Just in case you were wondering, Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans and police Chief Cathy Lanier are buds. That would be the takeaway from the ad, shown above, that appeared in Wednesday’s Current newspapers.

But does that make also Lanier a scofflaw?

Federal law prohibits District and federal employees from participating in various political activities. According to the Web site of the federal Office of Special Counsel, which investigates violations of the Hatch Act, it’s a violation to “engage in political activity while…in a government office” or “wearing an official uniform.” Evans, as an elected official, is exempt; Lanier is not.

The picture appears to have been taken inside Evans’ office in the John A. Wilson Building, the seat of District government, and Lanier is wearing her uniform. The picture also appears on Evans’ campaign Web site, along with other pictures of Lanier and City Administrator Dan Tangherlini.

According to Evans campaign spokesperson Keith Carbone, Lanier “did not sign off on the picture and was not aware that we were using it.” Traci Hughes, a police spokesperson, says, “We will let the [Evans campaign's] acknowledgment that the Chief was not consulted stand on its own.”

Lanier isn’t mentioned by name in the ad; the only thing remotely public-safety related is a mention that Evans helped bring ShotSpotter to Shaw. “The obvious point of using that [picture] is showing that Jack works closely with the chief of police,” he says. “They maintain a pretty constant stream of communication about things. It’s important to Jack to get frequent updates.”

The picture certainly belongs to the “grip-and-grin” genre common to campaign materials in this town. They usually show up on direct mailings in a collage of various around-town photos. (Check out this blog post from Evans challenger Cary Silverman, for instance.) This one’s a little different: It’s in a paid ad in a community newspaper, it’s huge, it’s the police chief, and there’s no other photos on it.

LL has inquired with the Office of Special Counsel as to whether (a) it is a violation to have your image used unwittingly for political purposes and (b) whether the Evans campaign is breaking the law by doing so. The office is currently reviewing the matter.

Kristopher Baumann, head of the union representing Metropolitan Police officers, isn’t happy seeing Lanier apparently shilling for a political candidate.

Baumann says his group was the subject of a Hatch Act investigation in 2006, after candidates’ campaign materials showed D.C. cops in uniform. Though the cops had never consented to having the pictures taken or their use in campaign ads, the union had to hire a lawyer to fight off the charges, which were eventually dropped.

Baumann says he takes the law very seriously. “What infuriates my guys and me, we bend over backward,” he says. “We follow these rules hardcore….Here you have the executive and legislative branch of government just absolutely disobeying the rules.”

Neither Evans nor Silverman, Baumann points out, asked for the police union’s endorsement.

This might be my final installment into the saga that is the life of Captain Melvin Gresham—a D.C. Police Department official who appears to always be in the center of intrigue and controversy. According to his civil-suit complaint filed in June, Gresham is a hero/whistle blower/all-around standup cop. To cop sources, he’s a supervisor who needs some leadership training asap.

“I had to bang heads with him, very disagreeable is the way he investigated things. He never has any proof. When we go to arbitration against him, he loses most of the arbitrations. We’ve had several arbitration hearings with our members and he’s lost. All the evidence is, ‘What I heard.’ Nothing ever of substance. He never has any real evidence against anybody. When you’re a policeman, you have to have solid facts,” says one veteran officer.

Gresham has his followers. Many of whom have commented on this post and our last installment.

The current Gresham dustup stems from a traffic accident. The allegation: Gresham got into a fender bender and pressured an officer to change the accident report in his favor.

In Gresham’s complaint, he addresses the accident on page 10, bullet-point No. 23. Or rather, he dances around the allegations, focusing mainly on picking apart the testimony and character of Lt. Mike Smith.

The complaint hones in on anonymous letter (was it written by Smith?), Smith’s believing that Gresham is a very rich man, and the allegation that Smith admitted to “tampering” with evidence. “Lt. Smith was off duty and had no actual basis for interjecting himself into the investigation,” the complaint states.

The complaint notes that the police department withdrew the charges against Gresham. “However, Chief Lanier insisted on serving Cpt. Gresham an official reprimand.” The reprimand addresses the very serious allegation of witness intimidation:

According to the complaint, the reprimand reads:

“Internal Affairs Agent Denise Garrett investigated the alleged misconduct. Agent Garrett determined that your demeanor and subsequent confrontation with the reporting officer was intimidating and may have jeopardized the impartiality of the accident investigation.”

Read the rest of this entry »

In our latest installment on the complicated life of Captain Melvin Gresham, we dip back into the complaint he filed in late June as part of his civil suit against the D.C. Police Department and other top officials.

[Wanna play catch up on this exhaustive blog series: go here, here, and here.]

