District of Columbia
17th Street bars hit with D.C. liquor agency crackdown during High Heel Race
Official says no citations issued for patrons illegally carrying drinks on sidewalk
Investigators with the D.C. Alcoholic Beverage and Cannabis Administration (ABCA) created a stir during the annual LGBTQ Halloween High Heel Race on Tuesday night, Oct. 24, when they showed up at several bars and restaurants located along the two-block stretch of 17th Street, N.W. near Dupont Circle where the race and costume celebration took place.
According to observers attending the event, as thousands of spectators lined the street and sidewalks and capacity crowds filled the restaurants and bars, the ABCA investigators reportedly ordered some of the businesses to stop selling alcoholic beverages in their outdoor areas because they failed to prevent customers from carrying their drinks outside the establishments and onto the street and sidewalks.
An ABCA official told the Washington Blade that under D.C. law, bars, restaurants, and other businesses that sell and serve alcoholic beverages are required to prevent patrons from taking their drinks with alcohol off the premises of those businesses.
The official, ABCA Chief of Staff Jared J. Powell, said the ABCA investigators directed the bars and restaurants not to allow patrons to take drinks with alcohol off their premises, but he said the businesses were not told to stop serving alcohol in outdoor spaces for which they were licensed to sell and serve alcohol.
“ABCA responded to the scene in response to requests for assistance from two District government agencies, including MPD [D.C. Metropolitan Police Department], due to patrons leaving licensed establishments with open containers of alcohol and patrons drinking in the street,” Powell told the Blade in a statement.
“ABCA responded to the scene and observed more than 50 patrons leaving licensed establishments with open containers and drinking alcoholic beverages on the public street,” he said in his statement, adding that the ABCA agents advised the business to stop allowing this to happen.
“D.C. Code 25-113(a)(2)(A)(ii) makes it a violation for a restaurant or tavern to knowingly allow a patron to exit the licensed establishment with an alcoholic beverage in an open container,” Powell said in the statement.
But he said despite what ABCA agents believed were multiple violations no citations or official warnings were issued to any business visited by the ABCA investigators.
Ann Blackwell, executive director of Historic Dupont Circle Main Streets, a business advocacy organization that promotes historic preservation, said the illegal action by some businesses may have been prompted by confusion over whether the law Powell cited applied to a large outdoor event in which the streets were closed to vehicle traffic.
“I’m not quite sure which hand was not talking to the other because the event was set up just like it was in past years,” Blackwell told the Blade. She said she was informed that in past years the city did not enforce restrictions against taking drinks out of bars and restaurants and onto the street or sidewalk because people thought the race was an enclosed event.
“So, all those same rules applied,” she said. “It’s just that in years past there’s never been a crackdown. So, I’m not quite sure how it happened.”
People attending the event said the businesses visited by the ABCA investigators and told to stop allowing customers to take drinks off their licensed premises included Dupont Italian Kitchen, which has a gay bar on its upper floor; Annie’s Paramount Steakhouse, which has a large LGBTQ clientele; and JR.’s.
Powell said bars and restaurants under current D.C. law can apply for a one-day “substantial change” to temporarily extend their outdoor drinking areas to public or private spaces. He said none of the 17th Street businesses applied for that extension for the Oct. 24 event.
Blackwell said one reason the businesses may not have applied for the extension is because under city rules the expanded area must be enclosed in a fence, which she said would likely be very expensive to install in the two-block area where the High Heel Race took place.
“ABCA did not advise licensed establishments to stop selling, serving or allowing the consumption of alcoholic beverages on licensed outdoor spaces, including Streeteries,” Powell said in his statement. “Rather, ABCA advised MPD that establishments were legally allowed to operate, sell, serve and consume alcoholic beverages outdoors, including on licensed Streeteries.”
Powell was referring to the extended outdoor spaces, including spaces in city streets, known as Streeteries, that came into use during the COVID pandemic when indoors spaces were closed.
