In a recent public filing, plaintiffs lawyers in the last remaining Pershing Park case provide additional evidence showing that then-Chief Charles Ramsey issued the order to mass arrest the 400 individuals on Sept. 27, 2002. All those arrests were promptly thrown out by city lawyers. More than seven years later, the arrests remain a huge controversy.

In recent depositions, two police officials testified that they heard Ramsey give the arrest order. Ramsey has repeatedly denied that he gave the command to make the mass arrests.

Captain Ralph McLean, who had previously given a similiar account, stated in his deposition: "It is my sincerest belief that Chief Ramsey said, 'lock those motherfuckers up.'"

Last week, Det. Paul Hustler backed up his affidavit with his own deposition testimony. He stated that he heard Ramsey order Assistant Chief Peter Newsham to "teach them a lesson" and "lock the motherfuckers up."

Plaintiffs lawyers go on to write:

"Hustler further testified that he was expressly told by Assistant Chief Jordan that no one was to be allowed out of the park and that even journalists would be arrested."

*file photo by Darrow Montgomery.

But the DOC still had to comply with At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson's request for data leading up to last week's oversight hearing on DOC matters.

Mendelson had asked for an accounting of assaults at the D.C. Jail in a letter to DOC Director Devon Brown sent last fall. Brown finally responded on Feb. 22. Talk about accountability and transparency!

Brown sent along a spreadsheet listing assaults and the dates for assaults. The spreadsheet appears to have been hastily made. The assaults are not listed in chronological order nor are they very detailed. In some cases, it is difficult to tell whether an inmate was stabbed or not.

Here's what we do know from the DOC's stats:

*On August 2, 2009: an inmate was stabbed by another inmate in Southwest One.

*On August 15, 2009: An inmate was on his way back to his cell when another inmate passed by and began stabbing the other inmate multiple times until he fell and then began stomping him. The inmate who was being attacked pulled out a "hand-fashioned" knife in an attempt to defend himself.

*On Sept. 1, 2009: Two inmates chased down another inmate and stabbed him after leaving the visitor's area.

*On Sept. 12, 2009: An inmate was stabbed in the chest, thigh, and calf.

*On Sept. 21, 2009: An inmate was stabbed in his cell "with a metal object." The inmate's stab wounds "were found to his right side, right chin area, right inner thumb, and right forearm."

*On Oct. 10, 2009: It appears that four inmates were stabbed by one inmate in Southwest One.

The data ends in October. The DOC did not provide statistics for November, December, January, and February.

D.C. Police Assistant Chief Peter Newsham tells City Desk that detectives are investigating five stabbings.

A newborn was found unconscious at the D.C. General family shelter on the morning of Feb. 9. The baby girl was rushed to Children's Hospital where she was pronounced dead.

Beverly Fields, the spokesperson for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, tells City Desk that the cause and manner of the child's death are still pending.

D.C. Police Assistant Chief Peter Newsham says the baby had no signs of infection and that the autopsy had showed no signs of trauma. "The baby was alone in a bassinet," he says.

According to a resident at the shelter, who was a close friend, the mother had come to D.C. General pregnant in September. Soon after giving birth in early January at a local hospital, she returned to the shelter. The resident said that there were other mothers who also had children during their stays at D.C. General but either chose not to return or to place their newborns with family.

When the mother came back to the shelter, the resident, she received no help from staff taking care of the baby. She said the mother was troubled and appeared overwhelmed.

Telephone messages left for the mother went unreturned.

File photo by Darrow Montgomery

According to an eyewitness, a D.C. Police detective (pictured above w/ gun) went nuts after kids pelted his Hummer with snowballs at 14th and U Streets NW this afternoon. The veteran detective got out of his car and eventually grabbed for his gun, displaying it to the crowd. He did not immediately identify himself as a police officer. He calmed down once his fellow uniformed cop arrived. Apparently, someone called 911 to report a man with gun. The snowball fight had been well hyped on Twitter. The news of the incident first broke there. We caught up with an eyewitness moments ago.

