Report on Meeting with MPD Chief Charles Ramsey
JULY 21, 1999
[Background: This meeting was originally scheduled for June 23, then postponed to July 6, and then postponed again to Thursday July 22. On Monday July 19, Chief Ramsey’s office asked for the meeting to be advanced one day, to Wednesday July 21. The result was that a number of people who had expected to attend July 22 were unable to attend on July 21, including Mindy Daniels (GLAA), D.C. Allen (Chief’s Advisory Committee), Dr. Patricia Hawkins (Whitman-Walker), Lisa Stewart (GLOV), and Charlotte Young (D.C. Coalition).EEO Policy. Mr. Howell opened by congratulating Chief Ramsey for the all-inclusive Equal Employment Opportunity statement provided on the Department’s web site for those interested in applying for employment. (The site may be found at: http://www.mpdc.org/.)Those able to attend were Craig Howell and Rick Rosendall of GLAA, and Bruce Johnson and Karen Pettapiece of GLOV. Representing the Department were Chief Ramsey; Assistant Chief Terry Gainer; Assistant Chief Bill McManus; and LT Jeff Moore. This was the first meeting between Chief Ramsey and gay and lesbian community leaders since November 1998.]
Community Relations Training. Ms. Pettapiece, who conducts weekly training sessions for veteran and rookie police officers at the Department’s Training Academy, reported that she has had a number of incidents where officers in her class would be flagrantly disruptive and openly contemptuous of her and of the gay and lesbian community in general. One officer’s conduct was so obnoxious that it prompted Robert Anderson, the representative of the University of the District of Columbia (which is the contractor for all community relations training at the Academy) to file a formal written complaint with the Department. Chief Ramsey stated such conduct was intolerable and may be grounds for dismissal from the Department. He asked that such incidents be brought immediately to the attention of police officials at the Academy so that they may take on-the-spot remedial action. Mr. Rosendall observed that too often bigoted police may feel free to act out their homophobia in such contexts because they think they will suffer no repercussions. Chief Ramsey agreed that perceptions must be corrected.
Citizen Complaint Review Board. Mr. Rosendall reported that he was one of several community leaders recruited by Marie Drissel’s Office of Boards and Commissions to sort through the more than 100 applications from people interested in serving on the new CCRB. That list has been pared down to 20. Mayor Williams should announce his four appointments shortly. The Department is also working to nominate one person for the Board. It was not known whether the CCRB would be able to start work before the five nominees are officially confirmed by the Council. There was a discussion of how to inform people with complaints about their options of filing a complaint with the Department or with the CCRB. Chief Ramsey suggested that one central telephone number might be in order for all complaints to go to first, because some complaints (such as allegations of police corruption) do not fall under the purview of the CCRB. All interested agencies will have to become involved before this question can be resolved.
Homicide Investigations. Assistant Chief Gainer reported that it is still too soon to judge the full impact of the recent decentralization of homicide investigations. What used to be called “Homicide Detectives” are now known as “Violent Crime Detectives” to indicate the widening of scope of their interests. There has been an increase in the closure rate since decentralization went into effect.
Profiling the Transgendered. Because of Jessica Xavier's recent unavailability, no one present had any feel for whether police are still making arbitrary arrests of transgendered persons on the bigoted assumption that anyone appearing to be "cross-dressing" must be a prostitute (as Xavier reported at the November 1998 meeting). Chief Ramsey asked that if such incidents do occur, they should be called to his attention at once. Ms. Pettapiece observed that her training includes this topic and that she often receives thanks afterwards from officers who admit they had never thought of this matter before.
Needle Exchange Programs. Mr. Howell noted that the House Appropriations Committee had voted on July 20 not to extend the ban on the District’s ability to fund needle exchange programs into FY 2000. Mr. Howell asked the Chief if he could send a letter to the Committee expressing his support for needle exchange programs. Chief Ramsey answered that when GLAA first made this request last month, he had referred this request to the Mayor’s office because he did not want to go over the Mayor’s head on a policy matter. The Chief was pleased that Mayor Williams has recently come out publicly for needle exchanges, and perhaps that should be enough for us. We noted that a letter directly from the Chief would have a lot of weight on its own. His office will check with the Mayor’s office to see if a letter can be sent. Since the DC budget comes up for a vote on the House floor on July 29, Mr. Howell emphasized that this matter should be expedited. [Note: Chief Ramsey subsequently did send the letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert. See Ramsey letter.]