I ended the last installment with a rundown over Gresham detailing a sexual harassment case brought by Lt. Rhonda Nunnally. In his complaint, Gresham had claimed to have stood up for her when she was allegedly physically assaulted by a “Lt. Delgado.” Gresham claims in the complaint that he was barred from arresting Delgado.

The complaint goes on to allege:

*Gresham’s help was sought in covering up for Nunnally’s attacker Phillip Graham. Delgado, the complaint states, leaped over Gresham on the org. chart going from an Lt. to an Inspector. “Cpt. Gresham was then assigned to Lt. Delgado in what can only be a retaliatory act,” the complaint states.

*In October 2007, two lawyers from the Office of the Attorney General met with Gresham. At this meeting, they allegedly offer him a promotion and a “prestigious assignment in Police Headquarters if he changed his testimony and DENIED that ‘he had been instructed to target Lt. Nunnally and drive her from the workplace.’ Gresham immediately ratted out these two lawyers to Nunnally’s counsel. Superior Court Judge Natalie Combs-Green refused to permit Capt. Gresham from testifying about this incident.

Green stated, according to the complaint’s transcript:

“I thought it appropriate to have a hearing, if for no other reason to permit the parties an opportunity in open court to briefly express themselves and to give the Court, quite frankly, the opportunity to express my disappointment at this type of filing.”

“Particularly, I guess, the type of language that was used in the filing and upon closer examination, the sort of, and I will make specific reference, careless throwing around of names in the pleadings, which could be injurious to the professional stature of all the attorneys involved, and which I think diminishes our system for all of us of justice.”

It gets better.

Read the rest of this entry »

As promised, City Desk has more from the Captain Melvin Gresham saga. The first installment provided a recap of events and the detailing of Gresham’s lawsuit against the D.C. police and various named officials. Gresham cited the Whistleblower Protection Act and various alleged conspiracies to get him and other top brass.

Here are some more allegations Gresham puts forth in his civil suit complaint:

• Gresham accuses then-Assistant Chief Jose Acosta of ordering him to “set up” Commander Winston Robinson. Acosta allegedly wanted Gresham to “assist in sabotaging Commander Robinson’s leadership initiatives.” According to the complaint, Acosta told Gresham that the order was at the “behest of the ‘Chief’” and if he didn’t comply he “would be targeted.”

Read the rest of this entry »

A while ago, I posted a blog item noting WTOP’s reporting that Capt. Melvin Gresham (at the time a supervisor in the 3rd District) had gotten himself into some hot water over a traffic accident.

WTOP wrote:

“WTOP has learned Capt. Melvin Gresham from the Third District Police station in Northwest was involved in an accident with a Metro bus while driving his department vehicle. Gresham told a subordinate officer, who responded to the accident, to change a police report to indicate the Metro bus driver was at fault.”

I went ahead and interviewed two police officials about the incident. One of them was Lt. Mike Smith who was interviewed by internal affairs about the incident. Smith had come on the accident scene and was well versed in the events on the scene. I also interviewed another police official who had previous dealings with Gresham and characterized the supervisor as “not a fair person.”

The blog item was fairly run of the mill: a graph or two taken from the WTOP piece and some quick phone calls piggybacking on the news. This did not stop the comment box from filling up with allegations that my reporting had been way off or to keep everyone updated on the latest in the case or personally slam Lt. Smith.

In late June, Gresham filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court. He listed as the defendants in the case: Chief Cathy Lanier, Assistant Chief Jose Acosta, the police department as well as other officers and officials including Lt. Smith. The complaint alleges the defendants retaliated against Gresham under the Whistleblower Protection Act, defamation, breach of contract, and “intentional infliction of Emotional Distress.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Trinidad: the one neighborhood that could crash ShotSpotter was at it again this past weekend. Every other month, Trinidad picks a weekend to go bonkers and just kick the crap out of families and loved ones. Trinidad is nothing but a tragedy machine. This weekend brought about some particularly awful stuff–a teenager visiting his sick great-grandmother was killed.

And the checkpoints are back–during daylight hours.

Can the city admit that they don’t have an answer for the violence in Trinidad? Can they just say “We don’t know how to stop it?” The checkpoints are a dubious idea–a somewhat effective gimmick at best, at worst a distraction and hinderance for detectives trying to sleuth out murder suspects. At least that’s what this pro says.

No one has a good solution.

