Inside D.C. General's family shelter, the staff had a term for rooms deemed uninhabitable: "off line." This designation was reserved for the worst of the worst—rooms without working heat or overrun by mold or peeling paint or infested with roaches. The off-line label extended even to rooms that no one thought to convert to living quarters, like utility closets.

Residents were forced to sleep on deflated air-mattresses in a cafeteria, bed down shoulder-to-shoulder in activity rooms and lay on their own coats in hallways (see picture above). But for a time at least, Families Forward Inc., the nonprofit charged with running the shelter, kept residents out of the off-line rooms. Until the February snowstorms hit and the already over-crowded shelter became overwhelmed.

According to two former staffers and two residents, the off-line rooms were eventually filled. In one case, a supply closet became a bedroom. Families Forward tried to pressure two pregnant women to share that particular closet. There were holes in the walls, recalls one staffer. "You could tell that the rats or mice had ate through it," the staffer says. "It was big enough to put a single bed and maybe a crib. It was a tad bigger than a walk-in closet."

One of the women refused, the staffer says. But the other pregnant woman took the room. Another staffer recalls that there weren't just holes but mold. Aaron McCormick, 42, a single father who resides at the shelter, says the space had been "storage for emergency food." He describes it as "more like a jail cell."

The supply closet conversion, and the moving of other residents into off-line rooms, was just another sign that Families Forward Inc. could not manage D.C. General. By then, residents had complained about the bad food, and the long waits to see case workers, and of course, the gaping holes in the walls:

And the cramped sleeping arrangements in the activity rooms:

On Feb. 9, a newborn died after being found unconscious in her shelter room. Two former Families Forward workers and one current employee say this wasn't the first newborn death at the shelter. The previous year, another newborn was found dead.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner says a baby died on May 2, 2009; it had the same last name as the baby identified by former staffers. The cause of death was determined as "Sudden unexpected death in infancy associated with sleeping in prone position and inappropriate bedding."

"It was kind of scary," says one former staffer. Both former staffers say that Families Forward Inc. did not provide grief counselors to shelter employees or residents. Management just gave them a warning: Do not talk about the dead baby.

"When we had the incident with the first baby that passed, the only thing they said was not to speak about it to anyone," the former staffer recalls. "They said 'that's your job' if you talk. No one knows how the first baby died. It was on the hush-hush."

When asked about the 2009 newborn death, Joi Buford, Families Forward's shelter programs manager, refused to comment.

The staffers point to another long-standing issue within the shelter. This year, security guards found that the unused sixth floor had been converted into something of a bachelor pad. On their rounds, according to current and former staffers, the guards discovered used condoms, condom wrappers, and blunt papers. Garbage bags had been spread out on the floor for "bedding."

Residents have complained about staff offering to trade extra blankets and juice for sexual favors. Families Forward Inc. recently fired several staffers for inappropriate contact with residents. Helen Hare, a spokesperson in Mayor Adrian Fenty's office, said that the Attorney General is looking into the allegations and refused further comment.

But current and former staffers say the sexual activities between staff and residents had been going on for some time. Staff and residents complained to management "plenty of times," says one former staffer.

"We had meetings about it," the former staffer says. "That was it. Even when they had names—names were given to them several times—nothing would ever be done. The thing that got me: We have cameras. But a lot of times they were breaking the cameras down, pulling the cameras down.”

At least one meeting took place last year to discuss an allegation that a staffer had gotten a resident pregnant. Says one former Families Forward employee:

"The staffer didn’t get fired. He was going around with a cellphone showing off pictures of the baby. He got her pregnant last year. I remember the rumors. It was last year, end of hypothermia. I remember the resident, she was on the fifth floor. She got pregnant. This resident had complained. After she got pregnant, they got her out there. I was very disappointed by it. Why is he still here? You had a meeting about it but you didn’t do anything to him about it. He wasn’t fired. We kept constantly getting complaints about this same guy with the residents."

One current D.C. General resident says that the employee's alleged harassment of residents was well known. As soon as she moved into the shelter, she says other residents warned her about him.

The two former staffers say that, along with the sex-for-blankets allegation, they heard complaints about co-workers trading cigarettes and small bills for blowjobs with female residents in the shelter bathrooms.

