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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 3:16 am
Time: 3:16 am
Results for civil rights violations
1 results foundAuthor: Bromwich Group LLC Title: The Durability of Police Reform: The Metropolitan Police Department and Use of Force: 2008-2015 Summary: This report evaluates whether the District of Columbia's Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) remains in compliance with the June 2001 Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between MPD, the District of Columbia, and the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). The 2001 MOA required MPD to adopt a broad set of reforms relating to the use of force by police officers, and to incorporate those reforms into policies, procedures, and training. The goal was to create a culture of accountability and constitutional policing within MPD. Although MPD is currently under no legal obligation to maintain these reforms, they establish meaningful benchmarks for assessing MPD's current management of the use of force. We were asked to undertake this review by the Office of the District of Columbia Auditor (ODCA). This report reflects fieldwork conducted from May through late September 2015 and includes certain use of force data through the end of 2015. We have seen much that is positive in our review of MPD. MPD's command staff remains committed to limiting and managing use of force - and to fair and constitutional policing. MPD has reduced its use of the most serious types of force, including firearms, even during periods of increased crime in the District of Columbia. Importantly, we have seen no evidence that the excessive use of force has reemerged as a problem within MPD. But we have also identified some significant shortcomings that need to be addressed, including changes in the requirements for reporting and investigating use of force that impair MPD's ability to manage use of force, and declines in the quality of use of force investigations. In addition, we found systemic problems, involving both MPD and the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia (USAO), that result in excessive delays in resolving officer-involved fatal shootings. All of this is described in detail in this report. Our review, although limited to MPD, comes at a time of intense national focus on the relationship between local law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve. Within the last two years alone, the use of force policies and practices of police departments across the country - in Ferguson, Baltimore, New York City, Cleveland, Albuquerque, Newark, and, most recently, Chicago - have been the focus of community unrest, DOJ civil rights investigations, and intense media scrutiny. In addition, in December 2014, President Obama created the Task Force on 21st Century Policing with a mandate to examine use of force issues. MPD was one of the first local law enforcement agencies to successfully navigate a reform process initially triggered by profound concerns about its use of force and its management of use of force. Beginning in 1999, MPD experienced a comprehensive, two-year DOJ civil rights investigation focusing on use of force, a binding agreement by MPD and the District of Columbia to implement substantial reforms, and a multi-year period of outside independent monitoring. As far as we know, this review marks the first retrospective examination of its kind - an analysis of the durability of such use of force reforms many years after independent monitoring ended - of any of the law enforcement agencies investigated by DOJ during the period 1994-2004, the first decade during which DOJ had statutory authority to investigate such matters. Because of limitations of time and resources, we did not review all aspects of MPD's continued adherence to the MOA. Instead, we selected issues that we considered among the most significant reforms embodied in the MOA and implemented within MPD. We focused on the adequacy of MPD's use of force policies; MPD's use of force investigations; the operations of MPD's Use of Force Review Board (UFRB); MPD's systems for dealing with at-risk officers; and the operations of MPD's Office of Risk Management, the Department's internal oversight entity. In addition, we reviewed three officer-involved fatal shooting cases, and examined issues related to the alleged "use and potential abuse" of charges for alleged assaults on police officers. The Review Team received excellent cooperation from MPD throughout this project, from our project liaison up to and including Chief Cathy L. Lanier. From the outset, Chief Lanier and her command staff showed strong interest in the results of our work and demonstrated a willingness to promptly address some of the deficiencies we identified. In early December, we circulated a draft of this report to MPD, inviting its comments and its responses to the report's 38 recommendations. We met with Chief Lanier and her staff for approximately four hours on December 16, and received a 42-page written response from MPD on December 22. We believe this process, and MPD's deep engagement with it, have resulted in a better report. Of our 38 recommendations, MPD has said it agrees with and will implement 15, agrees in part with 13, and disagrees with 10 - although of the 10 with which it disagrees, four relate to a new MPD program, and MPD therefore views the recommendations as premature. Details: Washington, DC: Office of the District of Columbia Auditor, 2016. 343p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 6, 2017 at: http://www.dcauditor.org/sites/default/files/Full%20Report_2.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: http://www.dcauditor.org/sites/default/files/Full%20Report_2.pdf Shelf Number: 146028 Keywords: Civil Rights ViolationsDeadly ForcePolicePolice AccountabilityPolice BrutalityPolice ReformPolice Use of Force |