PROMOTING PLAY Seneca Heights receives a new playground. A-4
SPORTS: Bethesda, Gaithersburg open Cal Ripken Collegiate Baseball League on Saturday. B-1
The Gazette
NEWS: ‘Flags for our Heroes’ fly at Bohrer Park in Gaithersburg. A-3
GAITHERSBURG | MONTGOMERY VILLAGE DA I LY U P DAT E S AT G A Z E T T E . N E T
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
25 cents
Dredging project to begin in June
Celebration shave
Areas around Lake Whetstone in Montgomery Village will be closed n
BY
SAMANTHA SCHMIEDER STAFF WRITER
GEORGE P. SMITH/FOR THE GAZETTE
Teammates help Gaithersburg starting pitcher Anthony Felitti shave his beard after the Trojans won their first Class 4A state championship in baseball Friday in Aberdeen, defeating Severna Park 5-3. Felitti promised before the season that he wouldn’t shave until they won the championship. See Sports, Page B1.
County police adopt body cameras Pilot program will equip 100 officers
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BY
VIRGINIA TERHUNE STAFF WRITER
Starting in late June, about 100 of Montgomery County’s 1,200 police officers will begin wearing body cameras on their chests or on eyeglasses as a way to record their contacts with the public. The goal of the six-month pilot program is to test and evaluate different types of cameras and technology, which are
intended to improve police accountability, particularly in incidents involving the use of force, while balancing that with privacy concerns. “There will be times when [someone] asks not to be recorded, and the officer has the discretion to turn [the camera] off, but he or she must say aloud why they’re turning it off,” said county police Chief J. Thomas Manger during a May 11 budget discussion with the County Council. The cities of Rockville, Gaithersburg and Takoma Park also are testing and evaluating
police body cameras. Body cameras have become part of a national discussion about officers’ use of force following the fatal shooting death of an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014 and, most recently, the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore in April after suffering neck and spinal injuries while in police custody. County officers will wear the cameras during traffic stops, arrests, transports and incidents involving people with mental problems, Manger said. The cameras will not be
used to record conversations between officers or in places such as locker rooms and dressing rooms unless the rooms are part of a criminal investigation, he said. “When there’s a complaint, [the cameras] will eliminate that speculation about what actually happened,” said Councilman Craig Rice (D-Dist. 2) of Germantown. During the pilot, the police department will handle public requests for video in about the same way that it currently han-
See CAMERAS, Page A-7
Unsung hero finds her praise at school Gaithersburg Middle students write play about desegregation pioneer n
BY
SAMANTHA SCHMIEDER STAFF WRITER
Before there was Brown v. Board, there was Mendez v. Westminster — a court case that began in 1946 to challenge racial segregation of Mexican-Americans in California. Behind that case was Sylvia Mendez, a little girl who just wanted a nicer school playground.
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Madeline Hanington, a sixth-grade English teacher and content specialist at Gaithersburg Middle School, worked with four of her students to research, write and stage a play focusing on Sylvia Mendez and her family’s important contribution. The project will be featured on the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes’ website. Hanington was asked to be a Lowell Milken fellow last summer because she had received a Milken Educator Award in 2011. The Lowell Milken Center for Unsung He-
roes promotes project-based learning for students by giving them the task of researching in order to write a play, make a documentary or build a website about an unsung hero. The center defines an unsung hero as “one who created positive change in history by improving the lives of others, and has yet to be recognized for his or her actions.” On the evening of May 18, in the school cafeteria, parents, colleagues and friends came out to see “The Story of a Brown Skin Girl,” the culmination of the project. The play
told the story of how Mendez wanted to attend a better school and asked her father and aunt to enroll her in Orange County, Calif. The school denied Mendez and her siblings enrollment because of their darker skin, but allowed her cousins entry because they were lighter skinned. The play went on to explain that Mendez’s father and other fathers in the neighborhood decided to band together to challenge the School District of Orange County in federal court and then the United States Court of
A&E
NOT SAFE FOR WORK Round House Theatre’s latest play focuses on bad behavior, job issues at men’s magazine. A-9
See HERO, Page A-7
Volume 28, No. 21 Two sections, 24 Pages Copyright © 2015 The Gazette
A dredging project is set to start this summer at Lake Whetstone in Montgomery Village closing the boathouse, volleyball court and parking lot near the recreation area in June. Amy Stevens is the manager of the stormwater facilities maintenance program within the division of watershed protection in Montgomery County’s Department of Environmental Protection. On May 16, she and several other representatives from Montgomery County as well as from the outside contractors and consultants, including Anchor QEA, participated in a community meeting at the lake. The group explained during the community walk that the dredging process includes
a large barge that will sit on the water to collect the sediment and send it back to equipment that will continue the separating process in the parking lot and a grassy area that will be paved over. The hydraulic dredging process involves disturbing the sediment in the water and pumping it into a machine which filters it and sends it back to land to be fully treated. Eventually the sediment is separated at hauled to a landfill and the excess liquid is put back into the lake. “The project started out as a request from the community, from Montgomery Village Foundation and the surrounding home associations,” Stevens said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “We started investigating it several years ago.” Stevens explained that residents noticed there was a lot of sediment buildup around the area where a stream flows into
See DREDGING, Page A-7
Car plunges into Germantown pool; opening delayed Gaithersburg pool company employee helps driver get out OK n
BY
PEGGY MCEWAN STAFF WRITER
A small four-door sedan plunged into the Woodlake Community Pool in Germantown on May 20, two days before the pool was scheduled to open for the season. The driver was not injured. Mike Williams, vice president of RSV Pools Inc. of Gaithersburg, said he was finishing up some work at the pool that night when he saw a car come into the driveway, jump the curb and drive across a patch of grass. It went through the fence, over the concrete deck and landed in the pool. “It came out of the blue,” Williams said. “At first, I thought it was some kind of stunt, someone trying to get into the pool. I was taken aback, shocked.” Nevertheless, Williams said, his first reaction was to get the driver, who was alone in the car,
PHOTO BY MIKE WILLIAMS
This small four-door sedan plunged into the Woodlake Community Pool in Germantown on May 20, when the driver lost control in the pool’s parking lot. Mike Williams from Gaithersburg’s RSV Pools Inc. was preparing the pool for opening day and helped the driver to safety. Because of the damage, the pool will open a week late. out safely. The car landed in the shallow end of the pool with one
See CAR, Page A-7
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