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TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23 , 2021. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/LOCAL EZ M2 B

JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON

Miriam’s Kitchen provides

meals and some comfort

for people experiencing

homelessness in D.C. B3

THE DISTRICT

Officials are expanding a

monetary reward meant

to help find untraceable

guns made from kits. B4

OBITUARIES

Dave Frishberg, 88,

a playful singer-songwriter

and jazz pianist, wrote

35 ° 44 ° 44 ° 38 ° “I’m Just a Bill.” B5

8 a.m. Noon 4 p.m. 8 p.m.

High today at

approx. 2 p.m.

46

°

Precip: 0%

Wind: NW

10-20 mph

the only developed country in the

world that doesn’t make paid

family leave mandatory.

Why would military folks care

about this?

For someone like Khanbalinov,

having primo medical care from

the Navy meant squat when his

wife couldn’t take paid time off to

help him.

The four weeks of paid leave

that bill proposes would’ve kept

them intact financially while his

wife stayed home to care for him.

“I was so well taken care of

during my surgery. But then they

sent me home, and we realized

my wife had no flexibility,” he

said. “The lights had to stay on,

and the children had to keep

going to school. So she had to go

back to work.”

Khanbalinov’s medical issues

weren’t from combat. But his

situation is like that of thousands

of other service members who

were injured while in action and

SEE DVORAK ON B4

Doctors told him

he couldn’t lift

anything heavier

than a pencil after

the nine-hour

surgery.

So Chief Navy

Counselor Grant

Khanbalinov lay

still, alone in his bed all day,

hoping his ostomy bag wouldn’t

burst while his wife was at work

managing a dental office in

Virginia.

“Paid family leave never

crossed my mind before that,”

said Khanbalinov, 31, who is on

the front lines of the debate this

week urging Congress to act on

paid family leave — for civilians.

While the Senate futzes with

the $2 trillion-dollar spending

bill that the House passed last

week, military advocates are

hoping the paid family leave

requirement tucked into that

legislation will help them — and

the nation. After all, we’re still

Want to support the troops?

Support their families, too.

Petula

Dvorak

BY LORI ARATANI

Metro will operate with re-

duced rail service through the

end of the year as it works to

return its 7000-series rail cars to

the tracks, the transit agency

announced Monday.

The trains, the newest in Met-

ro’s inventory, make up 60 per-

cent of the transit agency’s fleet

but have been sidelined since the

October derailment of a Blue Line

train near the Arlington Cem-

etery station. Metro General

Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld said

the decision to maintain service

at current levels will give riders

more certainty as they plan their

trips, and he cautioned that those

levels will probably rise gradual-

ly, even in January.

The announcement is the lat-

est blow for a transit agency

seeking to recover from historic

pandemic-induced ridership

losses and a federal safety inves-

tigation. Metro previously

warned commuters that lower

service levels would continue

through this month b ut said

Monday that it needs more time

for data collection, testing and

other protocols that would allow

it to bring the suspended cars

back into service.

Trains on the Red Line will

continue to run every 12 minutes,

while those on the Green and

Yellow lines will operate every 20

minutes. Officials said Monday

that trains on the Orange, Blue

and Silver lines will run every 24

minutes — a slight improvement

from the previous 30 minutes.

Wiedefeld said January service

levels will depend on the success-

ful completion of tests and resto-

ration plans for the 7000-series

rail cars. Still, he said service is

unlikely to immediately return to

what it was before the derailment

since trains may need more strin-

gent inspections.

“As we pull out of this, we’ll get

better and better at providing

more service as we get more cars

out there,” he said. “But it’s not

going to be something that, come

January 1 or whatever date, that

we can say, ‘ Okay, well, the 7000s

are back.’ I think it’s important

for the public to understand

that.”

He said a more likely scenario

would be a gradual ramp-up of

service as trains are cleared to

resume carrying passengers. In

all, Metro has 748 rail cars in the

series. The transit agency is oper-

ating with about 45 trains using

its older 2000-, 3000- and 6000-

series rail cars.

Wiedefeld said rail ridership,

which had been about 30 percent

of pre-pandemic levels, has

dipped to about 28 percent in

recent weeks.

No one was injured in the

Oct. 12 incident, but an initial

investigation by the National

Transportation Safety Board

found defects in the trains’

wheelsets that could make them

more prone to derailment. Simi-

lar defects in that series had

been identified as early as 2017,

but Metro considered those to be

rare and isolated warranty is-

sues. Investigators looking into

the cause of the derailment said

the defect appeared only a hand-

ful of times until this year, when

nearly 40 of the roughly 50 cases

were discovered.

