News Briefs

PAGE 2 | OCTOBER 6 - 12, 2022

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FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM

Falls Church NEWS BRIEFS

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Coordinated Thefts on the Rise in Falls Church Area

For the past few months, the City of Falls Church has seen an increase in thefts around the area leading to a special announcement from City Hall this week.

According to Falls Church police, the latest spate of thefts have happened at or around the Eden Center, specifically 6751-6799 Wilson Boulevard. Falls Church City police have said plenty about the common features reported by victims of these crimes.

The criminal suspects start by approaching victims in ways like trying to sell fake jewelry, asking for directions, asking to pray with them or asking for a hug. When the suspects are close enough, they place fake jewelry on the victims while taking the real victims’ jewelry.

Falls Church City Chief of Police Mary Gavin told the News-Press that most of these thefts have been committed by people who are surveilling potential victims at shopping centers and local businesses.

Gavin said these people are a “coordinated group” that are watching people and “taking an opportunity” to catch them off-guard while talking to them “very closely and directly and confusing them.”

“The next thing you know [is] that they’re taking [the victim’s] jewelry off their neck,” Gavin said.

The suspects often flee the scene by vehicle, while victims sometimes do not realize their jewelry has been stolen until the suspects leave.

The suspects are described as a “MiddleEastern man with one or two Middle Eastern women driving newer Mercedes SUVs.”

Recent incidents have included a larceny at Roosevelt Boulevard on September 25, where two females distracted a male victim while substituting fake jewelry for real jewelry.

Two incidents at Wilson Boulevard on July 25th and September 30th followed the same pattern with two suspects distracting a victim with conversation while substituting their fake jewelry for real jewelry.

When one is approached by an unfamiliar person, Gavin advised people need to be “leery” of the distance between that person and a possible suspect, as well as being “direct” with someone who gets “too close.”

In terms of valuables, Gavin said people should be “very careful and discreet” about their jewelry and other possessions by hiding them in non-obvious places. Locking doors to both cars and houses is also a way to prevent a potential theft from happening, as well as traveling in pairs to reduce the risk of someone stealing from or harassing a potential victim.

Beyer Committee Finds Link of Anti-Abortion/Poor Economies

The U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee (JEC)—led by Chairman Don Beyer of Falls Church—released a new analysis that finds states with the most restrictive abortion laws have worse economic conditions for families.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn nearly 50-years of precedent that guaranteed the right to safe and legal abortion, states have enacted laws to restrict access to reproductive freedom. In those states that have either completely banned or severely restricted abortion, women will be constrained from making decisions that are right for them, their families and their financial security. The ability to decide if and when to have a child is not only an issue of bodily autonomy and individual agency, it also has far-reaching economic consequences for the people directly impacted, their families and their communities.

Data shows that the states that more severely restrict access to abortion also do not have policies to support economic resilience or positive health and educational outcomes for families.

In states with more restrictive abortion laws: Women have lower median earnings, child poverty rates are higher, health insurance for the neediest families is harder to access, paid family leave does not exist, spending on K-12 education is low.

Transportation Group Gets Report on Reduced Vehicle Use

Members of the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission will hear at their meeting tonight how NVTC’s Commuter Choice program has reduced vehicle miles traveled, shortened travel times and lowered greenhouse gas emissions since its inception five years ago.

NVTC’s Commuter Choice team will report on the results of the first five years of the innovative program to fund traffic congestion relief efforts in Northern Virginia. Commuter Choice uses toll money from the I-66 and I-395/95 corridors to support alternatives to people driving alone. Since the program began in 2017, Commuter Choice has funded $92.7 million in projects that supported a total of 3.5 million trips in the I-66 and I-395/95 corridors, amounting to 82 million fewer vehicle miles traveled, saved commuters 900,000 hours of travel time, commensurate to $24 million in economic benefits to the region, saved commuters $12 million in fuel costs and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 69 percent relative to driving alone for comparable trips, and avoided 100 automobile crashes.

The findings are part of the Commuter Choice 2022 Annual Report. Commissioners will be asked to approve the report and authorize staff to deliver it to the Virginia Commonwealth Transportation Board.

Continued on Page 4

PAGE 4 | OCTOBER 6 - 12, 2022

LOCAL

FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM Installation of Panels a ‘Starting Point’ For Educational Resources

Continued from Page 1

while also deciding where the panels would be located.

The decision to place them in between the transit plaza at South Washington Street and Hillwood Avenue was deemed perfect, as Redden said it is a “great location to highlight City history since the new plaza is a transportation hub for both residents and non-residents.”

Redden said the overall goal of the panels is to appeal to several factors: audience, content, transportation focus, images and future uses.

For audiences, the information and images on the panels are designed to be “relevant to residents, commuters, future citizens and tourists of all demographics.”

The content of the panels is to feature the history of Falls Church in “chronological order.” The eight periods shown on the panels stretch from the 1600s to present day.

The first historical period presented is centered on the native peoples and their land before 1700. The panel states how Falls Church was occupied by two native tribes before European colonists disrupted them. The panel also shows a photo of “Big Chimneys,” the first known European structure in the area.