District of Columbia
U.S. Attorney’s Office drops hate crime charge in anti-gay assault
Case remains under investigation and ‘further charges’ could come
D.C. police announced on Feb. 9 that they had arrested two days earlier on Feb. 7 a Germantown, Md., man on a charge of simple assault with a hate crime designation after the man allegedly assaulted a gay man at 14th and Q Streets, N.W., while using “homophobic slurs.”
But D.C. Superior Court records show that prosecutors with the Office of the U.S. Attorney for D.C., which prosecutes D.C. violent crime cases, charged the arrested man only with simple assault without a hate crime designation.
In response to a request by the Washington Blade for the reason why the hate crime designation was dropped, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office provided this response: “We continue to investigate this matter and make no mistake: should the evidence call for further charges, we will not hesitate to charge them.”
In a statement announcing the arrest in this case, D.C. police stated, “On Saturday, February 7, 2026, at approximately 7:45 p.m. the victim and suspect were in the 1500 block of 14th Street, Northwest. The suspect requested a ‘high five’ from the victim. The victim declined and continued walking,” the statement says.
“The suspect assaulted the victim and used homophobic slurs,” the police statement continues. “The suspect was apprehended by responding officers.”
It adds that 26-year-old Dean Edmundson of Germantown, Md. “was arrested and charged with Simple Assault (Hate/Bias).” The statement also adds, “A designation as a hate crime by MPD does not mean that prosecutors will prosecute it as a hate crime.”
Under D.C.’s Bias Related Crime Act of 1989, penalties for crimes motivated by prejudice against individuals based on race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, and homelessness can be enhanced by a court upon conviction by one and a half times greater than the penalty of the underlying crime.
Prosecutors in the past both in D.C. and other states have said they sometimes decide not to include a hate crime designation in assault cases if they don’t think the evidence is sufficient to obtain a conviction by a jury. In some instances, prosecutors have said they were concerned that a skeptical jury might decide to find a defendant not guilty of the underlying assault charge if they did not believe a motive of hate was involved.
A more detailed arrest affidavit filed by D.C. police in Superior Court appears to support the charge of a hate crime designation.
“The victim stated that they refused to High-Five Defendant Edmondson, which, upon that happening, Defendant Edmondson started walking behind both the victim and witness, calling the victim, “bald, ugly, and gay,” the arrest affidavit states.
“The victim stated that upon being called that, Defendant Edmundson pushed the victim with both hands, shoving them, causing the victim to feel the force of the push,” the affidavit continues. “The victim stated that they felt offended and that they were also gay,” it says.
District of Columbia
Capital Pride wins anti-stalking order against local activist
Darren Pasha claims action is linked to his criticism of Pride organizers
A D.C. Superior Court judge on Feb. 6 partially approved an anti-stalking order against a local LGBTQ activist requested last October by the Capital Pride Alliance, the D.C.-based LGBTQ group that organizes the city’s annual Pride events.
The ruling by Judge Robert D. Okun requires Darren Pasha to stay at least 100 feet away from Capital Pride’s staff, board members, and volunteers until the time of a follow up court hearing he scheduled for April 17.
In his ruling at the Feb. 6 hearing, which was virtual rather than held in-person at the courthouse, Okun said he had changed the distance that Capital Pride had requested for the stay-away, anti-stalking order from 200 yards to 100 feet. The court records show that the judge also denied a motion filed earlier by Pasha, who did not attend the hearing, to “quash” the Capital Pride civil case against him.
Pasha told the Washington Blade he suffered an injury and damaged his mobile phone by falling off his scooter on the city’s snow-covered streets that prevented him from calling in to join the Feb. 6 court hearing.
In his own court filings without retaining an attorney, Pasha has strongly denied the stalking related allegations against him by Capital Pride, saying “no credible or admissible evidence has been provided” to show he engaged in any wrongdoing.
The Capital Pride complaint initially filed in court on Oct. 27, 2025, includes an 18-page legal brief outlining its allegations against Pasha and an additional 167-page addendum of “supporting exhibits” that includes multiple statements by witnesses whose names are blacked out.
