Local
Probable cause found that off-duty cop fired gun at trans women
Judge orders D.C. officer held without bond
A D.C. Superior Court judge on Sept. 2 ruled that prosecutors established probable cause that an off-duty D.C. police officer committed an assault with a dangerous weapon for allegedly firing a pistol at three transgender women and two male friends during an Aug. 26 incident in Northwest Washington.
Judge Ann O’Regan Keary ordered Officer Kenneth Furr, a 21-year veteran on the force, held without bond pending his trial. Keary said evidence presented by police and prosecutors showed that releasing the officer would pose a danger to the community.
The judge’s ruling came during a preliminary hearing in which First District police Det. James Freeman provided detailed testimony about his investigation of the incident.
Freeman testified that the victims and at least two D.C. police officers who were in the vicinity of the shooting reported that Furr stood on the hood of a car in which the victims were sitting and fired at them through the windshield.
He said witnesses and the victims reported that the incident began about 4:40 a.m. at a CVS drug store at 400 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., when Furr and one of the shooting victims reportedly got into a “verbal altercation.”
Transgender activist Jeri Hughes said one of the transgender women involved in the incident told her the verbal altercation inside the CVS store started when Furr approached one of the transgender women and invited her to engage in sex. Furr reportedly became angry when she turned him down, Hughes said, prompting the woman’s male friend to exchange words with Furr in an effort to get him to leave the woman alone.
Freeman testified that Furr and the same person who argued with Furr inside the CVS store exchanged words outside the store a short time later while Furr was sitting in his car parked nearby.
According to Freeman, Furr reportedly retrieved a handgun from the glove compartment of his car, pointed it at the person and threatened to shoot the person, who is believed to be one of the male friends of the trans women.
The same person returned to the CVS store and told a security guard that Furr had threatened him with a gun, a police affidavit says. The victim then met up with the other four people, including the three transgender women, and all five got into one of their cars and followed Furr, who drove away in his car, Freeman testified.
When both cars reached the intersection of First and Pierce streets, N.W., Furr jumped out of his car and began to shoot at the car where the five others were riding, Freeman told the court hearing. The shooting prompted the driver to crouch down to avoid being hit, causing the car he was driving to collide with Furr’s car, Freeman said.
That’s when Furr apparently climbed on the hood of the other car and fired his gun through the windshield, the victims and police witnesses reported.
Police and transgender activists who spoke with at least two of the victims said two of three transgender women in the car suffered non-life threatening gunshot wounds during the incident. Transgender activists said one of two male friends who were in the car was also was struck and suffered serious but non-life threatening wounds. All three were treated in area hospitals, the activists said.
In his testimony at the Sept. 2 hearing Freeman recounted details from a police affidavit he prepared that lists each of the five people in the car as unidentified witnesses. Neither the affidavit nor Freeman during his court testimony mentioned that three of the five people in the car at which Furr allegedly fired his gun were members of the transgender community.
News that some of the victims were members of the transgender community emerged from a police news release on the day of the incident. Deputy D.C. Police Chief Diane Groomes made personal calls to LGBT activists shortly after 5 a.m. on Aug. 26, just minutes after the incident occurred, to inform them of what happened and to note that police and the department’s Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit were investigating the incident.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Worm argued at the court hearing that police provided sufficient evidence that probable cause exists that Furr committed an assault with a dangerous weapon two times – once when he pointed the gun at one or two of the victims outside the CVS store and another time when he fired his gun at the victims while they were in their car.
Furr’s defense attorney, Harold Martin, told Keary accounts of the incident by various witnesses appeared to differ, making it difficult to determine the events that led to the shooting. He noted that the car in which the five people were riding followed Furr in the “wee hours of the morning” and Furr had a legal right to defend himself if he believed he was in danger.
He also pointed to the police affidavit’s assertion that one of the victims admitted to being drunk at the time of the incident and another victim admitted to having smoked marijuana the night prior to the incident.
“There are a lot of unanswered questions about what happened that night,” he said.
“The defendant exhibited extremely reckless behavior,” Worm told the judge. “He shot at least five times and certainly all five could have been killed.”
