After four people were murdered in one week in early September — all in the same Washington, D.C., neighborhood — residents made a plea for help. “We’ve been at funerals all week,” said Janeese Lewis George , a City Council member who represents the neighborhood. “What can we do as a community?” She was speaking to dozens of people at a vigil site, a tree adorned with teddy bears and candles along a street lined with rowhouses. According to police, the area, known as Brightwood Park, has been plagued by several dozen violent, gun-related crimes over the past year. When Lewis George asked whether the crowd had known anyone who’d been shot, most people raised their hands. Earlier that day, five council members joined Lewis George in asking Mayor Muriel Bowser for assistance — not in the form of more police, but from the city’s first-ever gun violence prevention director, Linda Harllee Harper. Harllee Harper knows Brightwood Park, having grown up near the heavily Black and Latino nei...
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