Rayful Edmond's death reminds me of my introduction to Washington, DC

The Post reported, "Inside the sudden death and complex legacy of an ex-D.C. drug kingpin," that Rayful Edmond, a kingpin during the crack cocaine days of the late 1980s and early 1990s, has died.  (Also see "Running Low on Rayful," Washington City Paper.)

Besides all the deaths, in another way, his is a tragic story, because clearly he had the smarts to be a very successful businessman.

... authorities say that in the 1980s, he commanded a ruthless crack cocaine operation, raking in an estimated $2 million a week and fueling a deadly epidemic that plunged D.C. into the national consciousness as America’s murder capital. 

The sudden death stunned Edmond’s family and attorneys, who have said that although he was once a prolific salesman of drugs, he claimed not to have used any himself. And his demise elicited sharply divergent reactions in D.C., a place that prides itself on second chances. To many who investigated and prosecuted him, Edmond was a larger-than-life criminal who profited from death and addiction in the city. 

To some who considered him a friend and neighbor, he was a local legend whose charisma helped build an empire, and who was known to cover rent, food and medicine for those in need. “He may have been convicted of serious crimes, but Rayful’s only intention in life was to be able to help people,” said Tiffani Collins, one of Edmond’s attorneys. “Sometimes people go about giving that help the wrong way, but there is no doubt in my mind he would have wanted his life to be a lesson for anyone to benefit from it.”

... The nightly crossfire among street crews guarding their turf — and profits — helped to sharply drive up D.C.’s annual homicide toll in the late 1980s and early 1990s, peaking at nearly 500, almost double the rate in 2023. Although Edmond was never convicted of a violent crime, authorities say he was responsible for hundreds of deaths, from murders to overdoses. 

When I first came to DC, it was in 1987, and I wanted to live in the city as opposed to the suburbs.  I lived in Ann Arbor--a city--before the move, and in Detroit off and on until I was 12, and then the suburbs for 6 years.

Then, not only was I a knee jerk liberal but mostly "young and dumb," not really ready to live in the 'hood.  I joke that I wish that Elijah Anderson's books Streetwise and Code of the Street had been already published, so I could have been better prepared!

Flicker photo by Ted Eytan.

Why this matters is we lived a few blocks away from his main distribution area, a set of two one way streets near Florida Avenue and today's thriving Union Market, Morton Place and Orleans Place. 

One thing I learned from this is that one way streets make it easier to make and hide drug transactions.  (In the H Street neighborhood, G Street and another pair of one way streets had similar problems.)

On Thursday morning, the blocks of Morton Place and Orleans Place NE that were once the epicenter of Edmond’s operation were quiet, full of well-kept rowhouses with fallen yellow ginkgo leaves blanketing the sidewalk. 

Then an open-air drug market called “The Strip,” Edmond’s employees once stashed drugs in abandoned houses here and sold them at a clip of 30 transactions a minute. High-rise apartment buildings have popped up in the surrounding blocks in recent years, next to Union Market, a foodie’s paradise serving everything from bubble tea to Mexican-Korean fusion.

Now Redfin lists transactions on those streets from the high 600s to over one million.

I thought the area was a good place to live because even though H Street NE was riot scarred, it was close to Union Station, Downtown, and Capitol Hill-US Capitol.  Then again, 30 people were murdered in the area in our first 18 months, and we had a lot of problems, serious marriage-breakup problems, with crime.

I moved from knee jerk liberal to what I called an "inner city progressive" whose liberal tendencies were mediated by the reality of the local conditions and governance.  (Still it was about a decade before I actually got off my ass and got involved, because I believed if I didn't the area would continue to languish--good timing since trends shifted favoring urban living).

Loree Murray was an activist involved in many issues, including DC statehood.

When I did get involved, one of the first organizations was Near Northeast Citizens Against Crime and Drugs, founded by a lady who lived around the corner from the mayhem ("A Woman Who Won't Sit Still From It," "Fought D.C. Cocaine Epidemic," Post) and police service area meetings--one of the problems we had is the area was split between two different police precincts creating problems of coordination.

Near Northeast Citizens Against Crime and Drugs was exactly the kind of community response and organizing initiative that Patrick Sharkey discusses in Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence as why we had the crime drop in the 2000s, nationally, and in DC.

A nearby apartment building, post-reproduction of space, was named in the honor of the founder of the group, Loree Murray.

FWIW, this area gave me another lesson, my lodestone in revitalization, in that investments in transit infrastructure in the right places has the fastest ROI, when the infill NoMA Red Line subway station opened in 2004 (case study) which brought about a huge influx in new residents.