The Settlement from 1700 to 1815 is displayed on the next panel. In 1734, a church was built near the Potomac River Falls, soon known as “The Falls Church.” This church that gave the City of Falls Church its name was the “center of local life” and served as a Revolutionary War recruiting station. The Virginia Village panel features the turnpikes and tolls of the area. Covering the period from 1815 to 1861, the panel describes how the city was an “essential” stop along the route from Alexandria’s port on the Potomac River to Leesburg and western mountains. This caused the creation of the Leesburg Turnpike, now known as State Route 7 and Broad Street.

The next panel on the Civil War era focuses on the years between 1861 to 1865 on how a “village was divided” due to many locals not supporting the Confederacy despite the state joining it. A story is featured on the panel about Harriet Foote Turner, a local free woman of color who led 12 enslaved people to freedom.

The Rebuilding era panel features the historical period when railroads began to spread from 1865 to 1890. The panel states how this was the time where the Falls Church Library Association created the town’s first public library under the leadership of Mary Riley Styles.

The Turn of the 20th Century panel highlights several historical events during 1890 to 1920 and how they associate with the City of Falls Church. Local black citizens formed what would soon become the first rural branch of the NAACP in the nation. By the time World War I began, women in the area took on new roles by joining the women’s suffrage movement, leading to the 1921 election of Mary Smyth and Mattie Gundry in the town’s council.

The Emerging City panel describes the growth of local roads and how Falls Church flourished despite two World Wars and the Great Depression. From 1920 to 1950, schools and a water system were built, along with the air-conditioned State Theatre.

The 1950 to Beyond panel highlights how the City of Falls Church truly became a small, independent city. In 1961, a diverse coalition of City activists successfully ended segregation in Falls Church schools, becoming only the second Virginia community to do so. The panel states how the City’s cultural diversity broadened as immigrants from Asia, Central America and South America joined the community.

Redden said the working group on the panels made a “conscious effort to represent important women and African Americans to create a more balanced representation of the City’s history.”

Because of the Grant Funding received for the panels, the text and images “highlight” transportation’s relevance to the City’s formation, which Redden said is “fitting” for the panel’s location at the transportation plaza.

The images selected for the panels “complement” the text while also creating a “balance of maps, buildings and individuals again consciously representing the importance of both women and African Americans through imagery.”

Lastly, for future use, Redden said the installation of the panels is a “starting point” for historical walking tours and educational resources for locals and non-locals.

So far, Redden stated the response to the panels by citizens has been positive. Redden also said she and her team hope the panels will bring a “better understanding of those who lived here and how the little city came to be what it is today.”

“Everyone is excited to see the evolution of transportation in The Little City,” Redden said. “We also hope to see tour groups use [the panels] as a starting point and for residents and visitors to learn more about our history.”

THE HISTORIC PANELS are located between South Washington Street and Hillwood Avenue. (News-Press Photo)

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OCTOBER 6 - 12, 2022 | PAGE 5

Amazon Announces Wage Hikes for Its Workforce

Amazon is increasing wages for its U.S. operations employees as part of a nearly $1 billion investment over the next year, it was announced this week. Average hourly pay for employees in customer fulfillment and transportation will increase from $18 per hour to more than $19 per hour.

Hourly Amazon employees will now earn between $16 and $26 per hour, depending on their position and location in the U.S.

The new wage increases begin in October, as will access to more career advancement and development programs, such as the Amazon Intelligence Initiative. The 12- to 14-month development program is designed to place employees in engineering roles within Amazon Web Services.

Interior Dept. Changes Lauded by Beyer

Falls Church’s Rep. Don Beyer today applauded the

lobby and adjusting the eco- Department of the Interior’s nomic agreement with the City announcement of new law to permit the theater group to enforcement policies for its receive 10 percent of not only officers, including key changes the entertainment tax proceeds for which Beyer has long advofrom ticket sales but also the cated. meals tax proceeds from meals “The reforms announced by and concessions sold on site, the Department of the Interior will be on the Council’s agenda this Tuesday. While the City’s Economic Development Authority has recommended an OK on these modifications, the Planning Commission was deadlocked in a 3-3 vote on the matter last month and therefore stopped short of a recommendation. In a letter from Mill Creek’s today will increase transparency and accountability while improving trust in the communities its officers police,” said Rep. Beyer. “I have long urged the adoption of body cameras for all federal police, advancing legislation with Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton to achieve this, Joe Muffler to the City this sum- and Interior’s decision to adopt mer, it was noted that “the new them now is very welcome. The updated use-of-force guidelines are particularly salient to my district following the killing of Bijan Ghaisar, and the restriction on no-knock entries is an important policy that should be adopted by police everywhere. I thank Secretary Haaland and her team for prioritizing police reform, and with my colleagues will be following closely as these proposals implemented.”

theater operator “is proposing to utilize a portion of the ground floor lobby as a full service restaurant and bar with entertainment features such as gaming and bowling,” noting “this is a fairly standard component of any theater operation today.”

