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The GW Hatchet

AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904

The GW Hatchet

Serving the GW Community since 1904

The GW Hatchet

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Second Police District filed 16 percent of city’s police complaints in 2019 fiscal year: report

The Second Police District submitted 16 percent of the city’s complaints against the Metropolitan Police Department last fiscal year, according to a D.C. Office of Police Complaints report.

The report released Monday shows that the Second District – which includes Foggy Bottom – tallied the third-most complaints out of D.C.’s seven police districts, up from accounting for about 13 percent of complaints between fiscal years 2016 and 2018. The data was presented just before the D.C. Council voted on legislation Tuesday to reform the MPD following nationwide protests over police brutality and the recent killing of George Floyd, a Black American.

The complaints contained more than 1,500 allegations against MPD officers, more than half of which were harassment claims, the report states. The Second Police District trailed in the number of complaints behind the First and Third Districts, each of which submitted 18 percent of the city’s complaints, according to the report.

The report states that Black residents filed 70 percent of all complaints against police, and almost half of the officers charged with complaints were Black, with both measures leading their respective categories.

The report also found that officers failed to comply with body-camera footage guidelines during 35 percent of encounters that led to legal cases. Twenty-two percent of these violations occurred because officers did not notify community members they were recording, according to the report.

The most common form of discipline following a complaint was a dereliction report, which follows an officer’s failure to perform his or her duties, according to the release. Other forms of police discipline in D.C. from the past year include five suspensions without pay for 11 or more days, four suspensions without pay for one to 10 days, two assignments of “education-based development” and one “official reprimand,” the report states.

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