WASHINGTON (DC News Now) — The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) for the District of Columbia said Monday that a man whom police shot and killed Sunday was a member of the office’s violence interruption program.
The OAG describes Cure the Streets as a pilot public safety progam that is intended to reduce gun violence in the District. Among other things, the OAG’s website states: “It operates in discrete high violence neighborhoods using a data-driven, public-health approach to gun violence by treating it as a disease that can be interrupted, treated, and stopped from spreading.”
The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) said it received word that a car hit the McDonald’s restaurant, located in the 2500 block of Marion Barry Ave. SE in Anacostia, around 5 a.m. on Sunday.
Chief Pamela Smith said in a news conference later in the morning that when officers arrived at the scene, they found the driver of the car unconscious and that he had a gun. The officers asked for additional police to come to the scene. The driver, a man, started to move. The officers had their weapons drawn and told him to put down the gun. Smith said while that was taking place, the man tried to take one officer’s gun. Both opened fire. The man died there.
As of late Monday afternoon, MPD had not identifed the driver, the member of Cure the Streets.
