MONDAY, APRIL 25 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ M2 B3
THE DISTRICTPolice identify woman
fatally shot by officersA woman who D.C. police say
was armed with a pistol and
behaving erratically when she
was fatally shot by officers early
Saturday has been identified as
Erica Graham, 42, of Northwest
Washington.
Officers were responding to
reports of a shooting shortly
before 6 a.m. in the 800 block of
Crittenden Street NW, where
they found a woman suffering
from a gunshot wound in one of
her arms, authorities said. While
officers were giving her first aid,
other officers encountered
Graham on a nearby front
porch, where she was armed
with a semiautomatic handgun
and smashing windows,
according to police.
Over the course of a minute
or so, authorities said, officers
ordered her to put down the
firearm and lie on the ground.
When she did not follow orders,
the officers shot her, according
to Police Chief Robert J. Contee
III. The officers have not been
publicly identified.
Although Graham was
wearing a special police officer’s
uniform, she is not registered as
a special police officer in the
District, authorities said. They
said Graham is believed to have
shot the other woman.
The officers involved in the
shooting have been placed on
administrative leave while the
department’s internal affairs
unit investigates the incident.
— Paul DugganMARYLAND2 women killed in
crash in Seat PleasantTwo woman were killed
Friday night in a two-vehicle
collision in the city of Seat
Pleasant, police said.
The driver and a passenger i n
one of the vehicles were killed i n
the crash on Central Avenue at
Old Central Avenue about
8 p.m., said Lt. Cedric Heyward
of the Seat Pleasant police.
When t heir car attempted a
left turn from Central Avenue
onto Old Central Avenue, it
collided w ith another vehicle,
Heyward said.
Two other passengers in the
first car, both described as
juveniles, suffered injuries not
believed to be life-threatening,
he said.
No information was available
on the driver of the second
vehicle.
The victims’ names were
being withheld until relatives
could be notified, Heyward said.
— Martin WeilLOCAL DIGESTResults from April 24
DISTRICT
Day/DC-3: 2-0-7
DC-4: 8-2-1-5
DC-5: 0-3-5-5-8
Night/DC-3 (Sat.): 9-0-3
DC-3 (Sun.): 8-4-6
DC-4 (Sat.): 0-4-9-6
DC-4 (Sun.): 4-5-6-3
DC-5 (Sat.): 2-8-6-1-1
DC-5 (Sun.): 1-6-0-3-5MARYLAND
Day/Pick 3: 8-8-8
Pick 4: 2-3-1-5
Pick 5: 9-8-8-1-2
Night/Pick 3 (Sat.): 6-6-9
Pick 3 (Sun.): 4-9-8
Pick 4 (Sat.): 3-7-4-2
Pick 4 (Sun.): 8-2-2-5
Pick 5 (Sat.): 5-9-3-4-9
Pick 5 (Sun.): 2-7-9-6-9
Bonus Match 5 (Sat.): 1-2-15-37-39 *4
Bonus Match 5 (Sun.): 3-4-23-25-28 *17VIRGINIA
Day/Pick-3: 9-0-5 ^9
Pick-4: 8-0-0-1 ^7
Night/Pick-3 (Sat.): 7-9-0 ^8
Pick-3 (Sun.): 3-3-4 ^6
Pick-4 (Sat.): 9-2-9-0 ^7
Pick-4 (Sun.): 7-9-1-8 ^0
Cash-5 (Sat.): 19-23-30-33-38
Cash-5 (Sun.): 4-13-14-26-27
Bank a Million: 7-17-21-22-28-33 *8MULTI-STATE GAMES
Powerball: 10-39-47-49-56 †8
Power Play: 3x
Double Play: 2-30-39-54-63 †17
Cash 4 Life:7-14-33-46-48 ¶1
Lucky for Life:11-13-28-30-37 ‡4
*Bonus Ball †Powerball
¶ Cash Ball ‡Lucky Ball ^FireballFor late drawings and other results, check
washingtonpost.com/local/lotteryLOTTERIESBroadband Programs, which
manages the uses of public rights
of way by cable TV providers.
It sent a crew over and in short
order reported back that the box
was an old RCN power supply.
