Scandal and a new Chief at MPD
Learning from problems in DC's most violent neighborhoods
There’s been a lot of crime and policing news in just the week since the DC Council passed an emergency crime bill. On Friday, Mitch Ryals and Alex Koma at the Washington City Paper revealed that 19 MPD officers are under criminal investigation due to alleged misconduct while operating in police district 7D (~Ward 8). On Monday, Mayor Bowser announced that Pamela Smith was her choice to be MPD’s next Chief of Police. Chief Smith inherits a lot of challenges but it’s worth highlighting the problems that this investigation in 7D has brought to the forefront and how MPD could learn from them. Before diving in, I want to thank everyone who has been sharing these posts and tweets. I’m seeing more people signing up to subscribe (welcome new readers!) and even policymakers referencing these topics; for that I am incredibly grateful to you all!
The Washington City Paper (WCP) article highlights 3 major problems arising from the (now criminal) investigation of 19 MPD officers from the Crime Suppression Team (CST) in police district 7D:
1. Unconstitutional searches: In many cases the officers searched individuals who actually were carrying illegal guns. The officers either correctly identified the signs of a hidden firearm or were lucky. However, MPD’s Internal Affairs Division (IAD) found that the officers’ narratives sometimes did not match the body worn camera (BWC) footage and that in other cases the officers selectively turned off their BWCs. At best, these are missteps that undermined the case (by casting doubt on the probable cause to search the suspect) and resulted in someone who was carrying an illegal gun to go free. The WCP found “at least seven more people whose criminal charges were dropped due to the investigation into Seventh District CST officers have since been arrested on new, unrelated felony charges” showing that some of these people carrying illegal guns are (allegedly) repeat offenders. This is an example of a larger problem at MPD where the challenges in building successful gun cases (due to a mix of MPD and judicial factors) leaves more gun-carrying criminals on the streets and some of them go on to engage in violent crimes.
At worst, these cases of inaccurate police narratives and non-compliance with BWC orders could reflect much more serious abuses. The fact that MPD’s internal affairs referred this to the USAO for possible criminal conduct is very concerning.
2. Accusations of biased policing: Throughout the piece they cite criticisms from the Police Reform Commission that units like the Crime Suppression Team and the similar Gun Recovery Unit (GRU) “use aggressive stop, pursuit, and search tactics that bump up against—and sometimes cross—constitutional boundaries.” They also quote the mother of one of the suspect’s saying young people in her neighborhood “are constantly subjected to unwanted contact, including unlawful stops and searches.” This reflects a common criticism from “anti-carceral” groups that is also echoed by at least 1 MPD “whistleblower” and the community feedback of MPD’s own PERF report:
“Participants from majority-Black Wards 7 and 8 said they had historically experienced an aggressive and disrespectful style of over-policing not seen in other wards. Some participants recalled witnessing rudeness in MPD officers’ tone, language, and conduct. They also cited some officers’ lack of empathy and kindness.”
“The participants stated they are unlikely to report crime, share information, and support MPD if officers don’t treat them with respect and dignity, take the time to explain their actions, and listen to what they have to say—in other words, to act in accordance with the principles of procedural justice.”
This is an incredibly sensitive topic and it tends to devolve into extreme nonsensical positions like “all cops are racist” vs “all police misconduct allegations are fake.” But we should all acknowledge that actual bias is wrong and even the perception of biased policing undermines public safety. Closing cases is infinitely harder when the community doesn’t trust the police.
3. Poor community communications: Despite MPD announcing its internal probe into these officers publicly back in November, there seems to have been little follow up to assure the public that they were taking the matter seriously. “Even ANCs representing the areas where many of these arrests take place say they were previously unaware of the investigation’s existence, despite being in frequent contact with police officials in the Seventh District.” This really reflects a missed opportunity by MPD. In this case, MPD leadership did the right thing. I criticize MPD leadership a lot so I want to reiterate that investigating these allegations was the right thing to do and MPD did it. But instead of proactively communicating to Ward 8 residents how MPD was taking this seriously, many people are going to find out about this from the Washington City Paper. A significant driver of public mistrust in MPD is the perception that cops that break the law don’t face consequences. That was the subject of another article from Mitch Ryals last week. This scandal is actually a counterexample but it’s certainly not being perceived as such in part because of MPD’s relative silence about its own actions.