Eyewitness Matthew Bradley tells City Desk:

"An hour ago, we showed up to see a snowball fight already in progress. Two factions along 14th Street along the intersection. It was pretty friendly, mostly OK. At one point, there was one interaction with the police that I saw. A cop got stuck in the snow. People stopped and helped him out. A couple moments later, at the intersection, heading west along U was this big maroon Hummer. A small faction of people decided to target it with snowballs. They're throwing snowballs at the Hummer. It turns out the driver of the Hummer is a detective. He gets out. He's waving a walkie talkie. It's not going well. Then he starts waving a gun. He hadn't identified himself at this point. There was a point where things cooled off a bit, more police showed up, and he identified himself at that point. The name was Det. Baylor. My guess was B-A-Y-L-O-R."

"There was a point where it got really tense. The experience for many people was snowball fight kind of fun...and then there's a guy with a gun."

Bradley says he heard that the police were responding to a 911 call for a man with a gun. The detective calmed down once his fellow cops arrived. Bradley says that he thinks the cop was a detective but is not 100 percent sure. D.C. Police later confirm that the gun-waving cop is a veteran detective.

Later in the incident, the detective goes into the crowd and grabs a man who he thinks threw a snowball at him:

Bradley has posted more photos of the entire incident.

A video of the incident made by Chris Strohm shows the aftermath–where the officer admits he pulled his gun out:

Like so many others, Robin Bell heard about the snowball fight at 14th and U Streets NW and decided to go and check it out. He tells City Desk that prior to the incident, a cop car got stuck in the road and everybody stopped the snowball fight and helped the cop get his car out of the snow. "The crowd cheered and everybody was happy," Bell says.

Soon, though, he started hearing people shouting: "Don't bring a gun to a snowball fight!"

"Then I walked over and I saw a police officer brandishing a weapon," Bell says referring to the uniform cop. He says he didn't see the detective brandish his weapon–only the furious aftermath. He says the detective was yelling and "kind of out of control." "It was really strange to see a police officer so upset and angry over what seemed at best a misunderstanding," Bell explains. "At worst, it was some kids throwing a snowball at him."

At one point, Bell says, the detective ran into the crowd and grabbed man whom he thought might have thrown a snowball at him. Bell adds that the detective them put the individual next to his Hummer. Cops grabbed two others. All three were given warnings. "It was ridiculous because everyone was throwing snowballs," Bell says.

Via Twitter:

"Detective Baylor(sp?) hummer get hits by snowballs and he waves a gun around. Cops on radio say Det is being 'blackmailed'"

And later:

Chant from 14 & U snowball fight: "You don't bring a gun to a snowball fight." Banner: "No war but snowball war."

Prince of Petworth reports similar cop scene:

"A reader writes in about the snowball fight at 14th and U. Word on the street is that apparently it started in good fun but then someone hit a Hummer driving by belonging to a police officer and then the reader says multiple patrol cars responded."

D.C. Police Officer at the 3rd District does confirm to City Desk that the police did respond to 14th and U, refused further comment.

An officer tells me that 2D cops responded and that 3D cops assisted on the incident. An official at 2D says that officers did respond to an incident involving snowballs being thrown at a passing vehicle at 14th and U. He stated that he had not heard about an officer waving his gun around. WJLA just posted a story on the incident with video. It appears that the officer merely brandished his gun. Another uniformed officer took out his pistol.

Still not cool.

Assistant Chief Diane Groomes tells LL via e-mail:

"Hello..i am just learning of this alleged incident..we are trying to verify and get in contact with witnesses to interview...to confirm and investigate"

More video here.

Assistant Chief Peter Newsham tells LL: "There was no police pulling guns on snowball people."
Newsham described the detective as a veteran detective.

*All photos courtesy of Matthew Bradley.

