WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE B5
motorized scooter, personal mo-
bility device, skateboard, or other
similar device.”
The bill, passed unanimously,
expands on a 2016 law that gave
protection to pedestrians and
riders of nonmotorized bikes,
ensuring them a greater chance
of collecting medical costs. The
bill also expands the comparative
standard to incidents that occur
on sidewalks, rather than only on
roadways.
Under the measure, vulner-
able road users “have to be found
by the jury to be beyond 50 per-
cent at fault for their injuries in
order to be barred from recov-
ery,” said council member Mary
M. Cheh (D-Ward 3), the lead
sponsor of the bill. “And that
makes it so much more equitable
and fair.”
Another bill would require
that at least 20 percent of park-
ing spots in new or renovated
commercial and apartment
buildings have infrastructure to
allow for future electric-vehicle
charging.
The bill requires builders to
create only the infrastructure to
support future installation of
electric vehicle charging stations,
such as conduit wiring and elec-chasing an electric vehicle is
concern about where they can
charge the vehicle,” Cheh said
last month. “The legislation will
help the District address those
concerns and prepare for more
widespread adoption of electric
vehicles.”
According to a council report,
installing the infrastructure dur-
ing construction will save devel-
opers money. The average cost to
install the infrastructure during
construction is about $900 a
spot, while retrofitting costs be-
tween $2,300 and $3,700, accord-
ing to the report.
The rule would apply to build-
ing projects creating three or
more new parking spots. The
requirement, which would go
into effect in January 2022,
matches standards in other ma-
jor cities, including Atlanta and
Chicago.
Another bill allows the District
Department of Transportation to
establish higher parking rates on
a temporary basis in some loca-
tions when high demand for
parking is expected near events.
The measure could potentially
allow “DDOT to be more respon-
sive to curbside demand,” Dan
Emerine, DDOT’s manager ofpolicy and legislative affairs, said
during a September hearing.
In a letter Tuesday to D.C.
Council Chairman Phil Mendel-
son (D), Mayor Muriel E. Bowser
said increasing “performance
parking” is a key mechanism in
the city’s curbside management
plan.
“By providing additional flexi-
bility in our ability to match
parking supply and demand, we
will be able to encourage curb-
side turnover that makes finding
a space easier for additional us-
ers, and can increase customer
access to nearby businesses,”
Bowser (D) wrote, pledging sup-
port for the bill. “Further, it
en courages alternative uses of
transportation that have fewer
carbon emissions.”
DDOT has operated some form
of “performance parking” since
2008 near Nationals Park, where
meter rates on game days reach
as much as $8 an hour. In the
Penn Quarter neighborhood,
rates around Capital One Arena
vary depending on time and de-
mand, reaching up to $7 an hour.
The bills will go to B owser w ith
a 30-day period for congressional
review.
[email protected]BY LUZ LAZOThe D.C. Council on Tuesday
passed several transportation
measures, including one that
would make it easier for some
road users, including e-scooter
riders, to recoup a share of medi-
cal bills and other costs if injured
in a collision.
The council also approved a
mandate for electric-vehicle in-
frastructure in future private de-
velopments and a bill giving the
city more flexibility to increase
parking rates in high-demand
areas — two measures that sup-
porters say will help the District
meet its climate goals.
The votes come as the council
rushes to approve legislation be-
fore the 2020 legislative session
draws to a close.
In a change for e-scooter rid-
ers, the council voted to broaden
the category of “vulnerable road
users” exempted from the “con-
tributory negligence” standard
that governs tort claims in the
District. The measure is set to
change a long-standing city law
dictating that for some road us-
ers to collect damages after a
collision with a vehicle, the acci-
dent must be 100 percent the
driver’s fault.
For example, when an e-
scooter rider is struck and in-
jured, the rider, e ven if 1 percent
negligent, i s barred from recover-
ing any damages.
