A consultant paid by the Washington, D.C., City Council to investigate the Metropolitan Police Department’s crackdown on Inauguration Day protesters is coming under scrutiny for what activists and experts say is a bias in favor of police. The Police Foundation, the purportedly independent group conducting the investigation for the city, is poring over charges of police abuses from January 20.
The city’s police department faced scrutiny for violence and arrests that targeted anyone in close proximity to an anti-fascist demonstration, part of a thousands-strong “Disrupt J20” protest against Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration. Demonstrators were allegedly confronted with arbitrary mass arrests and sexual assault, according a lawsuit filed against D.C. and the police. The lawsuit said those in and around the protest came under attack from chemical agents, such as pepper spray, as well as rubber bullets and stinger grenades. Following the mass arrests, hundreds of people were charged with conspiracy, property destruction, and assault, and now many face decades in prison. Defense attorneys say the mass prosecution is unprecedented in Washington, D.C.
The police’s actions on January 20 quickly provoked concern. The Washington, D.C., Office of Police Complaints, overseen by the mayor, reviewed the police’s approach on January 20 and released its findings in a February report. The office acknowledged that the Metropolitan Police Department may have violated its own policies and called for an “independent consultant” to investigate police actions. That’s where the Police Foundation — which is run by retired Redlands, California, Police Chief Jim Bueermann — came into the picture.
Michael Tobin, executive director of the Office of Police Complaints and a former Milwaukee police officer, told The Intercept that the city council allocated $150,000 to hire the Police Foundation. Tobin sought to justify Bueermann’s independence by arguing the Police Foundation head did not serve in D.C. law enforcement but had experience in police work elsewhere. “I think that it could be an advantage to have someone with prior police experience to review police procedures,” Tobin said.
“We believe that, for there to be a truly independent investigation, it would need to be through an entity that has no ties to police departments, police officials, or former police officials.”
For some critics of the Police Foundation, however, whether someone served in a far-off police department is of little importance. The Police Foundation “is extremely tied in with police departments and with police leadership, as well as police officials who retire and go into the very lucrative business of police consulting,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a constitutional lawyer and executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, which filed a lawsuit in March charging that D.C. police are unlawfully denying public records requests related to Inauguration Day. “We believe that, for there to be a truly independent investigation, it would need to be through an entity that has no ties to police departments, police officials, or former police officials.”
Defendants in the J20 trials and their supporters said the Police Foundation’s role in investigating police misconduct stood as yet another sign that the state is trying to dodge accountability. On Inauguration Day, the D.C. police surrounded and arrested more than 200 people, among them medics, legal observers, and journalists, according to Defend J20 Resistance, a group of defendants and their supporters. While no one disputes that windows were smashed during the protest, individuals were held and charged en masse for the same broken windows. More than 190 of those caught in the sweep will soon head to trial, with the first starting November 15, and many facing decades-long prison sentences, according to Sam Menefee-Libey of DC Legal Posse, which is providing support for defendants..
The D.C. police declined to comment for this article, and the Police Foundation did not respond to a request for comment.
Police fire pepper spray at protesters during a demonstration in downtown Washington after the inauguration of President Donald Trump on Jan. 20, 2017.
Photo: John Minchillo/AP
That the Police Foundation, a group with close ties to police, was proffered as an independent investigator of police abuses captures why protesters rose up against the incoming Trump administration in the first place, said some defendants in the trials stemming from the J20 protests.
“Everyone stood up to Trump and his administration in the belief he represented more policing, more militarization of marginalized communities,” Dylan Petrohilos, a defendant in the Inauguration Day case, told The Intercept. “Now, the MPD’s violence against us is being investigated by a PR firm for the police.”
Founded in 1970, the Police Foundation works closely with police, rather than as an independent auditor of their policies, to do “research.” “The purpose of the Police Foundation is to help the police be more effective in doing their job,” says the group’s website. “To accomplish our mission, we work closely with police officers and police agencies across the country, and it is in their hard work and contributions that our accomplishments are rooted.”
This is not the first time the Police Foundation’s findings have been called into question because of its closeness to police departments.
At an October hearing, Charlotte, North Carolina, politicians and residents criticized a draft report by the Police Foundation that found local cops “acted appropriately and in line with their policies and procedures” during a September 2016 response to protests against a police killing of an African-American man. National guard troops and police orchestrated a heavy crackdown on the protests.
Funded by the city in November 2016 for roughly $380,000, the Police Foundation report paints the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s actions in a positive light, depicting cops as acting on the defensive against protesters. The report insinuates that outside agitators played a key role in the demonstrations. “The issues and tension also created an opportunity that activists from outside the city leveraged to further their national agenda and to cause chaos and destruction in Charlotte,” the Police Foundation report states.