For D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles, Pershing Park isn't over. Though the city's top lawyer had just settled a big lawsuit with 400 plaintiffs over the mass arrests that took place on Sept. 27, 2002, there is another, more stubborn suit sitting out there.

Attorneys in the Chang case represent just four plaintiffs. But these folks are serious: They were the first to file suit over Pershing Park in federal court, and they have already signaled that they won't be content with $18,000 bucks per plaintiff and a few stipulations that city lawyers will safeguard evidence in future cases.

Yesterday afternoon, Nickles met with the Chang principals in the hope of reaching a settlement. It was the first meeting between the parties, and Nickles had a lot riding on the outcome. If he could make a deal, he could save the District millions of dollars in attorney fees and court sanctions, and save his people from defending a tough set of facts at a trial scheduled to start in October 2010.

Could Nickles make Pershing Park go away for good?

No. The meeting was a brief one. Plaintiffs lawyer Jonathan Turley would not comment on the substance of the meeting but says a trial appears inevitable.

“It is unlikely that we will see a resolution of these issues without a trial and a verdict," Turley says. "We have assumed that a trial would occur in this case for years. All I can say is we continue to look forward to Oct. 2010, when we can put these witnesses and this evidence before a jury.”

Late last night, Turley and Co. filed a motion [PDF] in U.S. District Court that made their intentions all too clear.

The papers ask to amend the Chang complaint to include the allegations over the discovery abuses.

What does this mean? They want to put the destruction and alternation of evidence before a D.C. jury. It's possible that lawyers under Nickles and in the D.C. Police Department's general counsel office would be compelled to testify about how critical evidence went missing or was destroyed. Already, at least one official appears to have given a false affidavit.

The evidence problems range from the withholding of documents for years, to D.C. Police film and radio recordings containing mysterious gaps to the infamous missing running resume, the play-by-play documentation by the police concerning the mass arrests at Pershing Park.

At this point in the seven-year-old litigation, the discovery abuses have become way more than a sideshow. The plaintiffs' filing reads:

"These proposed amendments are obvious and represent a well-founded response to the flagrant efforts by the District defendants to obstruct both Plaintiffs' rights to recovery and the civil processes of this Court. While these discovery violations have arisen at every stage of this litigation, starting with the District Defendants' failure to preserve documents immediately after the arrests or even after the commencement of this litigation a month later, some of the most serious transgressions came to light only recently."

Plaintiffs reference the Sporkin Report and the allegation that the police department's general counsel withheld relevant documents for the past five years. They claim that the withholding of documents and discovery materials had been a tactic from the very beginning.

The plaintiffs lawyers quote from an e-mail in which Assistant Chief Peter Newsham wrote in the aftermath of the Sept. 27, 2002, Pershing Park arrests: "I am very reluctant to share our tactics and strategies with defense attorneys."

The plaintiffs attorneys go on to list some of the subsequent discovery problems aside from the missing running resume and faulty radio tapes:

*A witness testified in deposition that Chief Ramsey's computer was never searched for relevant documents and was destroyed or wiped clean when he left the department.

*In 2004, the District performed a very limited search of police e-mails.

*It was only after the discovery process ended that the District then produced more than 22,000 pages of relevant documents; they were only produced after Judge Emmet Sullivan slammed Nickles in open court. Even these documents contained gaps and unjustified redactions.

*Plaintiffs are still waiting for the District to turn over all relevant video footage. They write: "The District has produced only two unique videotapes that contain footage of the events on Sept. 27, 2002—both of which contain crucial gaps in the footage that correspond to the timing of the arrests at Pershing Park." Six cameras were designated to shoot footage of Pershing Park that day.

*Nickles has failed to live up to his promises to the court. The plaintiffs lawyers write: "Despite his stated commitment to do so, Attorney General Nickles has failed to undertake a comprehensive investigation of these discovery abuses."

