Let’s play shot and chaser, shall we?
This might be the most revealing game of shot and chaser ever, but we’ll leave it to you to decide.
Shot.
A new report from the ACLU finds massive racial disparities in the way DC Police deal with blacks and whites.
The civil rights group found police are arresting African Americans at 10 times the rate of white people, and even more so for minor offenses.
The ACLU asked for arrest data under the Freedom of Information Act and got an eyeful. The ACLU’s analysis shows that between 2013 and 2017, African Americans were 47 percent of DC’s population, but 86 percent of the people police arrested.
“When you have a disparity of 86 percent of the arrests being black, in a city that’s 47 percent black, that’s not just one or two officers. That’s a systemic problem than needs a systemic solution,” said Michael Perloff, an attorney with the ACLU of D.C.
“Even in overwhelmingly white neighborhoods, it was the African Americans who tended to be arrested. “The black population of Kalorama is five percent,” said Perloff. “The black share of arrestees in Kalorama is 44 percent.”
The report also found thousands of African Americans were arrested for non-violent, relatively minor crimes. Of the people arrested for driving without a permit, 78 percent of them were African American.
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“We don’t think people should be subjected to the terror and humiliation of arrest for something that’s relatively minor. But you should definitely reconsider those arrests when it’s promoting racial bias, when it’s sowing distrust in the community,” Perloff said.
The Bowser Administration released a statement saying residents deserve both safe neighborhoods — and a police department they can trust. Deputy Mayor Kevin Donahue pointed to initiatives like body-worn cameras and training on the city’s history and culture as ways DC is working to rebuild trust between the police and the community.
Now here’s your chaser. Brace yourself. You might need a double.
‘It’s not OK to lie to the community’ | MPD whistleblower details alleged crime underreporting in the first interview: Sgt. Charlotte Djossou says she faced retaliation for reporting downgrading of crimes to supervisors, WUSA.com, March 4, 2020
A whistleblower from the D.C. Police Department is talking openly about the crime underreporting she says she’s witnessed inside the Metropolitan Police Department.
“I was surprised,” said MPD Sergeant Charlotte Djossou. “I didn’t want to believe it.”
Djossou, a 15-year MPD veteran previously honored for her service by Police Chief Peter Newsham, is going public with stunning allegations about what she says is going on in her own department.
She spoke exclusively with WUSA9 investigative reporter Eric Flack.
“You know you have to have courage to sometimes take a stand, for things to change,” Djossou said. “And hopefully this will be the start of a different D.C. Police Department.”
RELATED: Internal documents, whistleblowers point to alleged underreporting of crime by DC Police
She claims D.C. police supervisors are ordering investigators to downgrade crime classifications from more serious crimes to less serious ones to make the city’s crime stats look better.
“The commanders and the captains get promoted, and they get awards, when the crime stats are low,” Djossou said.
She says internal documents she handed over to DC Council, later obtained by WUSA9, suggest DC police commanders regularly instructed patrol officers to underreport crimes.
Djossou, who calls herself a whistleblower, says that can come with serious consequences.
“Some people are so comfortable walking in the district,” Djossou said. “They will walk down any block. You know headphones, jogging, because they feel like the crime isn’t as bad as it is.”
Included in those internal MPD documents are two different police reports. One which said the victim had her throat slashed. A second, which reported a man had a knife held to his neck in a case of domestic violence.
But instead of “assault with a dangerous weapon,” a felony charge that can get you ten years in prison, investigators classified both alleged crimes as a “simple assault.”
Think about this for a second: in 2019, the ACLU is mad too many blacks are arrested in Washington D.C.; in 2020, a black female sergeant with the Washington D.C. blows the whistle on how the Washington D.C. Police Department covers up black crime…
Do you get it, yet?