SEE METRO ON B2

Metro to keep lower service levels through end of y ear

7000 SERIES NEEDS TESTS, DATA COLLECTION

Move comes amid struggle to recover from pandemic

BY STEVE THOMPSON

ocean city, md. — Two Ocean

City police officers who arrested

a Black teen over the summer in a

chaotic exchange that went viral,

prompting outrage from activists

and concern from state officials,

answered differently in court

Monday to a question about the

use of force.

The officers, testifying at the

teen’s trial, said that Taizier Grif-

fin pushed past the raised arm of

an officer who was trying to stop

him from vaping and that they

considered it an assault.

Lawyers for the teen asked

which was more dangerous: the

alleged assault or shooting the

young man with a Taser mo-

ments later as he had his hands

up?

One officer said the alleged

assault. The other one said de-

ploying the Taser.

How and why the officers

chose to deploy force was at the

heart of testimony that provided

the most detailed public account

yet of the moments leading up to

SEE OCEAN CITY ON B6

Police testify

during trial

of Black teen

Tasered in Md.

Arrest on Ocean City

boardwalk that went

viral caused outrage

MATT MCCLAIN/THE WASHINGTON POST

Rhode N’Komba reacts to Daniel Lameyer’s proposal at Gravelly Point Park in Arlington on Sunday. Above the popular recreation and

aircraft-spotting area, a plane descends toward Reagan National Airport.

Hearts soar at Gravelly Point

BY JENNA PORTNOY

AND RACHEL CHASON

On the morning indoor mask-

ing restrictions relaxed in D.C.,

Calvin Watson strode out his

front door barefaced — and al-

most immediately regretted it.

Everywhere he went — in his

apartment building, on the

street, at the grocery store —

people had their faces covered, so

he masked up, too.

“I’m fully vaccinated, I have

my booster, but I feel odd if I

don’t have it on,” Watson, a

55-year-old certified nursing as-

sistant, said as he cleaned his

hands with a disinfectant wipe at

a Giant. “Better safe than sorry.”

That’s the message people

throughout the District shared

Monday as they went about their

business largely unchanged,

20 months into a pandemic that’s

claimed 1,196 lives in the city.

Many were reluctant to take risks

as coronavirus case and hospital-

ization rates rise and before fam-

ilies gather indoors for winter

holidays, which experts predict

could cause a spike.

Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D)

has drawn criticism from the

majority of the D.C. Council and

public health experts for doing

away with the mandate — which

was among the strictest in the

nation — without citing data or

metrics and instead saying it’s

time to let people decide for

themselves. But some businesses

— especially fitness centers that

have taken a financial hit during

the pandemic — welcomed the

change and plan to double down

on coronavirus vaccine man-

dates and other precautions in-

doors.

New infections are up 15 per-

cent in D.C. over the past week, 14

percent in Maryland and 26 per-

cent in Virginia, according to The

Washington Post’s coronavirus

tracker. Although vaccinated

people who contract break-

through cases generally avoid

hospitalization, cases requiring

hospitalization are also begin-

ning to creep up, especially in the

District, data shows.

The Centers for Disease Con-

trol and Prevention continues to

recommend that people, regard-

less of vaccination status, wear

SEE MASKS ON B2

As D.C. mask rules ease, m any stay covered

New cases in region

Through 5 p.m. Monday, 5,261 new

coronavirus cases were reported in

Maryland, Virginia and the District,

bringing the total number of cases in

the region to 1,602,768.

D.C.** MD. VA.**

+319+ 832 +4, 110

66,34 75 78,851 957,570

Coronavirus-related deaths

As of 5 p.m. Monday:

D.C.** MD.* VA.**

+0 +8 +56

1,196 11,129 14,548

* Includes probable covid-19 deaths.

**D.C. and Virginia’s weekend data has

been incorporated into Monday’s

reported cases.

BY IAN DUNCAN

Thanksgiving holiday travel

brought long security lines to

Reagan National Airport over the

weekend as redesigned check-

points faced their first major

challenge during the busiest trav-

el days of the pandemic era.

The wait early Sunday

stretched to 45 minutes, forcing

some passengers to run to their

departure gates after getting

through security. Airport and air-

line officials warned passengers

Monday to allow extra time as

parking garages, gates and air-

planes record some of their most

crowded conditions in nearly two

years.

Cicely Simpson, 47, a lobbyist

and leadership coach who splits

her time between Nashville and

Washington, said she grew wor-

ried when she saw the “sea of

people” waiting to be screened

Sunday morning.

“I saw that line. I thought,

‘Yeah, I’m going to have to find a

SEE AIRPORT ON B2

Security lines

at National

reflect rise in

holiday travel

Passengers encounter

extended waits despite

redesigned checkpoints