The inspector wrote it up as an
alert to RCN and also used twine
to attach the errant panel to the
base of pole so it wouldn’t blow
around and obstruct traffic. That
was decent of them, I thought.
By the time I called RCN —
which now goes by Astound —
this repair ticket was already in.
By the next day, RCN had
replaced the door.
The ownership, oversight and
maintenance of utility poles is
complicated. Pepco tells me it’s
impossible for them to know
what’s on all its poles. To this, I
say: too bad. Last year, parent
company Exelon had revenue of
$33 billion. Surely some of that
money could be spent training
crews to do more than say “Not
my problem.”
And you’d better believe if that
door had fallen on someone’s
head, Pepco would have
scrambled to find out exactly
who was responsible.More reunions
In Thursday’s column, I had the
date wrong for Northwood
High’s Class of 1971 reunion. It’s
Oct. 15, not Oct. 5. For
information, visit
northwood71.classquest.com/ or
email Brenda Coffman
Graninger at [email protected].
Other upcoming reunions:
Herndon High 30th Alumni
Picnic — June 5. All classes
through 1980 invited. Email Ann
Roberts Jenkins at
[email protected] or
call 703-430-7814.
Northwestern High Class of
1970 — Oct 1. For information,
visit northwestern1970.com.this is not our equipment. We
also worked with AT&T to
confirm it's not theirs either.”
I then called Montgomery
County’s Office of Consumer
Protection, figuring maybe it
could do what the state’s Public
Utility Commission couldn’t.
Director Eric Friedman
sympathized and passed my
issue on to the county’s Office ofup at my door the next day. I gave
him the address of the pole. He
drove his truck over to it, then
called me.
“That’s a Verizon box,” he said.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
He said it could be RCN.
By this time, I’d contacted
DirectTV, who emailed back:
“Our network operations team
looked into this and confirmedreception being degraded?
One day, I saw the homeowner
closest to the pole out in her yard
and asked if she had reported it.
She said her husband had called
Pepco. A Pepco crew had come
out, examined the box, said it
wasn’t theirs and slapped an
orange sticker on the door. The
sticker read “CAUTION. NOT A
PEPCO WIRE .... PLEASE
CONTACT YOUR
COMMUNICATIONS COMPANY
FOR REPAIRS TO THIS WIRE.”
In other words: not our
problem.
I contacted the Maryland
Public Service Commission, the
agency that regulates utilities in
the state. They said the pole was
probably owned by Pepco and
that I should contact Pepco and
provide the number of the pole.
There are two numbers,
actually. I took photos of both
and sent them to Pepco, which of
course already knew about the
pole and the box, since their crew
had already slapped that sticker
on the door.
A Pepco representative told
me to contact Montgomery 311,
the county’s non-emergency
number. Maybe they would know
whose equipment is on the pole,
she said. (You mean your pole, I
thought.)
I called 311. The operator there
was surprised to hear that Pepco
was telling people to call 311. He
said all he could do was give me
the toll-free numbers of the
companies that might own the
equipment: Verizon, Comcast,
RCN and DirecTV.
And so I started calling them.
A Verizon technician called me
back. I texted him a photo of the
pole and the box.
“That’s a Comcast box,” he
said.
I called Comcast.
A Comcast technician showedAds for utility
companies always
feature photos of
smiling customers
basking in lives
improved by the
wondrous
services these
corporations offer.
Happy people
squeal with delight around a TV
set. They practically explode
with joy as they scroll on their
laptops or talk on their phones.
The ads never show people
beating their heads against the
wall just trying to get something
done.
About a month ago, a utility
box on a utility pole in my
neighborhood in Silver Spring
lost its door. A utility pole is what
we used to call a telephone pole.
These days, these poles can be
home to as many different forms
of machinery as a coral reef is to
fishes, crabs and sponges. There
are electrical wires at the top,
then a panoply of other services:
telephone, cable, Internet, Fios. I
wouldn’t be surprised if some
start-up was trying to pump
lattes and cappuccinos through
this existing infrastructure.
Anyway, this startling variety
makes it difficult to figure out
who to call when something goes
wrong.
This particular utility box is
about two-thirds of the way up
the pole. It’s metal, pale green,
about three feet by four feet and
18 inches deep. The front panel
must have come off in a storm.