Jamie Marsicano, an organizer with the Charlotte Uprising, responded with incredulity. “When I think of who came from the outside, I think of how the police from all over the state and the national guard was deployed to occupy our city,” she told The Intercept.
“When police investigate themselves, they are going to find they didn’t do anything wrong.”
Ash Williams, an organizer with Charlotte Uprising, dismissed the findings. “When police investigate themselves,” Williams said, “they are going to find they didn’t do anything wrong.”
Charlotte is not the only city where the Police Foundation has become involved in disputes between local communities and the police — and where the foundation sided with the police’s views on the disputes.
The Police Foundation released a report in January defending a secretive, dragnet aerial surveillance Baltimore Police Department program; collaborated this year with the Department of Justice to produce a study that took a sympathetic view of the Minneapolis Police Department for its crackdown on a 2015 Black Lives Matter protest; and defended some instances of a controversial policing tactic known as “stop-and-frisk,” which studies have shown escalates racial profiling.
Amid the 2014 Ferguson, Missouri, protests, Bueermann, head of the Police Foundation, testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs to defend a federal program that distributes U.S. military equipment to police departments across the country, though he called for public accountability for how the equipment is used.
Bueermann is open with his donors about the foundation’s loyalties. In a 2016 fundraising appeal, he wrote, “The Police Foundation is honored to serve and support these leaders and the many outstanding men and women who form the thin blue line that separates good from evil, trust from betrayal, and honor from dishonor.”
For some critics of the police, the Police Foundation’s record and its professed closeness with police departments and even the ethos of police officers shows their bias — revealing the persistent problem of unchecked police power. “We’ve left police to their own rule, to carry out their own investigations, part of creating an unaccountable institution of policing,” said Alex Vitale, a professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and author of “The End of Policing.”
For some supporters of the J20 defendants, the fact that police conduct is being subjected to a probe — no matter how biased — should throw the entire prosecution into question. Kris Hermes, who is providing legal support for the J20 defendants, told The Intercept, “It’s really disturbing that, even though there’s a pending investigation of the D.C. police for questionable arrests and misconduct on Inauguration Day, protesters and others are nonetheless about to be tried by the Trump administration in less than two weeks.”
Top photo: Police officers try to clear the street as protesters make themselves heard following the inauguration of President Donald Trump on Jan. 20, 2017, in Washington, D.C.
Funny, but my view of the TV coverage had masked thugs dressed in black destroying whatever they could find… without a cop to be seen… but lots of media filming and doing nothing!
Sarah seems to lean a little left of ANTIFA
Voting for authoritarian government has consequences.
Is it just me or do these guys sound a bit like “Anti Defamation League Lite?”
NYC police are mostly very decent guys, I’ve known several. However if they’ve been “mobilized” for some reason, you have a choice: get the hell out of there or stick around for the drama and take your chances. This is nothing new. Back in the 1980s when I was a mere youngster, I was in Tompkins Sq Park one night with a friend of mine — never mind why — and came THIS close to being over by the Mounted Unit who were charging down the street in some kind of showdown with squatters on Ave B (now a posh area?) More than 10 horses but probably fewer than 20, coming right towards me and they weren’t stopping. I had nothing to do with these squatters I might add. I might have been a bit stoned at the time and it took me a while to realize what was happening. I shudder to think of it now.
Anyway. Do NOT get into a fight with big city police, you will not win. Maybe in Sweden or UK or some degenerate place like that but definitely not in New York.
During OWS, NYPD would throw perfectly innocent people to the ground, handcuff them, throw them into a car or van, give them the number to file a complaint and say have a nice day. That’s just the way it is here.
Police take orders from the mayor’s office, so with DeBlasio you probably get more Blue Flu, that’s a little worse. The violent & psychotic Left going insane in the street is hardly a picnic either. The world is a madhouse, not much I can do about that, is there? I tend to side with the police. And even feel sorry for them in many cases, they have to deal with the scum of the earth.
“I tend to side with the police”
You leave out of your post the fact that Occupy Wall Street was IN RESPONSE to the violent, psychotic, and criminal financial RIGHT.
the same police who escalate tensions rather than de-escalating them, and whose undercover plants seek to initiate and provoke violence in an effort to discredit and harm legitimate organizations and movements….all at the direction of and in service to government and corporate interests.
It is obvious from your comment that you are not a member of a minority group; being on their side would neither protect nor make you immune from their wrath. Cops are nothing but psychopaths with a license to kill & doing the bidding for the rich. If they weren’t cops, they’d all be in jail.