In addition to these problems, I would add that gun crime is up 28% YTD in 7D in the wake of this unit’s issues coming to light and MPD having to scramble to reassign these officers. No one can prove that this unit’s problems directly led to the increase in gun violence but it’s a concerning possibility and I think it’s likely a contributing factor.
So what could MPD’s new Chief Smith do to address these problems in 7D and DC overall? Her introductory remarks when she was nominated actually covered a lot of ground. I’ve bolded some of the key phrases:
“The community wants the police to be the police and do so in a constitutional, safe, and respectful manner. Make no mistake about it: I will be laser-focused to ensure that we do everything we can in this space. That includes targeting the deployment of our officers to areas impacted by crime. Engaging in long-term investigations focused on most violent individuals. Leveraging a whole-of-government approach.”
There’s a lot of implementation steps from lines in a speech to change on the ground but these are good things to focus on. Here’s why these are key priorities and how they relate to the specific problems in 7D:
“Constitutional, safe, and respectful manner”
MPD currently is conducting a lot of arrests that either the USAO, DC juries or judges feel are unconstitutional. At best this is mostly a waste of MPD’s time and at worse it’s harming Washingtonians’ rights. It’s worth pointing out that DC’s Attorney General is often willing to charge or “paper” gun charges (and successfully prosecute) in circumstances that the USAO will not, but there clearly needs to be alignment between MPD and the USAO on the standards for making arrests. This will likely involve some significant retraining for MPD officers and proactive review of BWC footage to ensure the changes stick. In general, it’s worth a review of how MPD supervisors are (or aren’t) auditing BWC footage to identify problems or just opportunities for feedback.
One way that MPD could probably improve the Constitutionality and respectfulness of their encounters in 7D is by reducing the enormous MPD experience gap in that district:
MPD assigns its least experienced officers to the district with the most challenges and homicides. In general, this happens because officers use their seniority to get out of 7D and there are no countervailing incentives to pull experienced officers in. This causes real problems. “Officers significantly change the way that they perform their duties and interact with civilians as they gain more experience, in a manner that suggests less discretionary and aggressive interactions with civilians.” Note that this drop in arrests also corresponds with a drop in violent crime from having more experienced officers, suggesting that the quality of these arrests is higher and leading to successful cases. Unfortunately, we’re choosing to put our least experienced officers in DC’s community that (probably) has the least trust in MPD. We’re choosing to have more use of force and more violent crime because MPD doesn’t want to incentivize or move experienced officers into 7D. Also young officers assigned to 7D have to share an experienced mentor (if they even get one) while young officers are more interspersed in areas like wealthy 2D.
MPD needs to prove that there’s accountability for both officers and MPD leaders when they break the law. MPD should treat “how we’re enforcing conduct” as an important topic in public communications (ANC meetings, Citizens Advisory Councils, public safety walks etc.) alongside conventional policing metrics. There also should be some investigation of how high up the knowledge of this unit’s behavior went. 19 officers are under criminal investigation. They were part of the Violent Crime Suppression Division (VCSD), which in turn is part of the Investigative Services Bureau (ISB). What did the VCSD commander and ISB Assistant Chief know and how did they respond? This activity took place in 7D. The former 7D commander is now an Assistant Chief in charge in Patrol Services South despite serious allegations of misconduct. What did he know and when? Right now, only low-level officers are under scrutiny (at least per publicly available information) which definitely echoes some of the officer feedback from the PERF report: “Discipline in MPD is incredibly arbitrary. Two officers may have committed the same exact violation with the same circumstances but one officer will receive far less punishment based on their relationship with the commander/assistant chief/DRD.”