I’ve been passing it every day
when I walk my dog. The door
just sat there on the ground. The
machinery in the box itself — a
couple of components that
looked like old stereo equipment
— was exposed to the elements.
I wondered: Is it safe? Is
someone’s cable TV or Internet
When it comes to utility wires and boxes, companies pass the buck
John
Kelly's
Wa shington
JOHN KELLY/THE WASHINGTON POST
The front panel on a utility box fell from this utility pole in Silver
Spring. It took days of back and forth with power, phone and cable
companies to find out who was responsible for fixing it.reading “I demand to be heard”
after DiLella refused to let her
speak, as the Wall Street Journal
reported.
“The Commission was estab-
lished to honor the American
people and their 250 years as a
nation,” the letter said. “Its activi-
ty should not be unnecessarily
obfuscated, and its conduct
should be held to the highest
standard.”
This is not the first time drama
has threatened to derail an Amer-
ican anniversary. Bicentennial
celebrations in 1976 were held
only after a federal commission
“later abolished by Congress for
ineptitude... spent 612 years ar-
guing over an appropriate nation-
al celebration and finally recom-
mended that there be none,” ac-
cording to a 1975 Time magazine
article. The nation’s 150th, which
also had Philadelphia as its na-
tional host, was plagued by debt,
low attendance and bad weather.
Andrew Hohns, a member of
the commission, said in an inter-
view that the nation’s anniversa-
ries are important opportunities
for education and infrastructure-
building. For example, he said,
South Philadelphia swampland
drained for the nation’s
150th birthday celebration is now
home to the city’s sports stadiums
and public parkland.
America 250 should be muster-
ing resources for programming —
everything from organizing vol-
unteer projects for students to
promoting childhood nutrition
that will strengthen the “social
fabric,” according to Hohns. In-
stead, the foundation, which has
about 2,000 Instagram followers,
has unsuccessfully focused on
building its brand, he said.
“I’m not at all comfortable with
the way things stand,” Hohns
said. “This is a very significant
abuse of this public institution.”
Commissioner Noah Griffin Jr.
said he is one of the commission’s
few African Americans. Griffin’s
grandfather was an enslaved per-
son, he said, and he joined the
commission to make sure Black
stories were told.
Now, America 250 is nothing
but a “branding operation,” ac-
cording to Griffin, and Biden
must act to ensure that it is run
effectively.
“Each generation’s ceiling is
the next generation’s floor,” Grif-
fin said. “I’m not willing to turn it
over to folks that are not willing
to understand and appreciate
that. Somebody has to continue to
make this commission what it
should be.”emailed statement, Commission-
er Val Crofts said the majority of
the commission was “energized
and excited for a commemoration
that will make this country
proud.”
Programs like the Young Peo-
ple’s Continental Congress, an
America 250 partner program
that will bring students to Phila-
delphia in an event modeled on
the First Continental Congress,
offer “hands-on experience in dis-
cussing contemporary issues and
proposing changes and ideas to
improve them,” the statement
said.
“The Foundation staff has also
designed a detailed plan for any
and all Commissioners who want
to be a part of the planning
process,” the statement said. “I
know that many of my fellow
Commissioners have done so and
I call on my colleagues who have
not to take them up on this
opportunity.”
In a letter to the foundation in
February, three lawmakers on the
commission — Sen. Robert P.
Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) and Reps. Bon-
nie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.) and
Dwight Evans (D-Pa.) — said
America 250 should launch an
investigation into the women’s
claims.
At a virtual meeting last
month, Coleman held up a signwas disparaged by a fellow em-
ployee “in a drunken, sexist tirade
to a work peer,” calling her “a
b----” who “probably made up the
claim she is a survivor.”
Potts resigned after some com-
missioners questioned the foun-
dation’s “waste and misappropri-
ation,” the suit said, concluding
“she could not refute them be-
cause they were largely true.”In an interview, Potts said
America 250 has a “sacred privi-
lege” to represent the nation as its
250th anniversary approaches —
one that the foundation was not
living up to.
“I’m the PR person,” she said.
“I’m not Houdini. These are disas-
trous decisions. I’m not putting
my name on that.”