I was making my way to the Whole Foods on P Street last night when a row of cops waved me into a real live checkpoint. (They should really stop people after they leave Whole Foods.) A nice officer held the brake on my scooter as I fished through my purse for my registration. I asked him what was up. He said he had no idea. He called the stops a “traffic checkpoint” and said police were just checking that people had their licenses and registrations. I asked if this was supposed to make the earlier checkpoints legal and he grinned and said he’d heard something like that. Then he sent me on my way. It’s interesting that the MPD is doing general checkpoints now, after Cathy Lanier stood up at a recent hearing and claimed the Trinidad operation was inspired by a specific criminal threat, she just couldn’t tell us the details.

Local gun enthusiasts, note these words: “reasonably perceived threat of immediate harm.”

That there, laid out in a law likely to be passed tomorrow by the D.C. Council, lays out exactly when you’ll be allowed to actually load a gun in the District of Columbia for self-defense purposes.

This policy was announced this afternoon at a Wilson Building press conference featuring Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, Interim Attorney General Peter Nickles, police chief Cathy Lanier, council Chair Vincent C. Gray, and various councilmembers. Much of the presser was devoted to the nuts and bolts of actually registering a handgun—you’ll be able to apply for a handgun permit likely later this week, Nickles said, and the whole process should take “weeks or months.” That includes taking a written firearms safety test and getting fingerprinted, plus a ballistics sample for every registered gun. Getting your hands on a gun is a trickier process; you can buy a gun in another state then have it transferred to a dealer in the District (for a fee)—last week, WTOP’s Mark Segraves found the one guy in town who’s willing to do that for you: one Charles Sykes, Jr.

As to where you can load that gun, given a “reasonably perceived threat of immediate harm,” it’s only in your home. Not your yard. Not your car, which might be parked in front of your home, but in your home. Now, as for the use of the gun once it’s loaded, the statute will say nothing about that; use of a weapon in self-defense is governed by reams of case law, Nickles says.

The District’s proposed standard is likely to attract additional legal scrutiny from folks who feel that the policy in not in full compliance with the Heller decision, but Nickles says it was drafted to comply fully with the holding. “When you do almost anything in this city, you get a lawsuit,” he said.

Lots more info in the press release after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Any time you have the opportunity to use the word “imponderable,” you should use it.

It’s a great word. It has a great sound. (Test it out, let it roll off your tongue.) And best of all, it conjures up images of bespectacled old professors, ranting U.S. senators on the floor, and 1940s sleuths hot on the trail–basically people that take themselves seriously for somewhat good reason.

You don’t hear the word a lot. And when you do, you remember.

Last time I heard it, I was interviewing Robert Levy, a lawyer (and so much more) for the pro-gun side of the DC handgun ban case. We were discussing the future of handgun ownership in the District should the ban end. What sort of laws and restrictions would be put in place? Who would write them? When would they be enacted?

“It’s imponderable,” responded Levy. “Even if the handgun ban is overturned, the court could write a narrow opinion, or it could write a very broad opinion.”

The ruling may dictate how long the D.C. Council has to pass handgun legislation. There may be some language permitting certain safety requirements. Maybe the Supreme Court will direct a lower court to issue guidelines for D.C. The point: Speculating about the court’s decision now is just one big maybe on top of another.

At the time, I also spoke to someone in interim attorney general’s Peter Nickles’ office, who said the office was “ready” for whatever action the court took. But, beyond that, the man wouldn’t comment. Well, Police Chief Cathy Lanier, let ‘er rip last night around 6:35 p.m., sending out this e-mail to various police listservs:

Read the rest of this entry »

A brief perusal of Roget’s suggests a galaxy of promising adjectives for describing one’s reaction to a troubling Supreme Court decision.

For one, there is “troubled.” “Shocked,” “outraged,” and “concerned” come to mind. Further options include “chagrined,” “mortified,” “aggrieved,” “offended,” “incensed,” “riled up,” and “scared shitless.”

In their press releases, however, District politicos have been sticking to one word with alarming regularity:

Disappointed.

First, there is Ward 5 Councilmember Harry “Tommy” Thomas, Jr., who “expressed his extreme disappointment with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the District gun ban, and indicated that the Council must now establish strict standards to regulate the sale of handguns in the District of Columbia.”

Then we have Fenty, Nickles, and Lanier, who weigh in as follows:

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, Interim Attorney General Peter Nickles, and Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier announced their disappointment in today’s ruling of the United States Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller…. “I’m disappointed in the Court’s ruling and believe introducing more handguns into the District will mean more handgun violence,” said Mayor Fenty.*

Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray includes the following in his statement:

Although I am disappointed by the court’s decision, working collectively with the Mayor, the Metropolitan Police, legal authorities, and residents, the Council will do all it can to prevent violence from escalating further as a result of today’s un-welcome weakening of our gun laws.

