Cross-Posted from WTOP
By Michelle Basch
WASHINGTON — The stories of people dissatisfied with the tactics of the D.C. police were at the center of a hearing at Howard University Wednesday night.
“The ACLU and the Washington Lawyers’ Committee have documented vast racial disparities in the arrest rates in D.C.,” said D.C. Councilmember Tommy Wells, who chairs the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, which oversees the Metropolitan Police Department.
“Some of these officers treat the citizens who are black in this community like animals on a daily basis. They jump out on the street and confront us aggressively. They pull us from our vehicles for no good reason at all. They yank at our clothing violently while they search us for contraband,” said Patrice Sulton, with the NAACP’s D.C. branch.
Iman Hadieh, who describes herself as white and Palestinian, says that last Monday she was talking with a bunch of young black friends outside a bar along 14th Street in Northwest when jump-outs — police in unmarked cars — suddenly drove up and searched everyone in the group but her.
“I watched as these Black Americans were stripped of their human and Constitutional rights right in front of God and everybody. This was an all-out assault on the Black male. … I’ve never seen anything like this except in war,” she said.
D.C. police are now testing body cameras that film interactions with the public from an officer’s point of view, but Philip Fornaci, with the Campaign Against Police Abuse, says his group plans to start what they call a “D.C. Cop Watch.”
“We encourage residents to film the police themselves, to turn the videotapes and cameras into tools of self-defense. We’re creating a D.C. Cop Watch website where people can post those videos,” he says.
“What I’d love to see is a [police] chief that’s willing to think outside the box. That’s willing to start thinking about, ‘how do we engage in relationships with the community that are positive, that build trust?,'” D.C. Councilmember David Grosso said at the hearing.
“My staff won’t let me tell you that I think we ought to get rid of guns in the city, and that police shouldn’t have guns, so I’m not going to tell you that,” Grosso added, to some applause from the audience.
The hearing will reconvene at 11:30 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 27 at the Wilson Building, where Police Chief Cathy Lanier and other members of the police department are scheduled to testify.
