ABCDE METRO friday, july 16, 2010 LOCAL HOME PAGE 82, 9 a.m. 90, noon 93, 5 p.m. 85, 9 p.m.
Obituaries The interests of maverick Australian conductor Charles Mackerras, 84, led him across the spectrum of opera. B7
Mayoral hopefuls hit hard
by Nikita Stewart and Tim Craig
In sharp exchanges during a one-on-one radio debate Thurs- day, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and his lead mayoral opponent, Vin- cent C. Gray, accused each other of ethical lapses and lack of trans- parency, signaling a campaign likely to be soiled by mudslinging in its final eight weeks. During the hour-long matchup on WPFW, host Jonetta Rose Bar- ras and guest panelists tried to steer the discussion toward is- sues including the contenders’ leadership styles and the recent city takeover of United Medical Center in Southeast. But the Democrats repeatedly challenged each other’s ethics. “They’re all going to be en-
gaged in some element of attack- ing their opponent,” Barras said in an interview. “It’s going to be very difficult to focus on the is- sues, because there’s not much difference between them on the issues.” Fenty has sought to portray himself as a leader who has made quick, unpopular decisions but has yielded results, while Gray has promised to be more deliber- ate before making decisions. “What Adrian is trying to do is
redefine Vincent in a way that re- duces the sheen on Vincent to see that he is equally tarnished,” said Barras, who was joined in the stu-
debate continued on B5
Rev up for the weekend Get ready for your weekend. Check out the Going Out Guide and Dr. Gridlock’s tips for avoiding trouble spots around town. Go to
PostLocal.com.
THE REGION
Weighing in On PostLocal: parking troubles, guides to the city for young visitors and Mike DeBonis on Wal-Mart, eyeing a Northeast parcel for its first D.C. store. B2
THE DISTRICT
Same-sex marriage upheld The Court of Appeals narrowly sustains the new D.C. law, rejecting an appeal by same-sex marriage opponents who sought a referendum on the unions’ legality. B4
Long
on ethics Fenty’s and Gray’s on-air mudslinging shuts out issues
B DC MD VA S
odds in shooting lawsuit
Police and paramedics are faulted by victim; Fairfax claims immunity
by Tom Jackman MARK GAIL/THE WASHINGTON POST Lt. Ozetta Posey in her office. She tells her homicide detectives, “No crying, complaining and whining.”
A different approach to violent deaths
One homicide drove home lessons that D.C. lieutenant now drills into others “It’s a guy with a hole in his
by Clarence Williams It was near dawn, the last call
of Ozetta Posey’s midnight shift but her first homicide as a detec- tive. A sheet covered the body, which was soaked by the early- morning downpour. Her job was to secure the scene until homi- cide detectives arrived. “Who is it?” Posey asked her
partner as they walked in the qui- et, past rowhouses in upper Northwest.
PETULA DVORAK
Blind devotion to pets not best course for all
magical cat who patrolled his alley with swagger and spent hours flirting with a cute house cat through her window. David Catania, who happens to be a D.C. Council member, wanted the best for the alley cat who had eyes for his girl. It’s a long story, but it comes down to this: Catania took Morty to the vet to get him neutered and cared for and learned that he had feline immunodeficiency virus, or FIV. Because Morty was a little
T
feisty, there was a reasonable chance he could infect the docile house cat — a bite often can do it, and Morty was a biter and a fighter. And Morty also hated — absolutely, stir-crazy hated — being indoors. Catania said he did everything he could to find Morty a home, but it wasn’t happening. So Morty became Catania’s outdoor cat.
And then Morty got sick.
Horribly sick. Before he died, his owners had applied costly creams to his wounds, pumped IV-bags of fluid into his furry limbs, hand-fed him oral medications. But that’s not always the case for cats with FIV.
