some of this stuff.
Whatever, though. We in good faith answered in case its a real post. I almost wish it were fake rather than thinking that some out of towner is going to move to Trinidad with small kids... |