“Targeting the deployment of our officers to areas impacted by crime”
This is a topic that I’ve written about a lot and I’m very pleased to hear that this is on the new chief’s agenda. Rather than rehashing last week’s post, I wanted to mention how the current MPD staffing situation in 7D may exacerbate poor police-community relations. Because MPD currently has a large share of its available officers in relatively low-crime neighborhoods, the officers that are assigned to high-crime areas like 7D have to work much harder (and this why more senior MPD officers leave 7D). Due to this workload, this means there are relatively fewer police available to visibly deter crime, to follow up on leads to close cases or to engage in community policing. This then feeds into community perceptions that the police don’t care like these themes from the PERF report:
“Many community members said they felt their neighborhood was being policed inequitably, and some residents have stopped calling MPD since they anticipate the response would be inadequate. One resident described how MPD only drives by when called and often after a long wait, which allows suspects to hide and resume their criminal activity once MPD leaves.”
This staffing disparity also means those cops working in places like 7D are even more tired and burned out than the norm. There’s a lot of evidence that shows that tired cops make more mistakes and can be more biased. In one study “Officers who slept less were significantly more likely to associate African-Americans with weapons.” In another study “Working only one additional hour of overtime per week increased the chances that an officer would be involved in a use-of-force incident the following week by 2.7 percent, and increased the odds of ethics violations by 3.1 percent.” Fatigue is also dangerous for officers themselves. Given the challenges of working in 7D, minimizing fatigue and burnout by more-evenly spreading the workload (and looking for ways to minimize overtime) ought to be a priority. MPD can’t instantly recruit more officers but it’s critical that they prioritize the officers they have to high-crime areas like 7D.
“Investigations focused on most violent individuals”
It’s also encouraging that Chief Smith is signaling that her MPD will focus on the 200-500 people responsible for “60-70% of all gun violence in the District”. This is in some ways a return to MPD’s previous Homicide Reduction Strategy that coincided with a large decrease in homicide (more background here). However, nothing in her initial remarks suggest that she’d bring back the Focused Deterrence messaging of that strategy and it will be interesting if she mentions it in future communications.
Sometimes this kind of approach is called “Precision Policing” or “Intelligence Based Policing” but regardless of the name, using leads and intelligence to build targeted cases is in direct contrast to “jump out” squads or racially-driven stop-and-frisk policies. Many people associate any increase in any kind of police activity with racial discrimination. But violent criminals are an incredibly small share of the population. Focusing investigations on the 200-500 highest-risk gang/crew affiliated people is distinct from the widespread biased policing that MPD’s fiercest critics allege. This is even more focused than the so-called “gang database.” This highest-risk population of 200-500 people is two orders of magnitude smaller than DC’s population of young Black males (approximately 40K people between the ages 15 and 34) who are often collectively and unfairly cast as the drivers of DC’s crime. Also, by extension, racial profiling is an incredibly dumb, counterproductive and unconstitutional way to “fight crime”:
Hopefully this will also signal a shift in focus towards convictions rather than arrests. Currently, MPD likes to report on how many guns they are “taking off the street” and this is one of the reasons units like the CST and GRU make so many arrests. But with the USAO and the courts refusing to prosecute/convict in many cases, the majority of those arrests have minimal public safety benefit (since criminals can easily get new guns). Even with violent crimes a huge share of arrests don’t result in a conviction:
A MPD that was oriented around convictions would be more proactive in strengthening the partnership with the USAO and identifying the root causes of no paper decisions. This would likely result in serious, repeat offenders being caught, charged, convicted and incapacitated with appropriate sentences more frequently than they are today. MPD can’t fix this by itself due to the USAO’s incredibly important role, but prioritizing convictions would help.
Hopefully Chief Smith will share more of her vision for MPD and how she intends to deal with some of the serious challenges in 7D/Ward 8 (where she lives) as the Council considers her nomination. There’s a lot of work to do at MPD but it’s encouraging that she is saying many of the right things in her initial public appearances.