ABCDE METRO friday, october 8, 2010 55, 9 a.m. 69, noon 76, 5 p.m. 64, 9 p.m.
Obituaries: British filmmaker Roy Ward Baker, 93, directed the celebrated Titanic melodrama “A Night to Remember.” B6
Check out Post Now, the breaking-news blog, for the latest happenings as well as updates from around the Washington blogosphere.
MARYLAND Purple Line’s future
Who wins the governor’s race could decide the format of the transit project. Martin O’Malley favors light rail; Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. supports buses. B4
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PRESIDENT AT O’MALLEY RALLY
For some, governor isn’t main attraction BY AARON C. DAVIS
President Obama on Thursday
exhorted a sea of mostly black, young supporters in Prince George’s County — who broke into chants of “Obama!” and “We’ve got your back!” — not to make him“look bad” by failing to
Tea party summit in Va. likely to draw2,000
Convention may be largest on a state level held by the movement
BY ROSALIND S.HELDERMAN
richmond—Morethan2,000tea party activists are expected to de- scendonVirginia’s capital cityFri- day for a two-day summit thought tobe the largest state gatheringby the loosely affiliated conservative movement. The Virginia Tea Party Patriot
Convention will eclipse a similar event held in Tennessee in Febru- ary andwill feature a presidential straw poll that convention orga- nizers are billing as the first of its kind tomeasure support for 2012 candidates. The convention will feature
dozens of breakout seminars on topics including Social Security reform and illegal immigration, speeches by former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), and panel discussions that includeVirginia’s three state- wide-electedRepublicans. It is a sign of the movement’s
organizational vibrancy inVirgin- ia, where a Richmond-based fed- erationhasuniteddozens of small tea party groups that have sprung up across the state over the past two years. What is less clear iswhether the
tea party will be able to translate its seminars and speeches into electoral success in Virginia, where independent suburbanvot- ers have gone back and forth be- tween political parties in recent electioncycles. “Theuniquegeographical char-
acter of the state, being so close to the nation’s capital, and the vari- ous demographic trends of the state all add up to a very compli- cated political picture,” saidMark Rozell, apublicpolicyprofessor at George Mason University. “No- body can say definitively that this is a solid red or blue state or how the suburbswill swing orhowthis allplays outhere.” More than 1,000 people who
identified themselves as tea party activists held a spirited rally at a
tea party continued on B8
turn out next month to reelect Gov. Martin O’Malley and a slate of Maryland Democrats to Con- gress. “What the other side is count-
ing on is that this time around, you are going to stay home. They are counting onyour silence, they are counting on amnesia, they are counting on your apathy, especially the youngpeoplehere,” Obama said. “They figure Obama’s not on the ballot — you’re not going to come out and vote. Well, Maryland, you have got to prove themwrong.” Obama lavished praise on
“Martin,” calling O’Malley one of the best governors in the nation and saying Marylanders should
be excited to go to the polls for a governor he said is—like himself —“rock solid” inhis commitment to education and tirelessly fight- ing for working-class families. “Martin’s been a great gover-
nor for a great state,which iswhy I hope you’re fired up in these last few weeks,” Obama said. But in Prince George’s, where
Obama’s approval rating is 85 percent, it was clearly far more Obama’s star power than excite- ment about the midterms that drew people to the rally. And for Obama, the return to Bowie State University — where four years ago he signed autographs and captivated a crowd of hundreds —seemedmore like an hour-long
for Obama overshadowed his ad- vocacy for O’Malley. Screams of “We love you,
SOURCE: WMATA
Obama!” interrupted the presi- dent twice. “I love you, back,” he said at
one point, “but I want to talk about this election now.” He paused to point out to paramed- ics two of the dozen or so audi- ence members who fainted.
obama continued on B5
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political oasis. An estimated 7,000 people, mostly college stu- dents and supporters who said they counted themselves true be- lievers, packed in around a stage built in the center of campus. At times, the crowd’s adulation
Shuttle Buses Closed station
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A portion of the Blue/Orange line will be closed for repairs from 10 p.m. Friday till 5 a.m Tuesday. Tis shutdown will include the Farragut West, McPherson Square and Metro Center stations.
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THE WASHINGTON POST
MARVIN JOSEPH/THE WASHINGTON POST
President Obama campaigns forMarylandGov.Martin O’Malley at Bowie StateUniversity. Lt.Gov. Anthony G. Brown at is left.
Police won’t
suspend officers
Pr. George’s review blames perfect test scores on lazy teacher
BY MATT ZAPOTOSKY Prince George’s County Police
Chief RobertoHylton said Thurs- day that he will not suspend 32 county officers accusedina cheat- ing scandal during their time in the police academy because an audit has shown that an instruc- tor — not the officers themselves — is to blame for the apparent impropriety. Records showthat onat least 11
PHOTOS BY BILL O’LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POST Dorothy Richter heads a team of geophysicists who have been looking for hairline cracks at the VietnamVeteransMemorial. New dimension to Wall’s little flaws
Years after first horizontal cracks, vertical fissures appear in VietnamVeteransMemorial’s polished granite BY MICHAEL E. RUANE
year. “But we’ve been monitoring it.”