Again, one staffer says, management was aware of the problem but the activities continued. The staffer says they counseled a woman who had traded money for blowjobs. "She stated that she needed the money," the staffer says. "She seemed like she was doing what she had to do to survive."

The former Families Forward employee says that it was difficult to work at the shelter under CEO Ruby King-Gregory.

"I prayed that their contract be taken from them, that [the city] get someone who really cares, that really has the residents’ best interest at heart," the former employee says. "I would stop and talk to each and every resident. I could spend a whole day just comforting, listening to the residents, telling them that it will be all right. I took it home. I took it with me. I carried that burden with me. It broke my heart to know what they were going through, what they were dealing with. It was very disconcerting for me. And it starts with the head Ruby Gregory.”

Gregory did not return calls seeking comment.

Councilmember Tommy Wells has scheduled a hearing on D.C. General for Wednesday morning. Wells told City Desk last week that Families Forward's contract to run the shelter will be terminated.

In their probe of the discovery abuses, plaintiffs lawyers in one of the  Pershing Park cases may have found new evidence of alleged criminal conduct by District employees. In early February, a District employee admitted in deposition that they destroyed materials at the order of their supervisor, according to court records.

Plaintiffs lawyers in the Chang case write in a footnote in a court filing dated Feb. 19:

"The extent of the District's outrageous conduct was highlighted this week when it was learned in a deposition, that a District employee, at the order of a supervisor, destroyed 15-20 boxes of material, which included approximately 50 VHS tapes–all of which was located in the office of the individual responsible for overseeing the Joint Operations Command Center."

Yikes.

The employee deposed  is George Crawford, a computer specialist who has worked for the D.C. Police Department for 12 years. Crawford's story had been included in the Sporkin Report. But plaintiffs lawyers were able to get more details from Crawford in deposition which included the depth of document and tape destruction.

The Joint Operations Command Center is the hub that would have generated the running resume, the police log of their minute-by-minute activities. The running resume for the mass arrests at Pershing Park on Sept. 27, 2002 went missing and has never been turned over to plaintiffs.

Police video of the events has also come under scrutiny. Plaintiffs lawyers had filed a lengthy brief arguing that the tapes that had been turned over in discovery were faulty: heavily edited, out-of-sequence, and missing the moment of the mass arrests. AG Peter Nickles and Co. had defended the videos. But at a recent hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, the OAG lawyers admitted that the tapes had been edited and were merely compilations of footage.

The OAG has still failed to turn over the original videotapes.

*file photo by Darrow Montgomery.

After yesterday's 12-1 D.C. Council vote to turn his job from a mayoral appointment to an elected position, Attorney General Peter Nickles called the legislation a disaster.

Councilmember Phil Mendelson says Nickles flip-flopped on the issue.

During yesterday's run up to the vote, Mendelson circulated a memo to his colleagues on the dais providing a timeline of Nickles' evolution.

Following the first public hearing on the legislation, Nickles wrote Mendo on March 3, 2008. Nickles stated: "Thank you for suggesting that we work collaboratively to draft legislation to make the Attorney General of the District of Columbia an elected official. We are happy to participate in the workgroup created to draft a bill which will meet the approval of Congress."

And then on Jan. 27, Nickles told the Examiner that he supports the idea of an elected AG. He is quoted as saying: "I like the idea of bringing democracy to the District."

And finally, in a July 10, 2009, written statement for the public hearing on the bill, Nickles wrote:

"I am already on record as being in favor of an elected office. I strongly favor the idea of bringing democracy to the District and an elected Attorney General would be a step in that direction."

However in his same statement, Nickles went on to argue that he in fact did not approve of an elected AG position because it would insulate the city's top lawyer from the mayor's influence, direction, and oversight. Which Nickles claims is a bad thing.

Nickles wrote that electing an AG would "destroy the lines of accountability that enable the Mayor to direct the legal functions of the District government."

So Nickles really didn't want the council to approve this bill all along.

One council staffer called Nickles' arguments a joke. "The mayor isn't left vulnerable. All the sudden, the poor mayor. He has tons of fucking lawyers that can defend his ass. Talk about perverting the system. How embarrassing—12 to 1 it passed, this is Jack 'Count the Votes' Evans."