Ward 4 Councilmember Muriel Bowser:

I am disappointed in today’s Supreme Court action which ruled that the DC law banning private handgun possession at home violates the Second Amendment.

At-Large Councilmember Kwame Brown:

My disappointment in the Supreme Courts ruling cannot be merely expressed by words. Every time I hear of another youth, another mother or child gunned down in our communities is yet another reminder of why we need these protective measures in place.

[Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton issued a statement in which the d-word was conspicuously absent, as did Adam Clampitt, Independent Candidate for DC Council At-Large.]

Come on, folks! Disappointed is when your team loses in spring training. Disappointed is when your kid doesn’t crack a B in algebra. Disappointed is when your dog relieves himself under the dining room table.

Whatever happened to “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!”

*The Post imputes “dismay” to Fenty. Over-editorialize much lately?

The scoop award goes to DCWatch for staying till the end of Monday’s hearing on police checkpoints. Turns out Chief Cathy Lanier had a specific crime-fighting reason for firing up the old gantlet — which would diminish the murkiness of the Constitutionality of general crime-fighting reasons for checkpoints. DCWatch summarizes:

There was another, more important, reason, she told the committee, but she could not reveal what that reason was. If the committee members knew what she knew, she was confident that they would agree with her actions, but she couldn’t tell them what she knew. She had, she said, specific information that there were specific individuals who were going to enter that neighborhood to commit a particular crime. Preventing that crime was the real reason for quarantining Trinidad. No lesser measures — tracking those specific individuals, warning the intended victims of the crime, etc. — would have sufficed to prevent the crime. Only a full-scale lock down of the neighborhood and lockout of other citizens was enough. But council members would have to take her word for it, because she couldn’t tell them anything more.

Up till now, the reason for the cordon has been explained as a general need to stem gun crime. In fact, Lanier has suggested that if crime returns to Trinidad, the checkpoints will come back too. Still no word from the ACLU on whether a lawsuit is coming.

The Post published a editorial in favor of the checkpoints today. The author includes a quote from neighborhood activist Kathy Henderson who testified at the hearing that debates about civil liberties were “academic.” She said the crime itself was a violation of her civil rights–which to me seems like a conflation of the freedoms we expect from our government and the natural rights (life, liberty, etc.) we expect from fellow members of humanity.

I think it’s a distinction people don’t think about as much these days. And I can see why the difference is hard to articulate. Here’s one way to look at it: I want my government to protect me from crime, but I can’t hold them responsible if I become a victim. For that I have to blame whichever human jerk does something to me. They’ve violated my natural rights. But if the police decide to arrest me without cause — say, throwing all suspicious-looking women on scooters in jail for a day — I may very well have a reason to complain that my civil rights have been violated. Ok. Sorry for the lesson-time.

I’ve still got my gay pride beads on from today’s rain-soaked parade. But here’s a question for the rest of the folks who lined 17th and P streets today: is it just me, or has Capitol Pride gone a little corporate?

The parade started with the Chief of Police and the Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit, followed by Mayor Adrian Fenty, Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton and a smattering of Councilmembers. But then it seemed like one business after another.

Citibank, Verizon, Bloom Grocery Stores all participated in the parade. Southwest Airlines had one of the coolest and biggest floats all day (they even gave out inflatable airplane toys). You should have seen the woman on the Maid to Clean float gyrate.

The D.C. Cowboys were great, and PFLAG’s “I Love My Gay Son” signs always make me a little teary. And far be it from me to judge how a marginalized community celebrates itself. But it made me a little sad that the guys in leather were so far behind SunTrust Bank’s ATM puppet.

On Saturday night, D.C. police converged on a small, one-way street in Trinidad to man the first of their newly-approved Neighborhood Safety Zone checkpoints. Officers stopped cars driving south down Montello Avenue NE, which is hardly a major entrance point to the area, with Florida Avenue and its tributaries just to the south. (In fact, I tried for a while to enter via the checkpoint but kept ending up on the other side of it without passing through the gauntlet.) Officers stood in the middle of the intersection and asked drivers for I.D. and an explanation of their business in the neighborhood. Sometimes, an officer would use a flashlight to peer into the vehicles (does that constitute plain view if they find something?) If drivers didn’t have a good enough reason to be in the hood, the officers waved them to the left. According to legal observers from the ACLU, about 90 percent of the cars were rejected, often because the drivers didn’t live in that immediate block. Most people parked around the corner and walked back.

