Wheaton residents exasperated with MoCo's failure to enforce laws on residential streets

Forget illegal parking within 35' of
a stop sign - this car is parked AT the
stop sign

Wheaton residents are questioning why Montgomery County is not putting more code and law enforcement resources into their area, as crimes and violations continue to increase. Four years after Connecticut Avenue Estates requested more assistance with illegal trash dumping on neighborhood streets, the problem persists. Parking of work trucks and rampant parking violations, including vehicles left too close to driveways and intersections, go unpunished across Wheaton neighborhoods. This despite new parking laws having been passed almost a decade ago to supposedly address the issue.

Illegal parking at driveway

Kimblyn Persaud, President of the Wheaton Regional Park Neighborhood Association, says Wheaton residents deserve the same level of enforcement and quality of life as those living in Bethesda. While the County has occasionally deployed more officers to the neighborhood in response to complaints, Persaud argues those efforts need to be sustained and ongoing to have any real impact. "The bottom line is, we need dedicated officers," she said.

"You can't see around these working vans, cars and vans are parked all the way to end of the corner, past stop signs and right into the street," Persaud added. "Large commercial vehicles, in violation of height restrictions, are still being allowed to park on residential streets, cars are often parked in the wrong direction, food trucks allowed to be stored on the streets and numerous garbage cans and cones holding parking spaces. Where is the quality of life in living like this, and why should we have to wait till a child, darting between work vans, gets hit?"

At the same time, increasing crime, gang activity and drug deals are taking up much of the time of those officers who are on patrol. "Even officers don't feel safe over here," Persaud said. "Nobody but a fool would walk by themselves down Shorefield [Road] and Connecticut Avenue Estates at night, and that's including officers.  So when a complaint is called in, officers respond by driving by, but they haven't been stopping!"

Persaud questions why Wheaton residents are being treated as children of a lesser god, despite the great wealth and progressive politics of Montgomery County. Given the highly-diverse demographics of Wheaton, she said race may be a factor. During scandals like Farm Road and the Moses African Cemetery in recent years, institutional racism in Montgomery County government has indeed come to light. In fact, the County Executive and County Council offices, and the Planning Board, have each called in as many as 7 police officers to confront African-Americans exercising their First Amendment rights to testify and peacefully protest. Police have never been called on white residents under the same circumstances, a disparity that should be under an even brighter spotlight after the recent Starbucks incident.

"The continued perpetuation of structural racism not only hurts Wheaton and Montgomery County, but it hurts us as individuals," Persaud said.  "We deserve to be safe, we deserve to have the protection of the police, from both crime and parking violations. We deserve clean neighborhoods, that are not roach and rat-infested." She cited promises made four years ago in emails by Councilmembers Nancy Navarro and George Leventhal, which have proven to be empty promises.  "We deserve so much better than what this County Executive and County Council has done," she said.

Illegal dumping remains a problem,
four years after the Council promised to end it

Illegal parking up against an
intersection

Parked cars in a no-parking zone

Parking within 35' of an intersection
along Shorefield Road

Photos: Kimblyn Persaud