File photo by Darrow Montgomery.

On April 23, 2008, Larry Rice Jr. had made the mistake of visiting a home on the 5800 block of Fields Place NE. D.C. Police soon raided the home on suspicion of drug activity; the officers did not have a warrant and found no drugs or any weapons. Rice tried to flee, according to court records, by attempting to crawl through a back-room window.

Rice managed to get his head out the window when Officer John Stathers found him.

Rice did not have a history of violent crimes. He had not been committing any crimes that day nor did he make any violent moves toward the officer. He was unarmed.

Stathers drew his weapon and grabbed Rice's leg. According to a civil complaint filed in U.S. District Court, Stathers then fired his weapon striking Rice in the gut.

Rice was then lowered to the floor.  The complaint then states:

"While on the ground, Officer Stathers and Officer Derek Starliper began hitting Plaintiff in the head and screaming at Plaintiff, demanding that Plaintiff provide his name. Plaintiff continuously indicated to the officers that he had been shot and was bleeding. The officers continuously yelled profanities at Plaintiff, demanding that he keep his mouth shut."

According to the complaint, Rice was then dragged to the front of the house where he remained for at least 30 minutes. No officers administered first aid or treated his gunshot wound. Eventually, 911 was called. Rice sustained a gunshot wound to his abdomen, a lacerated right liver, a lacerated diaphragm, a gastric injury, and respiratory failure. During his hospital stay, he had emergency surgery. Later during his stay, he got pneumonia.

For several weeks, Rice remained in the intensive care unit at Prince George's Hospital. He was hospitalized for more than a month. Since then, he's had a subsequent surgery on his lungs.

Rice was charged with "intimidating, impeding, interfering with and retaliating against a government official." The case was quickly tossed out. The lawsuit was filed in February.

The D. C. Police Department appears to have cleared the officers. As is typical, a lawsuit seems required to get the facts out and objectively analyzed.

But AG Peter Nickles has moved to bar the public from seeing a significant chunk of this case. Nickles and Co. at the Office of the Attorney General filed for a protective order that would cover the officers' personnel files and the department's training manuals.

In other words, Nickles doesn't want you to know if these officers had previously fired their weapons or had been accused of excessive force in the past. He also doesn't want you to know how the police department actually trains its officers on when they can draw their guns. The order was granted.

Nickles has requested a very broad protective order in the Pershing Park case. That request is still pending.

*photo by Darrow Montgomery.

In our running poll of the D.C. Council's Judiciary Committee members regarding AG Peter Nickles' conduct, we finally reached Councilmember Yvette Alexander.

Nickles has come under fire recently for his office's conduct in a Pershing Park civil suit. District evidence has either been destroyed or lost and discovery continues to be a problem in that case. The discovery process has dragged on for years. The U.S. District Court judge in the case slammed the OAG, ordered Nickles to submit a sworn statement explaining his office's actions, and called on the D.C. Council to investigate the OAG's handling of the case. The issues before Nickles include one very false affidavit.

So far Councilmember Mary Cheh has called for Nickles to resign. Yesterday, Councilmember Phil Mendelson joined Cheh in pushing for Nickles to rejoin the private sector.  Councilmember Jack Evans still fully supports Nickles.

Alexander says she is reserving judgment on Nickles for the time being. She would like to see the council take up the matter. "I wouldn't have a problem with requesting an investigation," she tells City Desk. "You are innocent until proven guilty. I would want to know what happened with the evidence."

If there was purposeful or criminal mishandling of evidence, Alexander says, then Nickles should be ousted.

Alexander says that Nickles still hasn't accepted his role as the attorney general. "I have not seen the distinction in his role as the general counsel and attorney general," she explains. "It troubles me. That was one of my concerns during the confirmation."

*photo courtesy of Alexander's awesome website.

Despite U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s willingness to talk about race in America and his pledge to end racial profiling, his Department of Justice hasn’t done much to dismantle Bush-era guidelines on national security; Those guidelines not only promote racial profiling by the Federal Bureau of Investigation but create justification for state and local law enforcement agents to do it too, the ACLU charges.