TheWall, on the Mall near the Ateamof geophysicistshas dis-
covered a new series of cracks in the black granite Vietnam Veter- ansMemorial,officialssaidThurs- day. The experts from Hager-Rich-
ter Geoscience were called in this weekbytheVietnamVeteransMe- morial Fund,which built thewall, afteranunusualverticalcrackwas discoveredlate last year. The consultants began inspect-
ing the Wall on Monday and dis- coveredmore vertical cracks, said the fund’s president and founder, JanC. Scruggs. Most of the cracks are small—a
fewinches long—andare scarcely visible to the casual viewer. But the Wall has a history of cracks goingbackto 1984, two years after itsdedication. In 1986, two of the 144 slabs, or
panels, that make up the Wall were removed for study. Scruggs said the cause of the cracking has never beenclear. One theory is that the polished
Lincoln Memorial, bears the names of 58,267 people who per- ished or aremissing in action as a result of theVietnamWar. It was designed by architect
Horizontal cracks like the one above were spotted in the 1980s.
stone might bend outward when heatedbythesun.Scruggssaidthe surface of the stone can be 20 degrees warmer than the air tem- perature. “These panels get hot, and they bow out like a bow and arrow,”he said. Asked about the cause of the
cracks,DorothyRichter,president of New Hampshire-based Hager- Richter, said: “There have been a lot of theories offered over the many years. . . . We’re constantly thinking about what might have caused the fractures. . . .We donot
knowwithcertainty.” Gene Simmons, Richter’s hus-
bandandthe company’s vicepres- ident, said the stone is no more prone to cracking than any other type of granite. Scruggs said Thursday that a
volunteer at the Wall found the first vertical crack about a year ago. “We looked at it as sort of an odd thing, because there have been a number of [earlier] cracks . . .but they’rehorizontal,”he said. “It actually looks worse than it did,”hesaidof thecrackfoundlast
Maya Lin and dedicated Nov. 13, 1982. TheWall is among themost visited tourist sites in Washing- ton, with about 3 million or 4 million visitors a year, Scruggs said. Its stone was quarried in Ban-
galore, India, Scruggs said, and the fund has several blank panels in storage in case one is severely damaged. He also said the fund wants to buymore spare panels to haveenoughfortheWall’sreplace- ment inthe future. Richter and Simmons said that
their investigation would run through Friday and that they would probably have a report ready ina fewweeks. “Maybe we worry too much
about it,” Scruggs said. “But that’s thewaywedo things.”
ruanem@washpost.com
For one of Sudan’s ‘lost boys’ and teens in D.C. jail, a shared struggle T
he book club was all aflutter. A celebrity author, after
all, can get even themost serious bookworma little exercised. “I really loved your book,
man!” said one of the readers — mouth wide open in a smile as he nearly tackled the slight Emmanuel Jal in a bear hug. The rest of the book clubbers
filed in, one by one, and they each greeted Jal with a high- five, somemore hugs. A few asked for autographs.
PETULA DVORAK Then they settled into their
discussion circle, a ring of bright, orange inmate jumpsuits. Jal’s book, “War Child,” is the story of his brutal, young life in
Sudan. He was one of the “lost boys,” wandering the desert with other forlorn children, and he became one of the famous child soldiers, carrying a Kalashnikov that was taller than his starved, scarred, 9-year-old body. He killed his enemies — Bam! Bam! Bam! — and didn’t feel any better, only sadder. In his book, Jal describes the
merciless boot camp, a hunger so intense that he whispered to his dying friend that he would eat the boy’s flesh in the morning, and themental
anguish of watching his home torched, his village burned and his auntie raped before his eyes. He ate snails and crows, and
he ran fromhippos, snakes and crocodiles. His father lied to him, telling himthat he was sending himto a school, but instead, it was to the barbarous training camp that turned boys into boy soldiers, if it didn’t kill themfirst. The book is riveting, shocking
and horrifying. And for the 40 or so young men surroundingme, oddly
easy to relate to. These are kids locked up in
D.C.’s Correctional Treatment Facility, 16- and 17-year-olds who were charged as adults for serious crimes that probably involved a weapon. There was a guy with the word “Hope” tattooed on his neck who looked dead ahead with flat eyes and refused to participate in the book club’s introductory wordplay. And there was the young inmate who wrote a note
dvorak continued on B8
tests, all of the students in the class who graduated in July 2009 wererecordedas receivingperfect scores.Hylton said Thursday that an audit he ordered last month revealed that the students in Ses- sion 115 did not all earn perfect scores. An instructor, out of lazi- ness, simply recorded 100s for all of them, he said. “I actually think it was due to
laziness that the instructor did not take the time to fill in the appropriate scores for each offi- cer, but that should not be con- strued that this was a class who cheated,whichisabsolutelyfalse,” Hyltonsaid. “Thatwas aninstruc- tor issue.Thatwasnot the class.” Hyltonsaidhedidnot thinkthe
arrestsmade by the students will be affected because theywere not negligent. Still, questions abound about
the legitimacy of the 34 students in Session 115. Thirty-two of them went to work for the Prince George’s Department, and two went to work for the Maryland- National Capital Park Police. The issue already was raised by a de- fense attorney in a high-profile homicide caseThursday. Hylton made available four of
the test forms and the audit re- sults. Not all of those students received a perfect 100 score, but other irregularitieswere evident. For example, on one test—the
finalexamforarrestprocedures— everyone in the class marked the same answer incorrectly for one question, and it was scored as being correct, the audit showed. Maj. Andrew Ellis, a department spokesman, said that was likely because the instructor was teach- ing the students incorrect infor- mation. On another test — which was
technically only two questions, al- though it required students to fill in several blanks—four students actually failed with a 50 percent score, even though they were re- corded as receiving a perfect score, the audit showed. Sgt. Joe Perez, an internal af-
fairs investigator, said that al- though the four students got a score of only 50, on other tests, they had demonstrated mastery
cheating continued on B5
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