A MPD cruiser by Tony Hisgett licensed under Creative Commons.

Last week, two officers of the four involved in the racing and subsequent crash of two MPD cruisers in a residential DC neighborhood in April were charged with reckless driving. One of the officers, who was still under a probationary employment period, was also fired.

While the crash remains under investigation, the questions about the role of police and how they should and could engage with communities, keep bubbling to the surface. What will policing look like in the future, and how does it intersect with traffic enforcement, safe streets and the increasingcalls for reform?

A race to nowhere

On April 22, four DC police officers working in the 6th District were involved in a crash – with each other. Any reasonable observer might hear this news and believe that these officers wrecked while engaged in a high-speed pursuit. While chases are against department policy, they’ve happened often enough that one would be remiss not to mention the possibility of a chase-induced crash.

So how did four police officers crash two marked cruisers in Kenilworth last month?

Street racing.

Four officers of the Metropolitan Police Department wrecked their government-owned vehicles while racing along Anacostia Avenue NE in Kenilworth. In an email obtained by FOX5, 6th District Commander Durriyyah Habeebullah wrote, “two 6D scout cars were totaled because officers decided instead of fighting crime, patrolling their beats, or engaging the community – they decided to drag race each other on Anacostia Avenue at 5 pm in the evening[.]” The totaled cruisers came to rest in a Kenilworth resident’s yard.

Mayor Muriel Bowser referred to the crash as a “dereliction of duty”.

The racetrack - commonly known as a neighborhood

The entire length of Anacostia Avenue sits in a community that is majority African American. The road is bounded to the west by Kenilworth Park and Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens and to the east by housing. Anacostia Avenue is no raceway, or at least it wasn’t intended to be that way. No road east of the Anacostia River was likely conceived, engineered, or constructed with the intention of serving people with an interest in racing, yet any person who has spent any significant amount of time in the neighborhoods that comprise wards 5, 7, and 8 knows that the roadways there are many times treated like a speedway.

In theory, police officers exist to dissuade people from engaging in bad behavior. So what happens when police officers engage in the bad behavior they’re said to be preventing while on-duty, in uniform, and in their government-issued vehicles? This is a question that has plagued American communities for decades, and in recent years has become more mainstream as videos and stories of police misconduct, brutality, and killings have proliferated.

For some, the answer has been reform, but locally some leaders have pushed back against the need for any more reforms. Last summer, at the height of nationwide demonstrations against police violence and racism, former DC Chief of Police Peter Newsham said, “[The DC Council] forgot about our 20 years of reform, and they insulted us by insinuating that we were in an emergency need of reform.”

Despite the reforms touted by then-Chief Newsham, MPD officers have been involved in several high-profile incidents where department policy regarding vehicle usage has been violated or called into question.

In 2018, 22-year old Jeffrey Price was killed while riding a dirtbike after an officer in a police SUV cut Price off. At the time of his death, MPD claimed the officer was not engaged in a chase, but witnesses reported differently. Released body-worn camera footageshowed a portion of the moments leading up to the encounter and the crash, raising objections from Price’s family about how the video was released.

Three months after that footage was released, MPD officers were implicated in the death of two road users. 20-year old Karon Hylton Brown was struck and killed by a car in the Brightwood Park neighborhood after being pursued by police while riding a dockless scooter. MPD initially denied that their officers were engaged in a pursuit of Hylton Brown, but a nearby resident’s security camera and BWC footage later revealed that officers were in fact pursuing him before he was struck.

A day later, 56-year old Candido Lopez-Sales was struck and killed in Capitol Heights, Maryland by a MPD officer and a member of the Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force.

MPD’s traffic enforcement is good at something. Safer streets is not it.

The head of the DC Police Union, Greg Pemberton, told DCist’s Jordan Pascale in an interview about police reform: “The reason that police are so well-suited to carry out these responsibilities is that they are well-equipped, well-trained, and are on the streets 24 hours a day, seven days a week.” But, the evidence doesn’t square with that claim.

While responsibility for injuries and deaths on our roadways cannot be laid at the feet of DC police, there is little evidence that supports the argument that what MPD is doing on traffic enforcement is actually working. Similarly, there appears to be little justification for the District to fund MPD’s enforcement of traffic regulations.