When asked about the filing, Turley wrote in an e-mail to City Desk:

"The amended complaint describes growing evidence of the intentional effort of high-ranking District officials to destroy or alter evidence related to the unlawful arrests during September 2002.  The amended complaint would allow a jury to consider evidence of obstruction, spoliation, and perjury.  Regardless of whether the Court now refers this matter for criminal investigation in light of the Sporkin report and recent witness statements, we believe this matter should be put before a jury to render its judgment on the conduct of these officials."

*Photo by Darrow Montgomery.

*follow me on Twitter.

Earlier today, we linked to the Examiner's great investigative piece on District employee bonuses. Among the District employees that received a hefty bonus was none other than the Office of the Attorney General's scapegoat in the Pershing Park mess: Tom Koger.

Koger's boss, who must have approved his more than $2,000 bonus in October, is none other than Ellen Efros whom AG Peter Nickles assigned to take cover the two Pershing Park cases after Koger was reassigned.  Good to know performance did not get in the way of a sweet bonus.

Indeed, the Pershing Park case has a history of treating their scapegoats well.

Koger wasn't the first official to be rewarded after falling on his sword.That honor goes to Assistant Chief Peter Newsham. When the D.C. Council first began probing into the false arrests from Sept. 27, 2002, Newsham was the police official who took the blame for the arrests.

The false arrests have cost the District millions in settlement agreements and lawyer fees. Recently, Newsham's attorney filed a request for more than $40,000 in legal fees. And that $40,000 only covered two months worth of legal work. The case has been going on since the fall2002.

According to court records, Pershing Park only cost Newsham a written reprimand "for failing to follow the guidelines in the mass demonstration handbook."

Chief Charles Ramsey testified in deposition that the reprimand was eventually removed from Newsham's file after a few years.

Ramsey also noted that Newsham "didn't lose any responsibilities as a consequence of this mass arrest" and that the official is "one of the best members that the department has ever had."

Either Newsham masterminded the false arrests of hundreds of individuals on Sept. 27, 2002 or he was simply an outstanding official who took one for the team. The department's actions suggest what the D.C. Council suspected: that Newsham was just the fall guy.

Newsham currently an assistant chief in charge of investigations.

*photo by Darrow Montgomery.

In late August, the Examiner published a piece arguing that the District's low homicide rate might be due to the cooler-than-usual summer temps. The story was one of the dumbest crime stories we've ever read. Even D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier called the lower-temp theory "idiotic." But the story did at least provoke a little attention on the police department's stunning successes and the city's big drop in murders. When Lanier speculated that the city could see fewer than 100 homicides for the year, she wasn't laughed out of town. Of course, the District's perps did not cooperate.

As of today, there have been 106 homicides. At this point last year, there were 148 homicides. The plummeting homicide rate is still quite impressive. So why is the District experiencing such a huge drop?

In September, Lanier may have squandered some goodwill by stubbornly sticking by and fighting for her All Hands On Deck program. She would do well to let that program drop. It is certainly not worth the money and the on-going petty court fight. In talking with police brass about the drop in homicides, no one mentioned AHOD is a factor. Lanier has initiated a number of other crime-fighting strategies that have both paid off and netted support from the rank-and-file.

Assistant Chief Peter Newsham, who is in charge of the Investigative Services Bureau, attributes the homicide drop to a series of Lanier-endorsed initiatives from IT upgrades to personnel moves to a push to investigate not only fatal shootings but non-fatal shootings. "One thing [detectives] are trying to focus on is shootings that don't result in homicides," Newsham explains, "trying to ID [the perp] even when nobody is struck, what the cause of the shooting was, where the victims are from, what types of associations [they may have]."

Sounds of gunshots actually gets a serious response from police. "Even if they don't find anything, we still track that," says Lt. Wilfredo Manlapaz of the homicide branch. "We look at that—especially the chief and patrol commanders. They may deploy officers there to find out if it's true, call intelligence officers out there to find out if there is some type of crew beef. If there's a known crew out there, based on that, who do we know that's beefing and having a problem with this crew?"

