jonetta rose barras: Pandering express in DC

The irony was not lost on me. How about you?

DC’s top lawyer and prosecutor, Attorney General Karl Racine, recently filed a lawsuit against the DC Housing Authority for failing to provide “critical security enhancements to [10] properties following repeated instances of homicides, assaults and drug arrests” in these public housing complexes. The legal action came as throngs of protesters in DC chanted and painted “Defund the police” on a section of 16th Street NW.

Longtime DC residents and people who regularly read local crime news are not surprised by the properties mentioned in the AG’s legal complaint: Kenilworth Courts Apartments, Langston Terrace and Additions, Lincoln Heights Apartments and Richardson Dwellings Apartments in Northeast; LeDroit Apartments and Kelly Miller Apartments in Northwest; James Creek Apartments and Syphax Gardens Apartments in Southwest; and Benning Terrace Apartments, Stoddert Terrace Apartments and the scattered-site public housing properties formerly known as the Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg Apartments in Southeast. Those complexes include 2,567 units with over 5,000 tenants — most of them African American. 

“For years, law enforcement has executed search warrants at these properties, regularly resulting in drug and firearm seizures and arrests,” Racine and his Office of the Attorney General team said in announcing their complaint. “These dangerous activities have left other tenants at the properties — a significant number of them children, seniors, or residents with disabilities — and residents from surrounding communities fearful for their safety.” 

Relying on the DC Drug-, Firearm-, or Prostitution-Related Nuisance Abatement Act, Racine’s office has asked the court to force DCHA to increase the presence of “security officers and cameras at the properties, improve lighting, and enforce barring notices and lease obligations against individuals engaged in serious criminal activity.” 

That certainly counters the “Defund the police” mantra being heard around the city and the country. It may be a catchy slogan but it ignores the reality of life in parts of DC and other urban centers where police and security officers frequently are required to stand between residents (most of whom are people of color) and criminals (most of whom are people of color) who are intent on stealing the peace of ordinary, tax-paying citizens while instilling fear in whole communities.

Ask those 5,000 public housing residents who are under siege by criminal elements in their communities whether they want to “defund” the police. From January 2019 through May 2020, the DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) responded to James Creek and Syphax Gardens more than 1,039 times, including for drug-related activity and gunshots, according to the lawsuit.

There have been 76 homicides citywide so far this year — a 10% increase over the same period last year, according to the MPD website. 

Those murders were not committed by police officers. Further, during the multiple weeks of demonstrations in DC, the names of those 76 individuals were not held up on any placard. 

Do black lives matter only when African Americans are being killed by police officers? How does defunding the police help public housing tenants who, even after COVID-19 reopening, may still find themselves under an unofficial stay-at-home order?

The DC Council rushed to pander last week, but not on behalf of public housing residents. Legislators seemed overly eager to position themselves as allies of the Black Lives Matter movement, acting as if DC police officers had participated in the Minneapolis murder.

Council members, playing to the crowd, ignored the District’s history of reform — namely their own 2016 legislation that mandated a greater public health approach to violence reduction including placing mental health professionals alongside police officers and deploying violence interrupters in some communities. Legislators seemed to brush all that aside; perhaps they worried that if they didn’t cast their lot with the loud and passionate demonstrators at their door, they might be perceived as perpetrators of racism or co-conspirators of police brutality.

Consequently, they approved the Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Emergency Amendment Act of 2020. Some of the reforms seem reasonable — for example, prohibition of neck restraints; greater and swifter access to body-camera recordings and video footage; release of the name of any officer involved in the death of a citizen in a use of force incident within 72 hours of that event; improvements to the Office of Police Complaints review board composition and processes; and enhanced authority for the police chief to increase disciplinary penalties against an officer involved in serious use of force. 

But, what was the emergency? Was it the fear that 10,000 people might turn their wrath on the John A. Wilson Building? 

Why couldn’t the council schedule a hearing first and then pass its bill? Equally disconcerting, how did a bill to extend voting rights to incarcerated felons — which had languished in committee for the past year — end up in the mix?