According to data collected by the District’s Vision Zero initiative, traffic fatalities have been steadily increasing over the last four years. Even with less drivers on the road to police due to pandemic restrictions, 2020’s traffic fatalities were higher than in 2019. Pedestrian fatalities in the first five months of 2021 are on track to surpass the total number of pedestrian deaths in 2020.

Last year, the DC Council appropriated $545.7 million in operations funding for the law enforcement agency. There is no specific traffic division within MPD, but there are several line items within the police budget for very narrow traffic enforcement. So who does traffic enforcement within MPD and how is it paid for? “It’s complicated,” Eileen McCarthy, Ward 3 representative to the DC Pedestrian Advisory Council (DCPAC), told me.

MPD’s traffic responsibilities are mostly housed within the Homeland Security Bureau’s Special Operations Division (SOD). Within SOD sits the Special Events Branch. The Special Events Branch holds the Traffic Safety and Specialized Enforcement Section; therein is the Motor Carrier Safety Unit, Traffic Safety and Impaired Driver Support Unit, and Major Crash Unit.

On paper, SOD also houses DC’s Automated Traffic Enforcement, although Mayor Bowser has attempted to transfer that section to the District Department of Transportation. In 2021, SOD received $38.3 million in total appropriations, including $877,000 in federal grants and $4 million in intra-District, or cross-agency funding.

MPD wants all of its officers to be doing traffic enforcement, meaning that the Patrol Services divisions, budgeted $249.6 million, also get in on the action.

In theory, McCarthy said, “MPD wants all officers to be doing traffic enforcement,” but, “what happens is that they get radio calls for whatever and they spend their time doing that.”

This arrangement also has a disparate impact on Black District residents and also keeps MPD from responding to the most serious and dangerous traffic infractions, says the DC Council-established Police Reform Commission (PRC).

In its recommendations, the PRC called for an end to MPD enforcement of most minor traffic violationsin its efforts to reimagine policing in the District. The commission argued that by strictly limiting the instances when they can enforce traffic infractions police officers would be better able to reduce the number of major crashes and traffic violations.

Between SOD and Patrol Services, it can be said that the District spends $287.9 million on traffic enforcement. By comparison, the District spends less than a quarter of that on non-police enforcement. The Department of Public Works (DPW), the agency responsible for enforcement of parking laws, towing, and removal of abandoned and junk vehicles, was appropriated a total of $34.3 million. DDOT’s Traffic Operations and Safety Division, which includes the agency’s traffic control officers, roadway operations patrol, and safety technicians was appropriated about $26.2 million. If fully funded, the Vision Zero Omnibus Act, passed by the Council last year, would cost $171 million over four years.

In addition to what was appropriated, so far this year, MPD has paid out over $3.7 million in settlements related to traffic crashes the agency’s officers were involved in, with the highest single settlement totaling $3.5 million. The racing-related crash also cost the District an additional $22,000 in damage.

This race likely isn’t a one-off

When state actors get caught doing bad things and are only caught because of the intervention of a non-state actor (like a bystander filming a police killing), or the result of the bad act is so great that you can’t help but notice (like crashing police vehicles into a person’s yard) there is likely a systemic problem afoot. What then are we supposed to glean from this recent crash-by-race?

Without the crash, no one would’ve known that cops were racing, save perhaps for a neighbor or passerby. There’d just be two law enforcement officers who treated an arterial like Richmond Raceway.

Since the crash in Kenilworth, another MPD officer allegedly crashed into a decorative boulder after trying to pass around another vehicle.

Amid rising traffic fatalities and injuries, elected officials and advocates for safe streets have an important question to answer. Is it a smart investment for the District to entrust traffic enforcement to an agency that appears to be ineffective at doing good traffic enforcement and effective at generating high costs for the communities they are sworn to protect?

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Tagged: dc, mpd, pedestrian safety, roads, traffic safety, ward 7, ward 8

Ron Thompson, Jr., formerly DC policy officer (DC TEN) at GGWash, was born and raised in Washington, DC with roots in Washington Highlands, Congress Heights, and Anacostia. He currently lives in Brookland. In his spare time, he awaits the release of Victoria 3 and finishes half-read books.