This past Friday night's double shooting at 13th and W Streets NW backs up this claim. Two men were shot. Both would survive their injuries. Despite their relatively minor wounds, the police were out in force guarding the crime scene as well as trying to track down the three suspects. A police helicopter roared overhead. Near the crime scene, one man was cuffed and interrogated. Detectives could also be seen interviewing potential witnesses, fanning flash lights on the pavement looking for shell casings, and patrolling nearby alleys.

The police presence was overwhelming. At one point, a detective hollered at a dude for leaning on an unmarked police car. She even got in his face about it. Talk about zero tolerance.

The other big factor Newsham cited was Lanier's push to get homicide detectives and beat cops to share information. "The street officers know more than we do," explains Manlapaz. "They are out there every day. We aren't confined to specific beats. We aren't familiar with the people in the neighborhood."

Manlapaz says the detective-patrol-cop cooperation came into play in a December '08  stabbing death on 14th Street in Columbia Heights. The beat cops knew the victim, knew people who may have been involved and had pictures of the possible perps. Manlapaz says he put the beat cops with the intelligence unit and the detectives.

Manlapaz continues: "It involved gang members and this came into play.... We got the nicknames from the community and passed them on to the gang unit. The beat officers knew the names already and had information—I know that person, I know where they live, as a matter of fact I just saw them. The intelligence unit knew all of them. They went out and picked them up for us so we could interview them."

Manlapaz says the case soon was closed with two men arrested. "We were able to piece together what happened, why it happened, and locate the suspects quickly."

Lanier has heavily promoted and helped ease beat-cop-detective communications. How? Through roll calls, crime briefings and quarterly homicide meetings where detectives present cases to District Commanders, PSA supervisors, vice units, and selected patrol officers.  Lanier has also initiated an emergency session or two when there's been an uptick in violence.

In May, there had been three homicides within a few blocks, Manlapaz says. Lanier called a special meeting to discuss these cases. She brought "everybody together, anybody that could potentially assist with the cases."

Assistant Chief Diane Groomes confirms this new approach. "Anytime there is a spree of violence, pattern of violence not only to include homicides but carjackings/robberies—we gather the important segments together to listen to the cases and brainstorm on what is needed to close out the cases," she wrote in an e-mail to City Desk. "This includes again not just command officials but those from patrols directly—who work the streets and need this information, and we need their input."

Groomes writes that the mission for detectives has expanded: "There is a greater cooperation and the detectives have also been given the mission to also PREVENT crime instead of just investigating it after it occurs."

This greater cooperation between detectives and beat cops may be Lanier's legacy. It surely will not be her much-hyped gimmicks.

*photo by Darrow Montgomery.

*The reason that police have closed off 14th Street is that one of the victims of the shooting fled across the street from the Metro stop, leaving blood and other key items of evidence in the trail. Police are harvesting that evidence and will reopen the street later.

*The two people who were shot both appear to be adult males.

*Police do not yet have a firm description of the shooter, in part because there were so many people in the area at the time of the shooting—video surveillance will be culled to see if the perp can be spotted on film.

Quotidian rhythms are being restored to this patch of D.C. concrete pretty quickly: Five Guys is pulsing right now with burger eaters. There were at least eight people in the hamburger joint while the police were scanning the area for bullet fragments. They did not seem all that interested in the goings on behind the police tape. Most were content to just eat.

"We hope to get 14th Street open pretty quickly," Newsham says.

"Federal marshals transported Ingmar Guandique to Washington on Monday night from a federal prison facility, where he was serving time for attacking two women.

Assistant D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said that Guandique will be taken today from the D.C. Jail to the police department homicide unit's office for fingerprinting, photographing and other processing. He will then be returned to the jail to await an initial appearance in D.C. Superior Court, possibly tomorrow."