Like many around the world, I was traumatized by the sight of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin with his knee in George Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds. The unarmed black man’s cry for his “mama” and his “I can’t breathe” call for help still ring in my ear. We know he was not the first African American to be killed by a white man or renegade police officer; there are numerous cases. Even as demonstrations continued over the first episode, Rayshard Brooks was killed after a DUI stop in Atlanta by police officer Garrett Rolfe, who has been charged with felony murder. His partner, Devin Brosan, has been charged with aggravated assault. 

Growing up in the segregated South, I came to know racism all too intimately. During my years as a professional community organizer, I had my encounters with police brutality. Once, in Mississippi, a friend and I were in a car when we were suddenly swarmed by more than a half-dozen police cruisers. As we exited the vehicle at the officers’ command, sawed-off shotguns were aimed at our heads. If either of us had made a move that day, my friend Chokwe Lumumba wouldn’t have lived to become mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, and I wouldn’t be here sharing this story.

Police reforms are critical. However, more than 60% of all Americans don’t support defunding the police, according to an ABC poll. Only 57% of blacks agree with the effort. Budgets can always be refined, allowing for cost-effectiveness and more efficient service delivery. Certainly, I have advocated for several years that the city take a public health perspective to reducing violence, including conducting citywide trauma assessments and providing more community-based mental health programs. As I mentioned, District officials, including council members, have embraced that approach. 

Advocacy around defunding the police and investing in anti-violence social services programs ignores the multifaceted public safety regime already in place in DC. “If you are just equating the police and violence interrupters, you’re missing the point,” Mayor Muriel Bowser said Wednesday during a press conference in which she identified several programs including Pathways within the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement as examples of the city’s approach.

In a June 16 letter to Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, DC Auditor Kathy Patterson underscored the interconnectivity of the city’s public safety efforts. She wrote that an upcoming report prepared by the Council for Court Excellence is expected to recommend increased funding for the Department of Behavioral Health’s pre-arrest diversion program, which is operated in conjunction with MPD and the Department of Human Services. The pilot program is required by the Neighborhood Engagement Achieves Results (NEAR) Act. The report indicates there is a need for “significantly more training for law enforcement … to be effective partners,” Patterson wrote.

Equally important to understanding the dynamics in DC, the lion’s share of the city’s local budget already is spent on human services and education. Activists may want to demand better management and oversight by the council to make these programs more effective. 

They may also want to more closely scrutinize the emergency legislation to determine where council members have actually made any major changes to current public safety policies and whether those alterations respond to genuine concerns. Consider that some of the measures in the emergency bill currently are included in MPD’s operating standards and manual. Others, like certain restrictions on the use of force, had been previously rejected by the legislature.

Then, there’s the matter of voting rights for felons: At-large Council member Robert White, along with all of his colleagues, introduced the Restore the Vote Amendment Act of 2019 a year ago. The bill went through two public hearings last October but remains in committee. It appears that, coupled with public pandering, some legislators grabbed their peers by the short hairs and used the protests to push through proposals that either had been unacceptable or for which there was insufficient public demand.

Nevertheless, after the vote, legislators seemed pleased with themselves. However, Chairman Pro Tempore Kenyan McDuffie cautioned that the police reforms were “only one step. Part of the work that this council needs to do is to dismantle the racist systems that exist in this city, that existed long before we started legislating.”

The District has had quasi-independence for nearly five decades. During that period, the majority of its elected leaders and government managers have been mostly African American. Who is to blame for the failure to dismantle institutional racism?

A few hours after the police reform vote, some council members drilled MPD Chief Peter Newsham about his department’s proposed budget. Legislators were on the hunt for possible cuts, embracing the “Defund” mandate. 

The chief sought to speak about the enormous number of guns on DC streets. He tried to describe the amount of violence occurring daily in the nation’s capital. He mentioned a young woman who had been killed the previous night; she was among more than a half-dozen others who — as demonstrations took place in downtown DC and around the city — had been wounded or fatally shot in incidents that had nothing to do with police brutality.

Newsham did not even get to speak about the battle to improve the safety and security at public housing developments where thousands of DC residents live. It would not have mattered. I got the impression that council members attending the public hearing that day were not all that interested. They seemed more concerned with playing on the national stage before a national audience, shouting, “Black lives matter.”

To wit, I continue to ask: Which black lives matter?

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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.