Ms. Bowser proposed legislation this week that contains many good ideas, restoring several tools that well-intentioned reformers have taken away from D.C. police over the past decade. With a growing consensus that officers shouldn’t fear being prosecuted for responsibly subduing dangerous criminals, she wants to refine restrictions on applying chokeholds to allow “incidental” contact with the neck area and clarify limits on chasing suspects, which can hamper apprehension of criminals even when a police pursuit likely would not be dangerous to themselves or others.
The mayor thinks officers should be allowed to review their body-camera footage before filing routine reports, which would enable them to write more accurate accounts. She also advocates for restoring a law, which she voted to repeal as a councilwoman in 2014, to make it easier to shut down open-air drug markets. This would enable police to focus resources on areas likely to be loci of crime. She calls for the reinstatement of another law, allowed to expire during the pandemic, that prevented people from wearing face masks to instill fear in others, a change that makes sense to many who have been mugged in the District. And she is requesting new penalties to target the ringleaders behind organized retail theft. Such robbery has contributed to a decline in the quality of life in localities across the nation, including store closures.
All of the above are productive contributions to the national recalibration on criminal justice. Unfortunately, the draft legislative text of Ms. Bowser’s bill also includes concessions to the D.C. police union that would roll back transparency for officer misconduct without making the community safer.
In the name of protecting officer privacy, Ms. Bowser calls for the repeal of several elements of a policing reform law that went into effect this year. Her bill would undo a requirement that the police department post officers’ names and badge numbers before disciplinary hearings. She seeks to limit the “unfettered” access the Office of Police Complaints, a city agency, has to the files of the D.C. police. She proposes amending the body-camera law to let the department redact the faces of D.C. government employees before videos get released.
The mayor’s bill would also amend the city’s 1976 Freedom of Information Act to allow for the redaction of “any personally identifiable information” about police officers. She wants to limit how much information goes into a database tracking misconduct. Instead, her legislation would only require public disclosure of misconduct in cases that result in officers being suspended, demoted or terminated.
Advocates for reducing transparency present it as a way to boost recruitment in an understaffed department, rather than watching officers flee to jurisdictions that will shield their identities. They also argue that it is unfair to treat police differently than other city employees who have privacy protections. But people trusted with guns and badges should be held to a higher standard.
It is fair to argue that unsubstantiated complaints should not necessarily go on an officer’s permanent public record, but it is also important to know if someone faces a pattern of alleged misconduct. Council member Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2), the chair of the judiciary and public safety committee, promises a hearing this fall on Ms. Bowser’s plan. Amendments to the proposal should follow. Ms. Pinto should also continue pushing her previously proposed package of legislation to fight violent crime, a more uniformly productive plan that would complement the worthwhile elements of the mayor’s.
Washington has recently taken steps to boost officer accountability. A 2017 Post investigation found that about half of D.C. officers who were fired between 2006 and 2017 appealed and got their jobs back. A report last year by D.C. Auditor Kathleen Patterson found that 36 officers who got their jobs back after being fired were awarded $20.6 million in back pay. These findings prompted the D.C. Council to enact a law removing discipline as an item that can be bargained over in union contract negotiations.
Rather than undermining accountability now, D.C. can show other cities and towns what a smart reassessment of criminal justice policy looks like.
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