Yet, as Johnny Barnes of the American Civil Liberties Union points out, "the only homicide in Trinidad last year was at the hands of the police."

It's a year and one day since Trey Joyner, 25, was mowed down by police bullets, and family members of the slain Trinidad resident are still waiting for an update on the investigation. Relatives, along with some fuming local activists, gathered in front of the John A. Wilson building on Wednesday to point out as much.

Dressed in the coveralls of his workplace, Travis Joyner wanted to know why authorities had yet to reveal what they'd discovered about the circumstances surrounding his brother's death. The family only knows that on June 8, 2009, Trey Joyner was killed by plainclothes park police, allegedly after he pulled a gun.

Eyewitnesses have contradicted an assertion made by cops that after a struggle in an alley, Joyner turned a gun on a group of U.S. Park Police officers who were in Trinidad as part of an inter-agency task force led by the FBI. Witnesses' claim that Joyner was shot in the back would also seem to contradict the cops' account.

"I'm to the point that I'm very frustrated, that our family hasn't gotten any answers," Joyner tells City Desk. "To me it's very sad, because I feel as though if it had happened in another area of Washington, D.C. like Dupont Circle of Upper Northwest, I believe that the investigation would have been over."

Joyner says the local U.S. Attorney's office, which was investigating the tragedy, contacted the family a week after the shooting, but not one time after. The investigation has now been taken over by federal prosecutors in Philadelphia.

Joyner says his family has tried to contact Mayor Adrian Fenty to see if he could help get answers, but the mayor wasn't interested. Cousin Patrice Lancaster hounded the Mayor's office about her deceased relative, and says she was hung up on three times. Eventually, someone who identified herself as "an administrative assistant"  to the mayor told her "that Mayor Fenty didn't want to have anything to do with my cousin's case," she says. 

"Not true," mayoral spokesperson Mafara Hobson says of Lancaster's story via email.

Trey Joyner's father, Walter Joyner, his voice wavering, called for an end to the violence: "I would just like to say, put yourself in my place and all of our brothers and sisters need to ban together and stop this police brutality that is happening on our streets killing our youth. That's all I have to say right now."

Staff photo by Rend Smith

Yesterday, Kristopher Baumann won another two-year term as Chairman of the FOP/MPD Labor Committee.This will be his third term playing the sharpest thorn in the side of police brass. The preliminary vote tally shows that the rank and file more than approve of Baumann's work. Out of the 1800 or so that voted, Baumann received a little over 1000 votes.

Initially, Baumann faced three challengers; one candidate dropped out shortly before the election. The election was not without controversy. The Examiner's Harry Jaffe had reported earlier this month that Baumann's fliers had been repeatedly swiped from police department walls.

"There were issues where our campaign materials were constantly being removed from police facilities throughout D.C. especially headquarters," Baumann tells City Desk. "The posters for the other candidates were not removed. There were anonymous fliers attacking me."

Baumann says that the department refused his request to investigate the matter.

Baumann has done much to piss off Chief Lanier and Co. And it's a safe bet that he's not received an Evite to Peter Nickles' horse farm in Virginia. He's successfully joined the fight against the police checkpoints and threw up a roadblock to Lanier's All Hands On Deck gimmick.

There's still plenty of  pending litigation on Baumann's docket from FOIA requests to whistleblower cases to an unsettled union contract. "I think there's a lot of unfinished business," he says.

"What this department needs is sunlight," Baumann, 42, explains. "Look at Pershing Park. That is a disgrace. That is a stain on the police department."

Still, Baumann says the union job isn't the job he really wants. "I just want to go back to being a police officer, but what kind of police officer would I be if I saw all these problems and did nothing about it?"

*file photo by Darrow Montgomery.

The District's only recourse at this point is to take its case to the Supreme Court.

AG Peter Nickles tells City Desk: "I'm disappointed. We'll look at our options including a Supreme Court request....The D.C. Circuit has spoken and we'll take it from there."

This morning, the Examiner's Bill Myers dropped a sweet story on the D.C. Police Department's in-fighting over the Trinidad checkpoints. What makes the story so great is that Myers actually got the police department to respond to a FOIA and give him internal e-mails. So instead of boilerplate, he's got the good stuff. It seems Assistant Chief Diane Groomes really had some issues with the checkpoints.

The problem I have is with his own newspaper. In presenting it on the web, they bolded three topic points at the beginning of his story: "Diane Groome, Chief Cathy Lanier, Barricades." Which name did they spell wrong?

It's Groomes not Groome!

Hey Examiner, you finally got a good story and you screw it up with a freshman mistake!