"Racial profiling remains a widespread and pervasive problem throughout the U.S., impacting the lives of millions of people in the African American, Asian, Latino, South Asian, Arab and Muslim communities," Chandra Bhatnagar, staff attorney with the ACLU Human Rights Program and the main author of the report said in a press release. "The U.S. government must take urgent, direct action to rid the nation of the scourge of racial and ethnic profiling and bring this country into conformity with both the Constitution and international human rights obligations."

The ACLU made the charges in a report to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. To read the press release or the entire report, click here.

In 1996, Holder proposed cracking down on marijuana users and sellers, a policy perspective which was and—assuming he still holds it—is completely antithetical to President-Elect Barack Obama's promise to end federal crackdowns on medical marijuana dispensaries.

What kind of legacy did Holder leave? Evidence abounds that the drug war has done nothing to help D.C.'s crime problem. The MPD are still investigating recent violence in Petworth, but it's likely that the crimes have a drug component, just as they do in Trinidad, Anacostia, on Kennedy Street, and in other parts of the District. Turf wars have become part and parcel of the drug trade, and are a direct result of law enforcement artificially driving up prices for drugs and limiting geographic opportunities for transactions.

The Washington Post on Holder's (failed) drug policies in 1996:

U.S. Attorney Eric H. Holder Jr. said in an interview that he is considering not only prosecuting more marijuana cases but also asking the D.C. Council to enact stiffer penalties for the sale and use of marijuana.

"We have too long taken the view that what we would term to be minor crimes are not important," Holder said, referring to current attitudes toward marijuana use and other offenses such as panhandling.

Now, people arrested in the District and charged with distributing marijuana, even large quantities, face only misdemeanor charges, a standard that has sparked repeated complaints by police officers....

Holder said he hopes to discourage some of that activity by being tougher on marijuana crimes. New guidelines should be in place by the end of the month, he said, noting that the District could learn from New York's "zero-tolerance" policy. There, crime plummeted when police aggressively enforced quality-of-life crimes, including panhandling and public drinking, which gave officers an opportunity to check for drugs, guns and outstanding warrants.

"If you take these so-called minor crimes seriously and treat them fully, it has a ripple effect," Holder said. [h/t to Dave Weigel]

BTW: New York's "zero-tolerance" policy wasn't a reform in any meaningful sense of the word. Instead, it gave the state license to lock away undesirables, of which—by N.Y.'s criteria—D.C. has more than a few.

Anyone care to bet against Holder finding a way to invest more money in the War on Drugs while still fulfilling Obama's promise to end raids on medical marijuana dispensaries? My money says the latter will give them enough political capital to fuck over recreational users across the country.

In a cover story in 1997—the same year Clinton nominated Holder for Dep. Attorney General—City Paper questioned Holder's approach to corruption during his tenure as U.S. Attorney for D.C.

But for all the love Holder has engendered in the community as U.S. Attorney, he has had precious little impact on the city's endemic municipal corruption.

Holder defended himself to reporter Stephanie Mencimer as follows:

"Certainly, the Dirty Dozen occurred while I was here," he says, referring to the 12 police officers caught up in an FBI sting operation in 1993 for bribery and other drug charges. "There was the housing case involving the sale of Section 8 authorizations, and there are other things in my mind that I think about our public corruption section and the work that they've done on the local side. So I'm not sure there's anything we have to apologize for, or try to defend. We've been as vigilant as we've ever been."

Further complications to this appointment include Holder's instrumental role in Clinton's presidential pardon of "billionaire fugitive" Mark Rich, and a June interview with Legal Times in which he said an ascent to A.G. "ain't gonna happen."

Just for good measure, a bit of CP prescience, courtesy of Mencimer:

Even without any big corruption trials, in the final analysis, Holder will get what all the District's U.S. Attorneys get for their trouble here: a better job. Holder's three and a half years in the District have given him wings. He's likely to be flying on to the Justice Department soon, where the albatross around his neck will be replaced by one who looks quite a bit like Bill Clinton. Meanwhile, the District will be left with the same old cadre of crooks, a durable group who know that if they bide their time they can outlast just about any U.S. Attorney.

Photograph courtesy of Covington & Burling LLP