DC Taxpayers Are Spending Millions To Rehire Bad Cops
from the Metro-PD-casting-public's-pearls-before-swine dept
Late last year, a trove of records was obtained by transparency activists Distributed Denial of Secret (DDoS). Those records showed what the Washington DC Metro PD hoped to hide: that the internal disciplinary process was apparently irreparably broken.
The joint report by DCist and The Reveal made sense of the DDoS-liberated data. What it showed was that officers with sustained complaints were often given nothing more than tiny hand slaps (suspensions, write-ups) for severe misconduct, including drunk driving, indecent exposure, sexual solicitation, and theft.
Welcome to Impunityville, USA. Not only were Metro PD officers assured they wouldn’t face criminal charges for criminal acts, they were assured they wouldn’t even need to worry where their next paycheck would come from.
Now there’s more bad news. Every so often, the DC Metro PD actually finds officers worth firing. A report from the DC auditor shows taxpayers are shelling out millions to keep the worst of the PD’s officers on the job, as Mitch Ryals reports for the Washington City Paper.
The full scope of this problem and what it has cost D.C. taxpayers, is detailed in an explosive report released this week from D.C. Auditor Kathy Patterson.
From October 2015 to March 2021, the Office of the D.C. Auditor found that MPD fired 49 officers and was forced to rehire 37 officers. The department paid out $14.3 million in back wages to 36 of those officers after their appeals crawled toward a resolution.
Three of the reinstated officers have been determined by the Auditor’s office to be a “threat to safety.” One of those is Jay Hong, who collided with another vehicle while drunk. In his vehicle, investigators found one (1) loaded handgun and one (1) unconscious, partially-nude woman. Hong pleaded guilty to DUI charges and was fired. The woman later accused Hong of sexual assault, but PD investigators cleared Hong of these accusations. Hong re-secured his job through a third-party arbitrator who suggested a 35-day suspension was a more appropriate punishment for driving drunk with a loaded gun and a loaded woman in his car. He received nearly $300,000 in back pay.
He’s not the only fully employed “threat to safety.” There are more:
The other two officers tagged as safety threats, who are still employed with MPD, are Wilberto Flores and Richard Mazloom, according to ODCA.
Flores was convicted in a criminal court of exposing his genitals to women in the parking lot of a grocery store in 2010, according to the report, which cites information from MPD and the Office of Employee Appeals.
[…]
Mazloom was the subject of three complaints submitted to the Office of Police Complaints before he went out drinking with friends while off duty and with his service weapon on him in August of 2011…
That night, Mazloom got into a fight on H Street NE, the auditor’s report says. He was later fired, but an arbitrator overturned his termination, in part because they “thought the evidence showed Mazloom was not the aggressor and the other party instigated the fight.”
Both officers were reinstated, taking home more than a half-million in back pay between the two of them. Officer Mazloom has since racked up two more complaints and one sustained instance of misconduct.
According to the City Paper report, nearly 40% of these reinstatements are due to the Metro PD missing administrative deadlines in the disciplinary process. This either means the Metro PD has so many bad cops it can’t keep up with the paperwork or it’s more than willing to slow walk investigations to ensure officers it actually decides to fire can get their jobs back. Neither alternative should be considered acceptable.
This happens frequently enough that even other MPD officers are getting sick of it. Statements made to the Auditor’s office during the preparation of this report show many officers are “demoralized” by the rehiring of bad cops and fully cognizant of the fact that overturned firings emboldens the worst officers in their ranks.
The Auditor’s report closes by recommending the Metro PD (duh) start meeting administrative deadlines to help assure bad cops can’t get their jobs back on a technicality. But the city seems powerless to actually enforce this, which means the PD can pick and choose which officers it will efficiently discipline. And that means taxpayers will still keep paying good money for cops even the Metro PD feels are too terrible to stay employed.
Filed Under: dc metro police, dc police
Comments on “DC Taxpayers Are Spending Millions To Rehire Bad Cops”
A good cop who covers for a bad cop is not a good cop
This happens frequently enough that even other MPD officers are getting sick of it. Statements made to the Auditor’s office during the preparation of this report show many officers are “demoralized” by the rehiring of bad cops and fully cognizant of the fact that overturned firings emboldens the worst officers in their ranks.
I imagine it would suck to have your higher-ups make perfectly clear that they’re fine with drunk driving, sexual assault, non-sexual assault, and I’m sure a slew of other crimes so long as the perpetrator has a badge, but if they want to actually do something about it it’s not like they don’t have options.
Quit, go to the press, make public statements condemning the ‘few bad apples’ on the force, there are any number of things they could be doing if they don’t like the fact that the scum sharing office space with them are rightly tainting the public’s perception of them and their profession, and saying nothing really isn’t an option because silence just sends the message that it’s not just the people at the top of the department that have no problem with that sort of behavior.
Protip: If your plans to reform the police don’t address the resistance of police unions to change, you’re talking about a fantasy.
Police culture needs to change, too, but when it comes to that, see above, because you already know the anchor point.
And how much of the backpay did the unions suddenly collect?
Quit
Quote: Quit, go to the press, make public statements condemning the ‘few bad apples’ on the force, there are any number of things they could be doing if they don’t like the fact that the scum sharing office space with them are rightly tainting the public’s perception of them and their profession, and saying nothing really isn’t an option because silence just sends the message that it’s not just the people at the top of the department that have no problem with that sort of behavior. Unquote.
So easy to say when you are not the one doing the quitting. Rent, mortgage food and bills still have to be paid. And as for making public statements? Pretty damned dangerous if you ask me considering the type of cops they would be going against.
Re:
It’s easy to say, sure, but it’s even easier in the short term to stay silent and no longer count as a good cop in any meaningful way, the problem with that is silence should and will be seen as support of that behavior by both the public and department, so if they thought it was demoralizing seeing bad cops get rehired again and again keeping their mouths shut is not going to help that or the public’s perception of them.
If they don’t like what the department is doing then it’s on them to do something about it, whether that be speaking out or making clear their objection by quitting and finding another department/job to work at. If that’s too much to ask then they should just sit down, shut up, and get used to ever increasing corruption and the scum of the departments rightly being seen as representative of the lot of them.
Re:
If they choose not to do the ethical thing, then yes, they do deserve the fucking rep and eventual punishment they will get.