dvorak continued on B6
he case of Morty Schwartz is a tough one to hear. He was a handsome,
Fairfax missing out on speeding ticket funds
Legal error has allowed money to go to Virginia coffers for years
by Derek Kravitz
Fairfax County has missed out on potentially tens of thousands of dollars in speeding ticket rev- enue because of a noticeable but little-understood legal error in the county code that has allowed the money to go to state coffers for years, according to county and police officials. The inconsistency between the
JACQUELYN MARTIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS Security checkpoint lines surge with travelers after power is restored at Reagan National Airport. Power outage slows fliers at Reagan A
problem in an electrical substation at Reagan National Airport knocked out power to terminals B and C for more than two hours Thursday. The outage began about 11:45 a.m. and power was restored to the terminals about 2 p.m., said Courtney
Mickalonis, a spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. The agency’s headquarters building, which is separate from the terminals, was without power for more than five hours. Arlene Salac, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said the outage did not affect air traffic operations. — Associated Press and staff reports
county code and state law, uncov- ered by the auditor to the Board of Supervisors nearly three years ago and created when Fairfax of- ficials failed to update the local statute, has led police to write tickets that are against state, but not county, regulations because Fairfax officials have not updated local statutes. The discrepancy, which county
officials began addressing this week, can be found in the speed- limit laws of the state and Fairfax, the commonwealth’s most pop- ulous locality at nearly 1.1million residents. The most cited exam- ple is the 50 mph limit on the Fairfax County Parkway, which stretches 35 miles from north to south through the county. The county’s speeding statutes fail to include the 50 mph limit; the Fairfax code lists only the old 55 mph limit on such roads.
County police officers have been writing tickets under both laws. This means that if a driver is caught speeding on the parkway, the money from the ticket could be sent to either the county or the state, depending on which law the officer cited. “Over the years, we’ve incorpo-
rated a lot of the language from the state, and the county code is somewhat antiquated,” said Capt. Mike Dittmer, commander of the Fairfax police chief ’s Office of Re- search and Support. “This will al- low officers to write the ticket to the county. So you won’t see more tickets, but you might see more money coming our way.” The Fairfax County Parkway, which was built in the late 1980s, is one of the most heavily used roads in Northern Virginia, and police have launched several campaigns to curb speeding on the road, said Officer Joe Moore of the motorcycle unit. He said that officers had been using the state and county codes for traffic tickets on the parkway and that the county’s effort to clarify its law is “a long time coming.” Fairfax police said they don’t know specifically how many tick- ets or how much revenue from the speeding offenses has gone to the state instead of the county be- cause of the discrepancy between county and state codes. Fairfax’s special auditor to the supervisors launched a review of the state-
fairfax continued on B5
head,” Posey recalled him saying. Curious, she knelt, pulled back the sheet and found herself star- ing at the familiar face of her brother-in-law. The two had been together for hours on the previ-
ous day. This coincidental encounter
changed the arc of Posey’s career. Her personal and professional lives had intersected and, more than seven years later, remain in- tertwined. In her estimation, the
“That’s somebody’s family member
there, and no one seems to care.” — Lt. Ozetta Posey, at the scene of a homicide
investigation was botched, her family mistreated. “It’s still open because they
never did a proper investigation from the beginning,” said Posey, who decided to do something about it. Now she is a homicide lieuten- ant, and for the past three years one of her two squads has had the highest closure rate in the city. She helped establish new rules for investigators, often rankling
posey continued on B5
At 3 in the morning, Najib Ger- dak tried not once but twice to get help for people he didn’t know. He was rewarded by being shot five times in front of a Fair- fax County police station and then waiting more than half an hour for an ambulance. Gerdak, now 28, survived. The man who shot him, Jeffrey S. Koger, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 71 years behind bars. But Gerdak’s attempt to re- cover any money for his pain and injuries, either from Koger or Fairfax County authorities, may come up empty unless his attor- ney can convince a Fairfax judge Friday that the police and fire de- partments should be held partly responsible for what happened that night in 2008. Gerdak alleges that the police failed to help him and that para- medics took much too long to ar- rive. The county contends that government employees have im- munity from most legal actions and that Gerdak waited beyond the two-year statute of limita- tions to sue the county. Koger, 41, a convicted embez-
zler, is imprisoned and under fed- eral court order to pay $2 million in restitution and back taxes. He has few assets. Gerdak was one of several vic- tims of Koger’s bizarre shooting rampage Feb. 2, 2008, which be- gan when Koger shot a cabdriver in Alexandria, continued with the shooting of Gerdak and another man in front of the Franconia dis- trict police station, and ended when Koger was wounded in the stomach during a shootout with police.
shooting continued on B6
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