Salah Czapary is telling a story about the time when he, as a member of the DC Metropolitan Police Department, responded to a 911 call at a nail salon where a customer was engaged in a dispute. “The lady was upset that they didn’t offer a half gel service, or some other service,” he recalled during a recent interview with me.
“I’m like, well, this is not a police matter but let me see how I can help you,” said Czapary, noting that he got on Google Maps and found her another business. “We deescalated the situation. But we had to ask ourselves, ‘Is this something we want cops doing?’”
That narrative, while amusing, illustrates the many ways the city’s 911 system and police services are misdirected. It’s also a testament to how current DC elected officials have failed to innovate around public safety to compensate for reductions to MPD’s budget.
An Arab American who is openly gay, Czapary was an MPD officer from 2016 until February of this year. That’s when he launched his campaign against Ward 1 DC Council member Brianne Nadeau for the Democratic Party nomination. The two also face Sabel Harris, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in 1B, in the June 21 primary.
According to Office of Planning data, the 2020 Census put Ward 1’s population at 85,285 residents, which remained the same after redistricting. As of March 31, there were 59,240 registered voters in Ward 1. However, only 45,567 are registered as Democrats and therefore eligible to vote in their party’s primary, according to the DC Board of Elections website.
Nadeau became the Ward 1 council member in January 2015. She was elected to a second term in 2018, though she didn’t muster majority support in the Democratic primary. She garnered only 5,537 votes as the incumbent in a multi-candidate field; a total of 5,894 people voted against her. While she fared better in the November general election, pulling in 23,283 votes or 78.23% of the ballots cast, some political observers still consider her vulnerable in this election.
She has been criticized by some Ward 1 residents for poor constituent services, focusing too much on her pet issues and not enough on the ward’s needs, and failing to provide quality oversight needed to improve the overall government. She disputes all three contentions.
Harris cited the council member’s delayed response to homeless encampments as an example of Nadeau’s defective service to the ward. “This had not popped up overnight, and this was a point where I had decided that I’m going to run.” Nadeau eventually introduced legislation to prevent the city from abolishing the encampments without first providing housing to the people living there; however, she didn’t have enough support on the council to get the measure approved.
Using the oxymoronic phrase of “moderate progressive” to describe her brand of politics, Harris holds public policy positions that aren’t significantly different than those of the incumbent on many contentious issues — ranging from the pending development of the Frank Reeves Municipal Center at 14th and U streets NW to increasing taxes for upper-income residents.
Harris, a Vietnamese American, has lived in Ward 1 for the past 10 years. She has worked for multiple tech startups; the most recent one sold for “almost a billion dollars,” she said.
Harris’ primary complaint appears to be that Nadeau isn’t present and engaged. “What I think a council member should be doing at a baseline [is] showing up — showing up and hearing from residents, listening, talking with people, meeting with community members, being out and about. I think that it truly shows the effectiveness or at least, again, the foundation of a good council member.”
Nadeau challenged the notion that she’s not out in the community, adding that she has heard similar complaints in the past, including during the 2018 campaign. “I guess my sense is that, if you’re having a hard time finding something to be critical about, those seem like easy targets to me. Because it’s like, how do you prove the negative?”
The most pronounced MIA tag slapped on Nadeau by some of her constituents has been around gun violence and crime. Earlier this week, 15-year-old Malachi Jackson was shot and killed near his home in Columbia Heights.
According to the MPD’s 2021 annual report, violent crime increased by 16% — from 523 to 605 incidents — between 2020 and 2021 in the 3rd District, which in large part matches Ward 1’s boundaries. In fact, crime was up in every category except homicides, sexual assault and arson. That history — as well as public sentiment documented in a Washington Post poll taken of 904 District residents, which found that 36% of them identified crime, violence or guns as their top issue — has made the opponents’ runs a tad easier.
“I think what the ward needs is a responsive council member who can build those relationships with law enforcement and other city agencies, to ensure that we have the safest possible ward,” said Czapary, who has been described as a political moderate. “Whether it’s pedestrian safety [or] whether it’s actual crime, people are concerned about safety, and it touches us in a variety of ways here in the ward.”
Nadeau defended her record during my interview with her, citing more than 8,000 closed constituent services cases during her tenure; strong economic development throughout the ward, including a push to place a library and affordable housing at the site of the current 3rd District police station at 1620 V St. NW and the adjoining fire station; extra support for small businesses and retail corridors by establishing several Main Street groups; and increased funding for violence prevention.
“When I became council member, there were zero dollars invested annually on violence prevention here in the ward,” Nadeau told me. “I fought for that funding even before we had the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement. Little by little, I built it back up and now we have nearly $1.5 million a year coming to the ward directly for violence prevention, which has been a huge issue here in the ward, especially in Columbia Heights.”
