COUNCIL OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
COMMITTEE ON  JUDICIARY AND PUBLIC SAFETY

Judiciary & Public Safety Public Oversight Roundtable on Policing and Public Safety in Wards 7 and 8 

Testimony of
Marques Banks, Equal Justice Works Fellow
Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs

Thank you for this opportunity to provide written testimony regarding Policing and Public Safety in Wards 7 and 8. For nearly fifty years, the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs (“the Lawyers’ Committee”) has addressed issues of discrimination, racial injustice, and entrenched poverty through litigation and policy advocacy.

On November 3, 2016 the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs (“Lawyers’ Committee”) testified in front of this Committee and said, “every major city police department in the United States, including the District’s Metropolitan Police Department is one bad shoot away from the kind of community rebellion that happened in Ferguson, Missouri, Baltimore Maryland and elsewhere across the United States”.  The Lawyers’ Committee is concerned that this reality is closer to fruition than before.

Over the last few years, our communities have witnessed an increasing number of police-involved shootings. Police harassment of our neighbors, in what can only be attributed to a consistent practice of racial profiling, is a regular part of life for those who live in predominantly African American communities.  The most recent  incident of such unprovoked, unwarranted and, we believe, illegal conduct occurred on June 13th in the Ward 7’s Deanwood community.

The events on June 13, 2018 at Sheriff and Eastern Avenue in the Deanwood community were captured on video and widely circulated.  The video shows officers from the Gun Recovery Unit exiting an unmarked car claiming that they were inspecting the tints on a parked car. The officers then approached a group of young African American men sitting outside of Nook’s Barbershop to ask about the car. As the officers approached the group, the young men immediately told the officers that they had permission to sit outside of the barbershop and that the officers could speak with the owner of the barbershop to confirm. The officers then searched an unknown individual who was not associated with the group young men and found a pellet gun. The officers then let the unknown individual walk away and proceeded to search the group of young men without a warrant, relying on the discovery of the pellet gun. The young men did not consent to the search.

This incident, while deeply alarming, is but the latest example of practices that over-police and underserve communities of color. Over-policing predictably fuels resentment and a loss of trust towards law enforcement on the part of community members.  Data  confirms the disproportionate targeting and treatment of African American DC residents in our criminal system, such as that set forth below, and helps explain why the erosion of trust between community members and the police is so deep. We urge the Committee to use this hearing not only to focus on the events that occurred in Deanwood, but on the key, underlying factors that led to and continue to feed this breakdown in trust.

The Over Policing of Communities of Color

Police officers are the faces of a criminal justice system that has dramatic, disproportionately negative effects on lower-income African Americans. Incarceration   in the District disproportionately affects African American men, women and families:  ninety-one percent of the District’s prison population is African American, despite that the city is almost 50% white.  The highest rates of incarceration are among residents of Wards 7 and 8.

The Lawyers’ Committee issued a study of MPD arrest practices in 2013 that demonstrate the pervasiveness of race-based law enforcement practices.[1]  After reviewing arrest data kept by MPD, we identified the following racially-based disparities:

• More than eight out of 10 arrests in our city were of African Americans.
• Wards with more African American residents witnessed far more arrests. The five wards where 70 percent of arrests were made are home to nine out of 10 African American residents of the city.
• In wards where African-Americans were not the majority, they still made up a disproportionately high percentage of arrestees.
• More than 95 percent of the arrests in Washington, D.C. were for nonviolent offenses. Four of the largest categories of offenses — arrests were categorized as drug related, traffic violations, disorderly conduct, and “other assault” charge categories — alone accounted for about 60 percent of arrests in the District. Offenses in these categories are not considered violent crimes by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting system.
• Most arrests did not result in conviction, confinement, probation, or diversion.

The practices that underlie the foregoing statistics have driven a wedge between the police and those most likely to be policed.[2]

At the same time, communities of color and communities living in poverty are underserved. There is, for example, a dramatic disparity in the resolution of homicides in the District by race. The murder of a white victim is much more likely to result in an arrest than a Black victim.[3] The same is true for assault, robbery, rape and other crimes. Overpolicing and underserving communities of color are deeply connected. Until overpolicing practices cease, community trust, which in necessary to work together to ensure public safety, cannot be restored.

The Rise of Complaints Combined with Lack of Accountability and Transparency

A significant factor contributing to this mistrust is that police conduct is infrequently reviewed, and as a result, police officers and police departments are not held accountable for abuses. In September 2017, the Police Complaints Board reported that it received an increased number of complaints about officers conducting searches of people, vehicles and houses without obtaining proper consent.[4] The study showed 76 percent of the complaints came from 2015- 2017 came from African Americans.  72 percentage of the searches were carried out in 5th, 6th and 7th Police Districts, which cover most of Ward 7 and 8.

In the same year, the Police Complaints Board found reported incidents with police use of force rose by 36 percent in DC, continuing a steady increase in reported instances of police use of force since 2012.[5] African Americans were on the receiving end of the force used in 1980 of the 2224 reported incidents. Almost 40% percent of incidents involving the use force took place in Wards 5, 7 and 8. In only 15 percent of the incidents, the subject was armed. This is deeply concerning since it runs counter to the downward trend of crime in the City, but, nonetheless, the police still  use violence more than 2,000 times, nearly every time on an African American.

Despite the rise in police violence, transparency and accountability is seldom seen and hard to get. In September 2016, police shot and killed unarmed black motorcyclist Terrance Sterling. The officer involved did not face any criminal charges. Community members asked for answers for more than year before the Police Complaints Board issued a report acknowledging that the shooting was unjustified. Admissions like this are rarely seen in DC and take far too long. Recommendations from these reports include increasing the inclusion of more detail on the events that led to these incidents to promote transparency and accountability. However, despite these recommendations and the Neighborhood Engagement Achieves Results (NEAR) Act, which requires officers to compile data on stop and frisk incidents, the Metropolitan Police Department has yet to keep records that reflect the recommendations or requirements from the NEAR Act.

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Public safety is a concern in low-income communities and everyone in the District deserves a safe place to live. The police practices that we are observing in Deanwood are directly harming the individuals and communities that are targeted as well as the ability of the community to partner with the city to co-produce public safety. We urge the Council to:

• Make investments in communities that create opportunities to housing, employment, education and recreation as an integral part of the public safety agenda. More law enforcement is not the answer, investment is.

• Immediately create a task force to explore strategies to democratize policing through mechanisms that give civilians meaningful oversight. Oversight should extend beyond discipline and have influence over training, policy, priorities and practices. Communities most likely to be policed should be on these bodies, There are good examples of other cities that have made progress in building trust through these strategies. We can assist the Council to identify promising practices.

• Improve transparency. The NEAR Act is a good start and MPD does a better job than most at making certain data available to the public. But it is not enough and not in forms that community members can use to exercise political power to achieve the police department that they want and deserve.

In sum, the incident in the Deanwood community and others mentioned here are not isolated. They reflect a culture of policing that promotes tensions between the resident of DC and the police. The disturbing trends of increased violence and harassment of past few years shows the need to reform police departments through transparency and robust community oversight.

Thank you for the giving the Lawyers’ Committee the opportunity to testify on this important issue.  Please contact the undersigned if you have questions or would like further information.

Marques Banks Equal Justice Works Fellow Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs [email protected] 202-319-1000 ext. 131

Jonathan Smith Executive Director Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs [email protected] 202-319-1000 ext. 101

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