The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) will force 12 of its senior police officers to quit their jobs on April 30 due to a controversial law the Democrat-controlled district passed in 2022 following the 2020 race riots, D.C. supervisory public affairs specialist Thomas Lynch announced.
MPD has lost more than 1,400 officers since the district passed the legislation in 2022, the D.C. Police Union said. Washington, DC’s, council first enacted the law in 2020 as emergency legislation following George Floyd’s death.
MPD will not renew the 12 senior officers’ contracts due to the law, which “prohibits the department from appointing police officers who have any serious misconduct in their background,” WTOP News reported. Senior officers are members who retired from MPD, but returned to their posts to continue serving their community.
The law, which the D.C. Police Union opposes, is called the Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act of 2022.
It defines “serious misconduct” as follows:
- Unlawful discrimination (e.g., on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion,
national origin, sexual orientation, or disability) (excluding employment
discrimination); - Unlawful stop, search, and/or seizure;
- Acts of retaliation or retribution against a sworn member or person (including
against a person for filing a complaint against a member); - Incidents in which a subject is charged by a member with “assault on a police
officer”, “resisting arrest”, or “disorderly conduct” and the prosecuting attorney
or the court notifies MPD that the charge(s) will be dismissed based on the
member’s credibility; - Incidents in which MPD received written notification from the prosecuting
attorney or court of a constitutional violation involving potential misconduct that was discovered during the course of a criminal case or judicial proceeding; - Civil lawsuits alleging sworn member misconduct while in an official capacity.
The law is “inarguably the worst piece of public safety legislation the D.C. Council has ever passed,” the D.C. Police Union wrote a news release:
The bill prohibits the hiring of sworn personnel if they have ever received sustained discipline from any law enforcement agency. This includes the Metropolitan Police Department, meaning that these officers, who have spent their careers serving and protecting this city, are ineligible to be retained by the MPD due to prior administrative personnel matters, some of which are over 20 years old.
Crime in the Democrat-controlled city soared in 2023, according to police department data:
- Homicides: Up 35 percent
- Robberies: Up 67 percent
- Violent Crime: Up 39 percent
- Motor Vehicle Theft: Up 82 percent
Residents in the district blame Biden-appointed U.S. attorney Matthew Graves for the increase in crime. Graves refused to prosecute 67 percent of those arrested who would have been put on trial in the D.C. Superior Court, according to 2022 district statistics. In 2023, he declined to prosecute 56 percent of those arrested.
Graves’ track record in prosecuting cases before the D.C. Court of Appeals is not much better, he admitted in October, although he blamed the court, which has a majority of Democrat-appointed justices, for the lack of convictions. The D.C. Court of Appeals is made up of nine justices appointed by Democrat presidents and five appointed by Republican presidents. President Joe Biden appointed three.
Whether Democrat-appointed Graves or judges are responsible for the District’s soft-on-crime position, former President Donald Trump vowed to restore law and order if reelected. Sharing a Breitbart News exclusive in October titled “D.C. Residents Fear Crime Surge Turning Area into U.S. War Zone,” the former president called the town run by Democrats a “dirty, crime ridden death trap,” pledging that reforms will be a part of his reelection platform.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former GOP War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.