“Over the past year, Defendant Darren Pasha (“DSP”) has engaged in a sustained, and escalating course of conduct directed at CPA, including repeated and unwanted contact, harassment, intimidation, threats, manipulation, and coercive behavior targeting CPA staff, board members, volunteers, and affiliates,” the Capital Pride complaint states.
In his initial 16-page response to the complaint, Pasha says the Capital Pride complaint appears to be a form of retaliation against him for a dispute he has had with the organization and its then president, Ashley Smith, last year.
“It is evident that the document is replete with false, misleading, and unsubstantiated assertions,” he said of the complaint.
Smith, who has since resigned from his role as board president, did not respond to a request by the Blade for comment at the time the Capital Pride court complaint was filed against Pasha.
Capital Pride Executive Director Ryan Bos and the attorney representing the group in its legal action against Pasha, Nick Harrison, did not immediately respond to a Blade request for comment on the judge’s Feb. 6 ruling.
District of Columbia
D.C. pays $500,000 to settle lawsuit brought by gay Corrections Dept. employee
Alleged years of verbal harassment, slurs, intimidation
The D.C. government on Feb. 5 agreed to pay $500,000 to a gay D.C. Department of Corrections officer as a settlement to a lawsuit the officer filed in 2021 alleging he was subjected to years of discrimination at his job because of his sexual orientation, according to a statement released by the American Civil Liberties Union of D.C.
The statement says the lawsuit, filed on behalf of Sgt. Deon Jones by the ACLU of D.C. and the law firm WilmerHale, alleged that the Department of Corrections, including supervisors and co-workers, “subjected Sgt. Jones to discrimination, retaliation, and a hostile work environment because of his identity as a gay man, in violation of the D.C. Human Rights Act.”
Daniel Gleick, a spokesperson for D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, said the mayor’s office would have no comment on the lawsuit settlement. A spokesperson for the Office of the D.C. Attorney General, which represents the city against lawsuits, said the office has a longstanding policy of not commenting on litigation like the Deon Jones lawsuit.
Bowser and her high-level D.C. government appointees, including Japer Bowles, director of the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs, have spoken out against LGBTQ-related discrimination.
“Jones, now a 28-year veteran of the Department and nearing retirement, faced years of verbal abuse and harassment from coworkers and incarcerated people alike, including anti-gay slurs, threats, and degrading treatment,” the ACLU’s statement says.
“The prolonged mistreatment took a severe toll on Jones’s mental health, and he experienced depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and 15 anxiety attacks in 2021 alone,” it says.
“For years, I showed up to do my job with professionalism and pride, only to be targeted because of who I am,” Jones says in the ACLU statement. “This settlement affirms that my pain mattered – and that creating hostile workplaces has real consequences,” he said.
He added, “For anyone who is LGBTQ or living with a disability and facing workplace discrimination or retaliation, know this: you are not powerless. You have rights. And when you stand up, you can achieve justice.”
The settlement agreement, a link to which the ACLU provided in its statement announcing the settlement, states that plaintiff Jones agrees, among other things, that “neither the Parties’ agreement, nor the District’s offer to settle the case, shall in any way be construed as an admission by the District that it or any of its current or former employees, acted wrongfully with respect to Plaintiff or any other person, or that Plaintiff has any rights.”
Scott Michelman, the D.C. ACLU’s legal director said that type of disclaimer is typical for parties that agree to settle a lawsuit like this.
“But actions speak louder than words,” he told the Blade. “The fact that they are paying our client a half million dollars for the pervasive and really brutal harassment that he suffered on the basis of his identity for years is much more telling than their disclaimer itself,” he said.
The settlement agreement also says Jones would be required, as a condition for accepting the agreement, to resign permanently from his job at the Department of Corrections. ACLU spokesperson Andy Hoover said Jones has been on administrative leave since March 2022. Jones couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
“This is really something that makes sense on both sides,” Michelman said of the resignation requirements. “The environment had become so toxic the way he had been treated on multiple levels made it difficult to see how he could return to work there.”
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