However, to paraphrase the recent wisdom of one of her colleagues — at-large member Elissa Silverman — it’s not about the amount of money, it’s about the outcomes.
Pockets of Ward 1, especially Columbia Heights, have been battling crime for years without significant change. In February 2019, the month after Nadeau began her second term, a public exchange on DC Urban Moms and Dads revealed residents’ dissatisfaction.
“There were improvements before Nadeau arrived and MPD leadership changed,” noted one resident, who like the others was listed as anonymous. “The problems have become more pronounced” in Columbia Heights and Park View “since she was elected.”
“All she seems to care about is decriminalizing behavior and encouraging citizens not to call the police to keep ‘vulnerable populations’ out of jail,” wrote the Ward 1 resident in the discussion titled “Does Brianne Nadeau care about her job?”
Over the past two years, Nadeau has been one of several council members who have moved to divest in MPD, choosing to route money to violence interrupters through the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement or the Cure the Streets program operated by the DC Office of the Attorney General. The trendline is clear regardless of any year-to-year changes in how budget numbers are calculated: MPD had an actual budget of $621,491,859 in FY 2020 and $575,820,939 in FY 2021, according to government documents. For the current year, FY 2022, the approved budget dropped to $516,793,022. The mayor’s proposed FY 2023 budget for MPD is $531,522,233. The council hasn’t made any final budget decisions.
When I asked Nadeau whether she remained an acolyte of the defund movement, she began to rewrite history: “That isn’t exactly how I would frame it. I would say that whenever the council sees that there’s underspending in an agency, we’re going to want to allocate those funds to where they can be spent.
“Over the years, when there was underspending in the police budget, we allocated that funding to other programs like victim services, violence prevention, so that there was the right mix. So, for years the police budget was at half a billion, it still is at half a billion a year, and these other programs are really underfunded.
“I do think it’s the responsibility of the council to say, ‘OK, if someone isn’t spending their whole budget and they’re not going to spend their whole budget, let’s make sure that we put the funds where they can be spent,’ right?”
The argument that MPD underspends its budget hasn’t been the justification provided for making cuts to the agency over the past two years. Rather, council members have emphasized a need to expand the concept of public safety beyond policing. That’s helped frame recent debates between the mayor and council, such as when Bowser requested $11 million in FY 2022 to hire additional officers, in part to drive down overtime. The council gave MPD only $5 million; the rest went to violence interrupters.
Nadeau said the mayor has asked for a “modest increase this year, which I intend to support, but she also has made major investments in violence prevention.” That’s the same song being sung by her colleagues, especially those running for reelection or higher office.
The political shapeshifting doesn’t sit well with residents who fear for their safety and have been paying attention to the council’s treatment of MPD and its budget. That includes Nadeau’s opponents, especially Czapary.
“This is no knock on violence interruption. I think it’s a program that the city is experimenting with, and we don’t have enough data to say whether it works or doesn’t work. And we should continue to invest in it again because we’re not strapped for cash,” he said.
“But they’re not part of the 911 network. You can’t call 911 and get a violence interrupter. They’re not reducing the workload on the police department,” continued Czapary, noting that residents were promised improvements that would have shifted some of the responsibilities that fall by default to MPD officers.
“Two years later, the only innovation we have in the city is now 250 fewer police officers and detectives because of [a] hiring freeze and then the resulting retirements and resignations, and just the general attrition of the department.
“We don’t have any new mechanism to respond to other calls. So, fewer police officers doing more work was never what anyone asked for,” Czapary added.
We’ll have to wait until after June 21 to learn whether that message results in a new Ward 1 council member or Nadeau at the helm once again.
jonetta rose barras is an author and freelance journalist, covering national and local issues including politics, childhood trauma, public education, economic development and urban public policies. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.
Saying Nadeau “garnered only 5,537 votes as the incumbent in a multi-candidate field” is true but a tad misleading; one could just as truthfully say she did almost twice as well as her closest rival (48.3% to 25.1%). According to the Washington Post, “Harris said that, generally, she finds herself politically aligned with Nadeau,” which makes me wonder why she’s running. I’m also not clear on the relevance of one of her recent workplaces selling for “almost a billion dollars.” Unless she was the founder or primary stakeholder, who cares?
More people voted against her than for her. That’s pretty telling.
Sadly, with two candidates running against her again, the same thing is likely to happen and we’ll get four more years of Nadeau’s incompetence.
It doesn’t need to happen if we all VOTE- Ward 1 cannot survive this escalation of crime and Nadeau’s continued incompetence and any realistic approach to combating crime. She is way to ‘woke’ for what is needed NOW. Salah is our true hope. Please Vote!