The measure establishes that
comparative standard will be ap-
plied in cases where the plaintiff
is a pedestrian or a “vulnerable
user” of a public highway or
sidewalk. The legislation defines
a vulnerable user as someone
“using an all-terrain vehicle, bi-
cycle, dirt bike, electric mobility
device, motorcycle, motorized bi-
cycle, motor-driven cycle, non-THE DISTRICT
Council passes bills on
e-scooters, electric cars
Currently, outside of the main
location, DCCK has satellite op-
erations spread across the city at
schools and rented office space.
Through the nonprofit’s Culi-
nary Job Training Program,
which works with adults who
face barriers to employment,
graduates have an 87 percent job
placement rate in D.C.’s hospital-
ity industry. The new location
will bring all those locations and
programs under one roof and
will also include a cafe for the
neighborhood.
“The kitchen will be very visi-
ble through the glass, so people
will walk by the building and seeBY TOM JACKMANThe Justice Department is
joining the defense team of the
two U.S. Park Police officers who
fatally shot Bijan Ghaisar in 2017,
slightly more than a year after
the department decided it would
not pursue federal criminal
charges against the officers.
Ghaisar, 25, was shot as he sat
behind the wheel of his Jeep
Grand Cherokee on a residential
street in Fairfax County by Park
Police Officers Lucas Vinyard, 39,
and Alejandro Amaya, 41. The
officers have claimed they fired
in self-defense, though a video of
the incident appears to show
Ghaisar’s Jeep slowly moving
away from the officers as they
started shooting.
In October, a Fairfax County
special grand jury indicted the
two officers on charges of invol-
untary manslaughter and reck-
less use of a firearm. A month
later, attorneys for Vinyard and
Amaya moved to have the case
heard in federal court in Alexan-
dria because they are federal
officers. Legal experts expect that
Senior U.S. District Judge Claude
M. Hilton will grant that motion
and that Vinyard and Amaya will
then seek to have the criminal
charges dismissed under the su-
premacy clause of the U.S. Con-
stitution.
The supremacy clause holds
that federal laws take precedence
over state laws. In more than 100
years of legal rulings on the issue
of charging federal officers in
state courts, judges have ana-
lyzed the officers’ actions on the
basis of whether they reasonably
believed their actions were “nec-
essary and proper” to performing
their federal duty.
Vinyard and Amaya already
have private attorneys in the
case. But the federal government
may send “any officer” of the
Justice Department “to attend to
the interests of the United
States” in any pending legal ac-
tion in state or federal court,
under federal law. And because
the officers are “asserting a feder-
al immunity defense,” according
to motions filed by the govern-
ment — the officers have not yet
raised any defense in state or
federal court — the Justice De-
partment is assigning a lawyer to
manage the government’s inter-
ests.
The lawyer is John Blair Fish-
wick Martin, of the constitution-
al and specialized torts litigation
section of the Justice Depart-
ment’s civil division. Martin is
licensed in New York and not
Virginia, so the Justice Depart-
ment had to seek permission
from Hilton to allow him to
handle cases in the Alexandria
federal court, which Hilton
granted Monday.The motions do not specify
what the government’s interests
in the prosecution of Vinyard
and Amaya are, though it could
be to help defend the officers
against the criminal charges or to
ensure the supremacy clause ar-
guments are properly made on
their behalf. Martin did not re-
spond to a request for comment.
Travis D. Tull, Amaya’s attor-
ney, said that he believed the
government’s interests “are cur-
rently in line with those of the
defendants” and that he
“wouldn’t be surprised to see a
memorandum in support of the
expected motion to dismiss the
state charges based on the su-
premacy clause and federal offi-
cer immunity.” Tull said he did
not know whether Martin would
stay on the case if Hilton did not
dismiss the criminal charges.
Daniel Crowley, Vinyard’s at-
torney, declined to comment, as
did Fairfax Commonwealth’s At-
torney Steve T. Descano and
lawyers for the Ghaisar family.
The U.S. attorney’s office in
Alexandria declined to join the
case because it is already defend-
ing the two officers in a civil suit
filed by the Ghaisars. That case,
also being heard by Hilton, was
scheduled for trial last month,
but Hilton postponed it after the
criminal indictment was handed
up in Fairfax.