Mr. Howell reported that Dr. Hawkins had no new complaints about inappropriate police enforcement of the drug paraphernalia laws against the private needle exchange programs. That problem apparently has ebbed and flowed in recent years but is dormant for now.
Recent Incidents. Assistant Chief McManus reported that the Park Police has been handling the case of the man found beaten and unconscious beneath P Street Bridge several weeks ago. The man was recently released from the hospital, still unable to speak.
Assistant Chief McManus reported that the investigation of Officer Guarin has been completed. He was involved in the Pride Day March altercation with Christopher Costas, who had his pet boa draped about him. Officer Guarin has received “mid-level discipline” (our term) for failing to note in his official report that he had grabbed Mr. Costas during the incident. The Department failed to uphold complaints that the officer had physically assaulted Mr. Costas and had drawn blood. [The separate issue of verbal abuse by Officer Guarin was not explicitly discussed during this meeting; we assume those charges were also dismissed.] No witnesses had been found other than the roommate of Mr. Costas. Lou Chibbaro of The Washington Blade has spoken with McManus on the outcome of this case.
Mr. Howell reported that the newly-elected Secretary of GLAA, Lukas Malek, had a run-in in June with an officer on O Street SE who was harassing gay customers and who refused to give Lukas his name. Mr. Malek also reported second-hand on other recent incidents of abusive conduct by police against gay men or transgendered persons. Assistant Chief McManus asked to have Mr. Malek call him directly to provide more details.
Role of MPD in Implementing Megan’s Law. Mr. Howell stated the recently-enacted Emergency Sexual Offenders Registration Act (often called “Megan’s Law”) originally had several provisions that might have had an adverse impact on our community. While many improvements were made, some issues remain that need to be fixed in the permanent legislation. He noted that no one seemed aware that the federal government will reimburse local jurisdictions for all direct costs they incur in implementing Megan’s Law; thus, the statements in the Department’s official testimony about reprogramming funds to pay for the public notification component of the Act were out of place. Chief Gainer claimed to be aware of this provision in the federal Jacob Wetterling Act (one of the basic federal laws that collectively make up what is called “Megan’s Law”), but seemed to confuse it with the $200,000 in federal funds the District might have lost from a separate federal program had they failed to enact a new Megan’s Law by mid-July.
Mr. Howell noted that GLAA wants the permanent legislation to return the control of the registration component of Megan’s Law to the MPD. The emergency legislation granted it to a federalized agency, the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. Chief Ramsey said he would have no problem with taking back the registration program. In most states, he said, one agency controls both the registration component and the public notification component, and that agency is usually the police department. Having two separate agencies run these components could easily lead to coordination problems, especially where one agency is federal and the other is local. Chief Gainer volunteered that he himself had helped to draft provisions of the Illinois version of Megan’s Law granting the State Police powers over both components.
The police officials expressed considerable annoyance that they will not be able to implement any part of the public notification program until the Council signs off on all the proposed regulations for the entire law. This process could take months.
Off-Duty Employment Restrictions. Chief Ramsey repeated his willingness to consider not restricting the off-duty employment of officers outside ABC establishments or sexually-oriented businesses. However, he wants a ban on such employment inside those establishments because of potential conflict-of-interest problems. He said it would be asking too much of an officer to turn in a bar serving underage patrons, for example, if he or she were employed there. Plus, it just looks bad for the public to see uniformed officers inside these businesses. Mr. Howell stated that such concerns should give way to the paramount interest of patrons to be safe, and that the presence of MPD officers has often been useful in crowded bars. Chief Ramsey said bars and sexually oriented businesses are free to hire private security agencies to safeguard their patrons. Mr. Rosendall added that conflict-of-interest concerns could arise in any business where police were employed, such as dry cleaning establishments that were violating municipal regulations. Chief Ramsey replied that opportunities for problems and for FOX-5 exposes are far more frequent in bars and sexually oriented businesses than in dry cleaning places. No consensus was reached.
Next Meeting. It was agreed to hold another such meeting in November, and that these meetings should take place at least twice a year.