Some commissioners, howev-
er, praised America 250. In anBurchard and her co-plaintiffs. In
more than 60 pages, their com-
plaint alleges they were “retaliat-
ed against, shunned, isolated, hu-
miliated and undermined be-
cause of their activities as whis-
tleblowers” and “subjected to a
hostile work environment be-
cause of their gender.”
Burchard alleged in the suit
that she was told to pay $30,000
worth of invoices “for which there
were no contracts and no proof
that work had been done.” The
suit also said she expressed con-
cerns about a “potentially unlaw-
ful quid-pro-quo” between Amer-
ica 250 and Facebook’s parent
company, Meta, which gave the
foundation $10 million in ex-
change for rights to map national
parks with drones “for its own
business purposes” — using the
“pretense” that the mapping was
an America 250 program. (Meta
did not respond to a request for
comment. The National Park
Service, which is not a party to the
lawsuit, declined to comment.)
Meanwhile, the foundation’s
president assigned Burchard sec-
retarial duties and told her she
“needed to learn how to serve
him,” the suit claimed.
The suit also alleges that Keri
Potts, another plaintiff and a sex-
ual assault survivor who has been
profiled in The Washington Post,priations, donations and spon-
sorships, America 250 has re-
ceived $20 million in federal
funds so far, according to the suit.
The commission’s unpaid chair
is Daniel DiLella, a Philadelphia
businessman appointed by
Trump in 2018. In the past two
years, the suit alleges, DiLella has
staffed the foundation with
friends, improperly steering con-
tracts to businesses with which
he had “personal dealings or rela-
tionships, that created a potential
conflict of interest and/or had
questionable prices in services.”
Burchard and three other
women quit the foundation when
“they could no longer participate
in noncompliant, unlawful and/
or fraudulent use of taxpayer
funds, and could no longer en-
dure a toxic and volatile work
environment,” the suit said.
In a court filing on April 7,
attorneys for America 250 said
the lawsuit “fails to articulate
sufficient facts to set forth any
cognizable claim.”
“At bottom, the Complaint con-
tains unsupported allegations
and speculations regarding
Plaintiffs’ collective disagree-
ments on management decisions
during their employment,” the
filing said.
The White House declined to
comment.
In a telephone interview,
DiLella also declined to comment
on the lawsuit’s allegations. How-
ever, DiLella said, the commis-
sion had “no money, no organiza-
tion, and no appropriation” when
he took over in 2018.
When many commissioners
did not return his phone calls
looking for resources, he said, he
donated $250,000 of his own
money and turned to his friends
to raise about $3 million to “open
the doors.”
“We had absolutely nothing,”
he said. “It was just dumped in my
arms.”
Burchard said she saw working
for America 250 as the “cherry on
top” of her career. With the coun-
try newly focused on racial jus-
tice, she said, the semiquincen-
tennial could put the bicentenni-
al in context through programs
mounted across the country by
historians.
“We’re looking at Ameri-
ca 250 years behind us but also
equally 250 years ahead of us,” she
said. “This whole thing was going
to set that up.”
The foundation has not lived
up to its potential, according to
FOUNDATION FROM B1
Lawsuit: Workplace at commission for nation’s 250th i s ‘toxic’
BILL O’LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POST
Anna Laymon, right, and Renee Burchard, center, two of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit targeting the
America 250 Foundation, talk with attorney Pam Keith this month in Washington.“I’m the PR person.I ’m not Houdini. Theseare disastrous decisions.I’m not putting myname on that.”
Keri Potts, one of the plaintiffsSubscriber ExclusivesAlmost “tutu” good to be true: Specially priced tickets to Kyle Abraham’s A.I.M. –
An Untitled Love April 29 & 30 at The Kennedy Center
Kyle Abraham – one of the most sought-after choreographers and dancers of our time – has worked for New York City Ballet,
NYCB dancer Wendy Whalen, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and more. His company A.I.M by Kyle Abraham marks its first
Kennedy Center full engagement with the highly anticipated D.C. premiere of An Untitled Love, “a daring, heartfelt, and brilliantly
idiomatic celebration of love, suffering, yearning, and bliss” (independent.com).
See details at washingtonpost.com/my-post.