She pointed to a statement by at least one of the victims that Furr shouted “Ima kill all of you” before he started shooting into the vehicle.
Worm noted a police breadth test also found that Furr “had been drinking a substantial amount of alcohol” and that he had a prior arrest in D.C. for driving while intoxicated. Police initially charged Furr with driving while intoxicated in the latest incident but the U.S. Attorney’s office did not file that charge in court.
Nearly a dozen family members and friends of Furr’s sat in the courtroom during the hearing, a fact that defense attorney Martin mentioned while arguing that Furr’s strong community ties were among the grounds for allowing him to be released while awaiting trial.
But Keary, in issuing her ruling on the matter, said the government met the legal criteria needed to have Furr held in jail, saying no combination of circumstances or mitigating factors could override her belief that Furr would pose a danger to the public if released.
She scheduled a status hearing for Oct. 7. The case was expected to go before a grand jury in the next few weeks.
District of Columbia
Capital Stonewall Democrats set to celebrate 50th anniversary
Mayor Bowser expected to attend March 20 event
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, members of the D.C. Council, and local and national Democratic Party officials are expected to join more than 150 LGBTQ advocates and supporters on March 20 for the 50th anniversary celebration of the city’s Capital Stonewall Democrats.
A statement released by the organization says the event is scheduled to be held at the Pepco Edison Place Gallery building at 702 8th St., N.W. in D.C.
“The evening will honor the people who built Capital Stonewall Democrats across five decades – activists who fought for rights when the odds were against them, public servants who opened doors and refused to let them close, and a new generation of leaders ready to carry the work forward,” the statement says.
Founded in 1976 as the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the organization’s members voted in 2021 to change its name to the Capital Stonewall Democrats.
Among those planning to attend the anniversary event is longtime D.C. gay Democratic activist Paul Kuntzler, 84, who is one of the two co-founders of the then-Gertrude Stein Democratic Club. Kuntzler told the Washington Blade that he and co-founder Richard Maulsby were joined by about a dozen others in the living room of his Southwest D.C. home at the group’s founding meeting in January 1976.
He said that among the reasons for forming a local LGBTQ Democratic group at the time was to arrange for a then “gay” presence at the 1976 Democratic National Convention, at which Jimmy Carter won the Democratic nomination for U.S. president and later won election as president.
Maulsby, who served as the Stein Club president for its first three years and who now lives in Sarasota, Fla., said he would not be attending the March 20 anniversary event, but he fully supports the organization’s continuing work as an LGBTQ organization associated with the Democratic Party.
Steven McCarty, Capital Stonewall Democrats’ current president, said in the statement that the anniversary celebration will highlight the organization’s work since the time of its founding.
“Capital Stonewall Democrats has been fighting for LGBTQ+ political power in this city for 50 years, electing people, training organizers, holding this community together through some really hard moments,” he said. “And right now, with everything going on, that work has never mattered more. This gala is the first moment of our next chapter, and I want the community to be a part of it.”
The statement says among the special guests attending the event will be Democratic National Committee Vice Chair Malcolm Kenyatta, who became the first openly gay LGBTQ person of color to win election to the Pennsylvania General Assembly in 2018.
Other guests of honor, according to the statement, include Mayor Bowser; D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5, the Council’s only gay member; D.C. Council member Anita Bonds (D-At-Large); Earl Fowlkes, founder of the International Federation of Black Prides; Vita Rangel, a transgender woman who serves as Deputy Director of the D.C. Mayor’s Office of Talent and Appointments; Heidi Ellis, director of the D.C. LGBTQ Budget Coalition; Rayceen Pendarvis, longtime D.C. LGBTQ civic activist; and Phillip Pannell, longtime D.C. LGBTQ Democratic activist and Ward 8 civic activist.
Information about ticket availability for the Capital Stonewall Democrats anniversary gala can be accessed here: capitalstonewalldemocrats.com/50th
Maryland
Md. Legislative LGBTQ+ Caucus outlines 2026 priorities
Expanded PrEP access among objectives
Maryland’s Legislative LGBTQ+ Caucus outlined legislative priorities for the remainder of the General Assembly’s 2026 term during a press conference on March 5.
