Scott McCabe, The Examiner
2008-04-29 07:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

WASHINGTON -

Two security guards hired to protect a North Capitol Hill Head Start center near where a 7-year-old girl was shot recently were arrested and thrown in jail earlier this month because they lacked proper gun permits.

More than a dozen uniformed police officers, some with their weapons drawn, forced themselves into the Azeeze Bates Day Care Center, 444 16th St. NE, and held the security guards in a classroom for questioning, said Yasmine Daniel, program director for CDI Head Start.

The police raid infuriated pre-school officials, who had been refused full-time city police protection. They characterized the arrests as an overzealous response by the department’s anti-gun squad. 

The day care’s 39 3- and 4-year-olds, who were already jumpy because of ongoing gunplay near the facility, were traumatized by the raid, Daniel said.

The police should be “going after the bad guys, not the people who are protecting us from the bad guys,” Daniel said.

D.C. police spokesman Traci Hughes said the security officers were arrested because they were suspected of unlawfully carrying weapons.

“We treat everybody the same,” she said. “No one is being targeted.”

The guards were hired by CDI Head Start following a March 28 gunbattle outside the day care, in which four masked gunmen fired on another man who returned gunshots. More than 50 rounds were exchanged, one of them catching a former day care student in the shoulder.

Police informed the school that the department didn’t have the manpower to constantly provide protection for the day care, Metropolitan Police Department and day care officials said.

That led day care staff to hire private protection in the form of Falken Industries, of Manassas.

The security officers made the children, parents and staff feel safe, Daniel said. One of them, Gavin Wageman, was a U.S. Marine who had just returned from a second tour in Iraq.

The security firm notified D.C. police about the security detail and faxed over a letter requesting a waiver for the gun permits, according to a police report. Matthew LeFande, an attorney for the security firm owner, said a police officer dictated the terms of the letter before it was faxed. The included a list of 19 guns owned by the company.

The next day, more than a dozen officers showed up to arrest the guards.

The children have since been moved to an undisclosed location, Daniel said.

While declining to provide security for the school, police kept a watch on one of the security guard’s cars before towing it away, Daniel said. “They wouldn’t guard the children, but they guarded the car day and night,” she said.

smccabe@dcexaminer.com