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Please permit me to respond to the report in Loose Lips (1/10) concerning the so-called Adams Morgan Standoff. It is a complete distortion of the facts to characterize what was a spitting contest between two individuals with a history of acrimony as anything larger than that.
I arrived at the ANC 1C office after receiving a “frantic call” from Dan Horrigan suggesting I might be of some assistance in resolving what he called a “bit of a dust-up.” With the exception of one thoroughly disgusted community relations officer there were no other 3rd District personnel at the scene when I got there.
I was told by my fellow commissioners that Bobby Pittman and they had held an office-orientation session inside the ANC office without incident until Horrigan decided, on his own, that Pittman should give him the office keys. Pittman refused. They argued. Horrigan banged his fist on the desk. Pittman told Horrigan to leave. Horrigan told Pittman to leave. Pittman called the police. It was a childish culmination of an ongoing feud between two guys who could easily have reached a compromise if they weren’t each so intent on having their way.
I spoke with Bobby Pittman and Dan Horrigan and found each of them to be unnecessarily stubborn and inflexible. Both strike me as lacking the maturity one would hope to find in community leaders. What they do seem to have are egos as wide as 18th Street is long and a willingness to drag any and everybody into their petty contretemps. It is hardly surprising they’ve been going on like a Hatfield and a McCoy for more than a year now. They deserve each other.
The Adams Morgan ANC, on the other hand, does not deserve to be made a party to their tantrums. Theirs is a personal dispute that has nothing to do with ANC 1C’s goal of creating a mechanism that allows community residents a real voice in determining the issues our neighborhood faces. I am sorry Loose Lips was not aware of this before publishing a story that is essentially inaccurate and fundamentally irrelevant.
Dupont Circle