Word: grader
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...ELEMENTARY School is in the heart of Washington's seventh police district. It is known to some officers as "the jungle," because, as one black patrolman observes, "it's all about survival here." Across the street from the school is a graveyard, its iron fence mangled where a sixth-grader crashed a car he had hot-wired. Near an outside corner of the school is "the penthouse," where at night, under a mural of the U.S. flag and the words WE WANT A DRUG-FREE AMERICA, the crackhead prostitutes of Alabama Avenue sell themselves for $2 or $3. Every morning...
...They're not kids, they're really not," says Chester Earl Jordan, father of a five-year-old Malcolm X student. Jordan, along with others, patrols the neighborhood at night, a flashlight in one hand, and -- until recently -- a gun in the other. "If you sat down a third-grader and asked him how to weigh crack, how to bag it, how to load a 9-mm, how a beeper works, you're going to get first-rate answers right...
Edge's role goes well beyond providing security. "He's explained to my son how to be himself, how not to be a follower, to use his own judgment," says a grateful Sylvia Chavis, a single parent and mother of sixth-grader Terrence Cooper. Each of Edge's warnings is tinged with the memory of an empty locker or graveside service. His job too is not without risks. Last year three men opened the door of the school and leveled automatic weapons at him. "Hey, you," they hollered, paused for a moment, then left. Says Edge: "I never know...
Moments later, two girls appear at his door, agitated and hoping he can help them avert a fight. One is a stocky third-grader, the other a fourth-grader with limpid brown eyes and cream-colored skin. "She called me a whore," said the older girl. With agonizing patience, Pannell unravels the dispute. The girls are friends. The day before, the older girl invited her friend home for the first time. There the younger child saw her friend's house was in disrepair, that the outside door was battered and punctured by what she thought were bullet holes. At school...
...beef up security at Cabrini-Green, including the use of metal detectors, IDs for residents and secured entrances. Meanwhile, suspect Anthony Garrett, 33, told police that he shot Dantrell by mistake. Garrett said he was simply trying to take out a few rival gang members when the first-grader...