If you examine the police-involved shooting death of David Kerstetter, you have to look closely at one key question: Were the two cops justified in entering Kerstetter's Logan Circle condo.
With that in mind, I asked a number of experts for their opinions. Before I get to their answers, first some background.
On the morning of November [...]

On November 6, two D.C. Police Department officers shot and killed David Kerstetter. The two cops knew that he was mentally-ill, that he was probably in crisis. The police department says that Kerstetter had a knife, that there was a struggle, that the officers had to shoot. We recently published a full story on the [...]

DeOnte Rawlings. David Kerstetter. Both cases of police-shooting deaths. Both cases where there are outstanding questions left unanswered. The D.C. Police Department, so far, has remained mum on some of those questions which City Desk eloquently wrote up this morning. We also have a detailed account of the Kerstetter shooting.
In the police department's latest annual [...]

A belated kudos to the Washington Post editorial page, for nailing a thoroughly reported editorial-cum-investigative piece on the DeOnte Rawlings situation. Though we've already cited the piece in our fabulous Loose Lips Daily, a more complete breakdown is in order.
Rawlings, 14, was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer on Sept. 17, 2007. Subsequent [...]

On the morning of November 6, two D.C. police officers responded to the home of David Kerstetter. The door to Mr. Kerstetter's condo had been been busted open. It looked suspicious. So the police were called. The officers were eventually confronted with a very simple scene: Mr. Kerstetter in his bedroom, allegedly holding a knife.
This [...]

In the wake of the police shooting death of David Kerstetter, I was told by the D.C. police department that its point man on issues related to dealing with residents in crisis is Commander Brian Jordan. Kerstetter had long suffered with his bipolar diagnosis. When the police arrived at his Logan Circle condo on November [...]

David Kerstetter was shot and killed by a D.C. Police Department officer on Nov. 6. We wrote a cover story on the incident. During the course of my reporting, I spent hours on the phone with Kerstetter's family. They talked about his love of Mel Brooks movies, his caustic wit at the dinner table, his [...]

This week we published a cover story about the D.C. Police shooting death of David Kerstetter. Kerstetter lived at the Iowa, a complex located at 1325 13th Street NW. During the course of reporting, I interviewed a neighbor, Sherry Lichtenberg who met with the two cops that morning, who talked to them just before they [...]

David Kerstetter was shot and killed by D.C. police on November 6. The story merited little attention. Police say simply that they found Kerstetter in his home, that he was brandishing a knife, that there was a struggle and that they used self-defense when they fired their guns.
But there were still tons of questions left [...]

Last Thursday, David Kerstetter was shot and killed by a Metropolitan Police Department officer. Kerstetter lived just south of Logan Circle in a condo. Two officers responded to his address after receiving a call that his door was open or that he was suicidal (the stories are conflicting). We wrote about the incident here and [...]

As you all know by now, a D.C. Police Department veteran shot and killed a suicidal man, who allegedly was brandishing a knife, at 1325 13th Street NW. The incident took place yesterday morning following a 911 call.
David Kerstetter, the man who police shot and killed, was familiar to officers who worked on 13th [...]

This was the worst-case scenario.
Yesterday morning, the D.C. police department received a 911 call for a reported suicide attempt at 1325 13th Street NW. Two officers, a 20-year veteran and a rookie fresh out of the academy, took the call.
When they arrived on the scene, the officers found a man clutching a knife, according to [...]