Police District Boundary Realignment to Affect Dupont Area
The current boundaries of PSA 208, which serves the Dupont-Kalorama area. (DC Citizen Atlas)
From Matty Rhoades
MPD has started a series of seven meetings around the city to present new police district and police service area boundaries. Locally, it appears that the Dupont area is in for some changes — the area east of 18th Street and north of Q Street NW will be transferred back to the Third District from Second District.
At present this area is part of Police Service Area (PSA) 208. The most notable part about these new boundaries is that it would split the 17th Street commercial corridor between two districts and two PSAs.
The Third District meeting is Thursday, June 9 at 7 pm. Location is 1620 V Street NW. New police district and Police Service Area boundaries will be presented to the public, according to MPD Assistant Chief of Police Diane Groomes. “We want all to come out to the 3D CAC meeting tomorrow night to see the changes… 3D will be having changes to their boundaries to balance out the workload,” said Groomes.
According to Assistant Police Chief Diane Groomes, a chunk of Police Service Area (PSA) 208 will go back to the Third District. There will likely be an additional PSA in the Dupont-Logan area as well.
“At this time, we have 46 PSAs in the city and we will go to 56 PSAs,” said Groomes.
There will no longer be what Groomes called “Super PSAs,” which are larger and serve more people than regular PSAs. At present each MPD District has one such Super PSA. In the Third District, it is PSA 302 (north Columbia Heights and eastern Mount Pleasant) while in the Second Distrct it is PSA 208 , which serves the Dupont-Kalorma area.
The Dupont Circle area is currently served by PSA 208 (in the Second District) while the Logan Circle area is in PSA 307 (Third District). Ironicaly, PSA 208 used to be called PSA 306 and was in the Third District. For the most part, the dividing line between 208 and 307 is 15th Street.
The Dupont PSA was transferred to the Second District about three years ago so that it would receive more attention. This means that the south side of U Street at 16th is in the Second District — while the Third District headquarters is across the street at 1620 V Street NW.
On the north side of U Street, Police Service Area 305 serves the eastern end of the U Street corridor area plus the Howard University neighborhood.