The whole scene felt a bit surreal. Everyone was sort of slow and sleepy after a day of 96-degere heat. Storm clouds darkened the sky but held their rain, just sparking up with intermittent lightening. Despite the impending storm, this normally sleepy intersection attracted a crowd of many dozens. There were people from the neighborhood, police officers and white-shirted brass, and lots of white people in t-shirts with clip boards (representatives of various do-good organizations). I watched assistant chief Diane Groomes field questions, or rather, commentary, from a group of frustrated young people, some of whom kept calling her Cathy. There were lots of comparisons to Iraq and Afghanistan. One young man asked Groomes why the city hadn’t held a neighborhood meeting to discuss the checkpoint. She said it was a fast, strategic decision in response to the murders, and that she was here now, ready to listen. The guy said back, “You want to listen to us now, after you’ve made your decision.” She said, “People make decisions all the time.” In addition to questioning the legality and civil rights implications of the action, many people wondered aloud about the effectiveness. One little boy remarked, “people do killings when they’re walking, too.”

While the city has repeatedly stressed the legality of the plan, the courts have not whole-heartedly endorsed checkpoints. In Indianapolis v. Edmunds, the Supreme Court ruled that checkpoints that serve general law enforcement purposes (rather than narrow dragnets for specific violations) contravene the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches. It seems plausible that Lanier’s checkpoints are pretty damn broad and general, even if they target just one neighborhood. If I were the ACLU (and knew more than one CrimPro class worth of law), it might seem like a reasonable gamble on which to wage a potentially precedent-setting lawsuit. Which makes me wonder what kind of payoff Lanier sees in this plan. The crime-fighting benefits are vague at best, and she hasn’t exactly won over the community. Is all that worth a potentially costly legal battle?

Instead of empathizing with her critics, Chief Cathy Lanier has cast them as jaded curmudgeons who don’t really care about public safety. In an open letter to 5th District residents, she wrote, “It is unfortunate that some want to criticize the use of this tool when we are simply trying to reduce the opportunity for violent offenders to enter a neighborhood for the sole purpose of taking someone’s life… I want to thank the officers, residents and other supporters of this district for what residents agree was a successful weekend. No matter what the critics say, this collaboration was a way of working together to confront potential violent crime at the door to say, “the crime and the killings are not welcomed in the Fifth District or any part of our city.”

On the list serve, one resident responded: “It is unfortunate that if someone expresses concern about this tool, you see it as negative… It is easy to set up a road block and soothe your mind that you are fighting crime in our neighborhood, but many of us feel that you have not done enough of the good old fashioned policing to justify setting up road blocks and it makes us all feel as though we are criminals.”

When news broke last week that 17 officers who had been terminated for various acts of misconduct were rehired because of administrative foul-ups, the D.C. Police Department called on a familiar face to take the brunt of reporters’ questions: Assistant Chief Peter Newsham.

Newsham has become the department’s expert in crisis management. In 2002, he took the heat from the Pershing Park debacle, when scores of people—some of them anti-globalization types and some of them onlookers and tourists—were rounded up, arrested, and hogtied. He was the officer in charge who ordered the arrests that day.

Now, Newsham, by virtue of his leadership in Internal Affairs, was being asked to explain how the department blew deadlines in issuing its terminations.

By the end of the week, Police Chief Cathy Lanier had moved to re-fire the 17 officers. On Monday, the number officers reinstated over administrative mistakes had climbed to 24, according to police spokesperson Traci Hughes. The additional seven officers were also being considered for re-firing. All 24 have been placed on desk duty.

The police union argues that police officials need to be held accountable—including Newsham. “I can’t wait for them to have hearings,” says the FOP’s Kristopher Baumann. And of Newsham: “If anyone is going to be responsible management-wise, that would be one individual.”

“Am I worried about being disciplined?” Newsham says. “We’ll obviously get to the bottom of that. If I were in some way responsible for this, I would expect to be disciplined.”

It was announced today that the city will be looking into new legal arguments to challenge the reinstatement of the 17 D.C. Police Department officers originally terminated for misconduct. The FOP has their own arguments here.

According to Traci Hughes, D.C. Police Department spokesperson, the number of reinstatement cases to be reviewed will be higher than the original 17. She says that there are “at least 20″ cases where officers were reinstated based on some kind of procedural screw up. And those numbers could increase.

Could there be more than 25 cases? “We don’t know yet,” Hughes says. She said that the reason for this new review is that Lanier couldn’t stomach bringing some of these officers back on the force. “She just reached the threshold of her tolerance,” Hughes explains.

As for any kind of deadline on these reviews, Hughes isn’t sure. “It’s hard to say. It’s hard to put a time deadline on it,” Hughes says. “It’s going to take some time, though.”