State Del. Kris Fair (D-Fredrick County) led the press conference. State Del. Ashanti Martinez (D-Prince George’s County) and other caucus members also spoke.
Caucus members are sponsoring 12 bills and supporting four others.
Martinez is sponsoring House Bill 1114, which would expand PrEP access in Maryland.
“PrEP is 99 percent effective in preventing HIV transmission,” he explained, noting PrEP’s cost often turns away potential users.
The bill aims to extend insurance coverage and expand pharmacists’ ability to prescribe PrEP along with other HIV treatments and testing. Martinez is working with state Sen. Clarence Lam (D-Anne Arundel and Howard Counties) and FreeState Justice on the bill.
The House Health Committee had a hearing last week that included HB1114.
“Ending the HIV epidemic is about expanding access and providing these life-saving tools to all persons in Maryland,” Martinez said.
Several other pieces of legislation were highlighted during the press conferences. They included measures focused on youth and education, birth certificate markers, so-called conversion therapy, and hormone medications.
State Sen. Cheryl Kagan (D-Montgomery County) is cosponsoring Senate Bill 950, which would update and strengthen conversion therapy laws. State Del. Bonnie Cullison (D-Montgomery County) has introduced an identical bill that would extend the statute of limitations on individuals who facilitate conversion therapy.
Kagan explained the bill would allow conversion therapy victims to come to terms with their experience undergoing the widely discredited practice that “creates shame and it silences survivors.”
When questioned, Fair explained the press conference happened late into the legislative session because “we [the caucus] are constantly having to respond in real time to what’s happening in Washington” while drafting and considering pieces of legislation.
The Frederick County Democrat described this session’s bills as the “most ambitious list of priorities to date.” Fair also described the caucus’s goals.
“It’s decency, it’s dignity, and its humanity,” he said.
District of Columbia
Owner of D.C. gay bar Green Lantern John Colameco dies at 79
Beloved businessman preferred to stay ‘behind the scenes’
John Colameco, owner of the popular D.C. gay bar Green Lantern, has died, according to a March 7 announcement posted on the bar’s website and Instagram account. The announcement didn’t provide a date of his passing or a cause of death.
Green Lantern manager Howard Hicks said Colameco was 79 at the time of his passing.
“It is with great sadness that Green Lantern announces the death of our beloved owner, John Colameco,” the announcement says. “Most of our patrons might have heard John’s name, but might not have known his face,” it says.
“He was a ‘behind-the-scenes’ kind of guy who avoided the limelight,” the announcement continues. “He preferred to stay in the back of the house with staff and team ensuring everything was running smoothly so that everyone out front was having a good time.”
The announcement adds, “As a veteran and businessman, John wasn’t a member of the LGBTQ + community, but he was one of the best damn allies our community has ever had.”
It says he “long provided spaces for the queer community to come together” since the 1990s when he owned and operated a popular restaurant on 17th Street, N.W. called Peppers.
According to the announcement, Colameco and his then business partner Greg Zehnacker opened the Green Lantern in 2001 in an alley off of 14th Street, N.W., between Thomas Circle and L Street, N.W.
The announcement points out that the Green Lantern first opened in the same location in the early 1990s before it later closed when the original owners decided to purchase and open other bars, one of which was the gay bar Fireplace near Dupont Circle. Colameco and Zehnacker were able to reopen the bar with the Green Lantern name.
“When Greg died unexpectedly in February 2014, John remained steadfastly committed to carrying on their vision and ensuring that Green Lantern remained part of the fabric of D.C.’s queer community,” the announcement says.
“Over the years, through Green Lantern, John has provided support to many community organizations, most notably Stonewall Sports, the Gay Men’s chorus of Washington, and ONYX Mid-Atlantic with Green Lantern serving as a gathering hub for their activities,” it states.
The announcement adds that Colameco’s family was planning a memorial for him in his hometown of Philadelphia.
“His Green Lantern family will celebrate his life by operating the bar as usual and we encourage you to stop by and join us,” it says. “Community coming together and having a good time – it’s exactly what John would want.”
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