[email protected]VIRGINIA
Justice Department joins defense
of Park Police charged in 2017 death
trical current capacity. It does
not require the charging station
to be installed and does not
mandate existing parking spots
be converted to electric-vehicle
charging spots.
Cheh, who chairs the Commit-
tee on Transportation and the
Environment, said the measure is
critical in supporting the wide-
spread adoption of electric vehi-
cles in the city, which she said
will “play a key part in the
District curbing its greenhouse
gas emissions and meeting our
climate goals.”
The city has set a goal to cut
greenhouse gas emissions in half
by 2032.
“Consumers report, however,
that their biggest barrier to pur-“The legislation will
help the District...
prepare for more
widespread adoption of
electric vehicles.”
Mary M. Cheh,
D.C. Council member (D-Ward 3)BY KYLE SWENSONAfter more than three decades
as one of the District’s key or-
ganizations serving the poor and
hungry, the D.C. Central Kitchen
is planning a relocation that will
revamp the nonprofit’s ability to
serve the region’s most needy.
“We’ve been in D.C. for 32
years, for about 30 of them in the
basement of the Federal City
Shelter building,” said Michael F.
Curtin Jr., the organization’s
chief executive. “It’s been a good
home, but it’s a decaying and
decrepit building, and it cannot
handle the work we need to do.”
With that in mind, D.C. Cen-
tral Kitchen has announced
plans to relocate to the River-
Point, a new development by
Western Development Corp., Orr
Partners and Akridge in the
Buzzard Point neighborhood
south of Nationals Park with 480
residential units and around
73,000 square feet of retail
space.
“I’ve known Mike and D.C.
Central Kitchen for years, and
they are probably the most re-
sponsible and largest of the local
groups that make a difference in
the community in terms of help-
ing people help themselves,” said
Herbert S. Miller, Western’s
chairman and chief executive.
“By giving them a new home that
is truly one of a kind, it makes us
feel good to partner with them.”
The nonprofit’s presence as an
anchor at the mixed-use develop-
ment is unique.
“We’re not a big-box store or a
national tenant restaurant chain
or retail chain,” Curtin said. “We
really want to show by being
present in a larger commercial
enterprise the value of work, not
just DCCK but what other non-
profits are engaged in.”
our students all working,” Curtin
said.
For nearly eight years, Curtin
and the other leaders at the
kitchen have been dreaming up
plans for a new location, one
that could help them better
serve their client base and con-
tinue to grow from culinary job
training to full-service catering,
cafes and other food-based proj-
ects.
“Over the years, we have
evolved from more of a social
service organization to a social
enterprise engine. We’re an or-
ganization that is creating close
to $90 million in economic im-
pact,” Curtain said, citing the
organization’s estimates. “By
2025, we are projected to create
$200 million in economic im-
pact with this move.”
Those projections are based
on the belief that the new loca-
tion will draw more volunteers
and more customers and will
allow the organization to take
advantage of the growing de-
mand for conscious consumer-
ism. There is a way to buy fairly
sourced coffee or toothpaste, but
RiverPoint offers a whole neigh-
borhood grounded in a social
mission through the kitchen’s
presence, Curtin said. Once the
coronavirus pandemic is over,
the organization expects to bring
around 30,000 volunteers each
year to the location, numbers
Curtin hopes will help alleviate
the projected 250,000 D.C. resi-
dents thrown into hunger by the
crisis.
“We are seeing how close to
the food insecurity line so many
of our brothers and sisters in the
city are,” he added.
The organization is planning
to move into the development by
the first quarter of 2022.
[email protected]THE DISTRICT
D.C. Central Kitchen plans 2022 relocation to new riverfront development
EVELYN HOCKSTEIN FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTD.C. CENTRAL KITCHEN
ABOVE: A rendering of D .C.
Central Kitchen’s new
headquarters in the RiverPoint
development, which is located
in the Buzzard Point
neighborhood south of
Nationals Park. LEFT: Saroyal
Booker practices preparing a
chicken as part of the
nonprofit’s Culinary Job
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