Modifications also call for reducing the minimum number of seats to 550, down from the earlier agreed-upon number of 750, while the maximum number remains at 850. Muffler wrote that the new number is based on “the quality of the theater environment, larger more luxurious seats reducing the quantity,” along with “the inclusion of a premium large format theater experience.”

The modifications proposed are “fair and justifiable in light of all that has transpired” in the recent period, including the way the pandemic impacted the theater business, from which it is now recovering, Muffler wrote.

Still the industry remains a little shaky, with the news last week that the CMX CineBistro at the Tysons Galleria nearby has delayed its grand opening, originally from last month to the middle of this month, but now has no new date announced.

That outfit has 33 locations with 358 screens across the U.S. Continued from Page 1 Founders Row Movies Await Council OK NEWS BRIEFS and the one set for Tysons has 43,268 square feet and 800 seats Continued from Page 2 across eight screening rooms and doubles as a restaurant with full food and drink service and films starting after 8 p.m. limited to patrons 21 and older. Paragon will bring a slightly more modest operation to Falls Church, but its chances for success are augmented by the wider entertainment options it is now seeking the OK to include. Falls Church City Manager Wyatt Shields told the News-Press that it is outfits with an array of entertainment options that are faring far better in the movie business now. Paragon’s current operations are in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Cary, North Carolina, DelRay Beach and Naples, Florida. The Naples operation has undoubtedly been impacted by Hurricane Ian, but there are no official reports yet, The Planning Commission classads@fcnp.com action last month on the proposed changes the Council will vote on next Tuesday saw three “yes” votes – Teates, Stevens and Caumont – and three “no” votes from Weiss, Krasner and Hyra.

Our Man in Arlington

By Charlie Clark

Local history commemorators have embarked on a fresh but potentially delicate project. The Arlington Historical Society has won two grants for its volunteers to trace, document and map out the locations in Arlington where enslaved persons labored in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The result may include an array of plaques—the placement of which might engender controversy.

The idea came from Tim Aiken, a one time federal humanities grants officer who got interested while writing a history of his Glencarlyn neighborhood that provided details on African Americans once enslaved there. His newsletter article “generated an ongoing discussion about how we might acknowledge the presence of enslaved people in Glencarlyn in some public and lasting way,” he said.

Aiken also drew inspiration from the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s observation that sometimes preserving a story “means working through a difficult past to create a more inclusive future.” And he credits Washington Post writer Michele Norris’s June 2021 essay about a sculptor in Germany who spawned a movement to install 70,000 street-level stones in Europe commemorating victims of the Holocaust. Aiken’s proposal impressed the Arlington Historical Society (I’m on the board), as well as the Black Heritage Museum of Arlington. After a grueling application process, the society won a $5,000 planning grant from Virginia Humanities. JBG Smith Cares, the philanthropic arm of the development firm, gave another $5,000 that will help pay Arlington Public Schools teachers to create lesson plans about local slavery and produce maps.

The Black Heritage Museum “is in the process of finding names of enslaved people who resided in Arlington and then immortalizing them with markers close to where they were enslaved,” says its president, Scott Taylor, who is seeking volunteers who know genealogy research. “It is important to myself and BHMA to be a voice for these people whom many have forgotten. Arlington is one of those counties where many don’t know slavery existed here.”

Jessica Kaplan, the society’s chief researcher on the project, shared with me some progress so far. There’s a digital map based on work by Bill Grether Jr. of the county government’s GIS Mapping Center that locates some 40 sites based on the homes of the enslavers on an overlay of modern Arlington streets.

Her fact sheets report on households of Arlington establishment families with names such as Harden, Birch, Minor, Hunter and Roach, who listed— with necessarily varied consistency—the first names of the enslaved workers, their genders and occupations: farmhand, house servant, chambermaid, cook, washer, driver, teamster, canal worker, field work foreman, assistant gardener, “utility” or handy man, and “boys given to Alexander Hunter Jr. as playmates.”

What kind of plaques would be produced and where they might be placed is still being determined. In Germany, some locals—even victims of the Holocaust—complained about the stones being placed on streets where pedestrians trod on them. An Arlington fight for another day.

***

Trevor, the panhandler bearing the sign “Combat veteran, always faithful” stationed for more than a decade at the exit from I-66 onto Langston Blvd., has landed a job.

After more than a decade as a regular on the sidewalk near the Falls Church border (I occasionally donated), he told me last month he qualified to be trained as a truck driver by the Alexandria-based 1st CDL Training Center of NOVA.

May the road rise up to meet him! ***

A noted Arlington nonprofit has joined the beneficiaries of philanthropist MacKenzie Scott—ex-wife of another donor to local causes, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness, whose national headquarters is on Wilson Blvd. in Ballston, announced Sept. 29 that it received an unrestricted gift of $30 million.

“Mental health is health, and this gift will contribute to our ongoing work to change the way mental health care is treated and delivered in this country,” said NAMI CEO Daniel H. Gillison Jr., citing its state and national efforts to combat stigma. “More and more people are now asking for help.”