Public safety advocates and D.C. residents Monday accused Metropolitan Police of abandoning community policing in favor of more aggressive, less personal tactics that they say hurt community morale.
“You cannot find out what’s going on in the community without talking to people,” said Ron Hampton, executive director of the National Black Police Association. “If you’re a foot patrol officer and you’re out there trying to get results, then you have to talk to people.”
More than a dozen witnesses at a hearing before the D.C. Council Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary, said they that they and residents feel out of touch with the police department in the wake of new policing initiatives that have been criticized as steps toward a police state.
Council member Phil Mendelson, at-large Democrat, has sharply criticized the initiatives in recent months. He called the hearing to get answers from Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier and D.C. Interim Attorney General Peter J. Nickles about the rationale behind them in the wake of a community backlash.
The initiatives include plans to consolidate oversight of the city’s 5,200 closed-circuit cameras, to ask residents whether police may search their homes for illegal guns and to establish traffic checkpoints in high-crime neighborhoods.
The latter initiative, called the Neighborhood Safety Zones plan, ran from June 7 to June 12 in the Trinidad neighborhood in Northeast, drew the most fire from Mr. Mendelson, the local American Civil Liberties Union and other groups who said that it was unconstitutional and ineffective.
The initiatives have “engendered enormous adverse publicity” in the city, said Mr. Mendelson, who has accused city officials of not being transparent about their implementation.
Council members questioned Chief Lanier and Mr. Nickles, but the pair insisted that the checkpoints are legal.
“I’m clearly not going to persuade you, but I’m comfortable with the constitutionality of the situation,” Mr. Nickles said.
Chief Lanier defended the initiatives, saying that they are based in part on suggestions from community members and that many residents privately ask police for help out of fear of being stigmatized by their communities.
“What we’re doing wouldn’t be possible without the support of the community,” Chief Lanier said. “Not everybody that works with us and share information with us is going to speak up in a public meeting. In Trinidad that’s the case because a lot of people are afraid.”
Chief Lanier started the checkpoints program to address a series of shootings in the 5th Police District. Seven of the city’s 43 homicides since April have occurred in Trinidad.
Residents have given the plan mixed reviews but many advocates on both sides of the issue have said that they want to see beat officers engage community members more.
Council member Harry Thomas, Ward 5 Democrat, whose ward has seen a spike in violent crime this year has supported the checkpoints as a way to calm shootings that result from snowballing conflicts.
But he also gave credence to residents’ complaints.
“I think we can do a better job at [community policing],” Mr. Thomas said. “When you put police at checkpoints, they can’t really do community policing. We’ve gotta get back to the Officer Friendly days.”
The hearing comes as the department prepares for its second phase of Chief Lanier’s signature All Hands On Deck initiative in late June, during which the entire 4,000-officer force will work patrol shifts over three-day periods.
Chief Lanier touts the program as an investment in community relations and attributed it in part to an increase in homicide closures and violent crime arrests.
The initiative has received mixed reviews from lawmakers, community leaders and residents, some of whom say it is a public relations gesture.
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