Having a police-friendly body investigate police brutality, misconduct, etc. is the next best thing to having the police investigate themselves something that wouldn’t be very democratic; unless it’s the FBI investigating itself – something they did a few years back, surprisingly finding themselves completely innocent of all wrongdoing (in this particular case, of having murdered some 150 innocent people). The US is quickly catapulting into the depths of Isreal and the IDF which investigates its own war crimes and finds itself innocent of all wrongdoing 100% of the time and, on occasion, even finding itself to be the “most moral army in the world(tm).”
Just a few thoughts Sarah:
1. The express strategy of engaging in acts of civil disobedience invariably results in law enforcement scrutiny. Because radicalized political activism has repeatedly resulted in acts of violence, mayhem, and death, organized efforts to affect such actions are deemed conspiratorial in nature. Any conspiracy that is specifically designed to undermine the rule of law – and its enforcement capabilities – is going to elicit a disproportion response from law enforcement agencies.
2. Engaging in organized acts of civil disobedience invariably results in a law enforcement response. The purpose of engaging in organized acts of civil disobedience is to hopefully elicit a sympathetic response from the general public by drawing attention to a condemnable pattern of sytemic an/or institutional injustice. If a cause is deemed righteous by the general public, related acts of civil disobedience have a greater chance of being perceived as necessary and just by the general public. If the underlying cause of civil disobedience is not broadly perceived as being just, then the arbitrary exercise of power by individual law enforcement agencies is going to be more readily perceived as idiosyncratic by the general public – especially if those acts of disobedience are designed to target them.
3. It is one thing for politically marginalized groups to engage in a form of identity politics that is specifically designed to challenged the legitimacy of laws that unjustly discriminate against a subset of American citizens. It is another thing altogether for a marginalized group to engage is a form of political activism that is intentionally designed to elicit they very behaviors that it purportedly condemns for the purpose of mischarcterizing and discrediting their opposition. Because identity politics relies upon a shared aspect of identity for group cohesion, its ability to garner broad political support for its niche political agenda is limited by definition. It is for this reason that Black Lives Matters (for example) intentionally conflates its self-serving brand of gender politics with the broader aims of racial equality as espoused by the Black Liberation Movement. It is in service to this brand building strategy of cooptive assimilation, that groups like Disrupt J20 nurture an ever-evolving set of euphemisms that are intended to mask their primary intentions and sanitize the political means by which they intend to be realized. It is in this light that the hybrid tactic of violent civil disobedience is being scrutinized by the public-at-large in a far more critical light then its non-violent and transparent predecessors that were successfully employed by Dr. Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi.
4. Because groups like Disrupt J20 have been springing up in proclaimed opposition to a purported pending wake of neo-fascism – as allegedly personified by President Trump – it is important to understand from whence such claims originate. To this end, the funding of such groups becomes essential to tracing the ideological well spring from which such ideas emerge. Almost invariably, wealthy billionaires like Soros (in this instance) are identified as a primary source of funding. The irony of Soros funding anti-fascist/pro-democratic reactionism is that he developed his unwavering penchant for amoral investing while in service to the Nazis where he enthusiastically participated in the confiscation of Jewish property as a preface to their extermination in death camps. So, too, Soros subscribes to the concept of the Noble Lie which relies upon the core belief that people are not created equal, and that an small minority of elite individuals are therefore imbued by nature with the innate capacity to rule. Thus, the role of elite managed institutions is deemed a necessary evil to insuring the propagation of a set of beliefs that, when applied, are designed to provide social, economic, and government imposed political parity at the expense of individualism and self-determination.
Just kidding!
I cut and pasted Police Foundation talking points.
Notice to all readers:
The aforereferenced quote was NOT posted by me. However, I have not lodged a complaint with the Intercept because I want it to remain so that all can see how reader avatars are subject to misuse at (by?) the Intercept. The post time for this comment is 11:59 a.m., yet it was not present when I posted a response to BWOG (aka Mona) at 1:45 p.m..
Summary: Karl often needs a lot of words to say that he doesn’t like black people. Extra this time is a Soros conspiracy theory (without sources).
Hi Mona, I knew that you couldn’t resist!
Your “Just kidding!” post was not present when I posted my reply.
PS I am not Mona, but if you miss her you can just go back to the post where she calls you an especially vile creature (I am paraphrasing here).
Just kidding!
Would love to see The Intercept start covering the J20 trials. I believe the first group of defendants are up this week.
WHO ARE THE TERRORISTS ?
The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) maintains a hit-list of over two-million Arabs, Muslims, and American political activists for persecution and assassinations.
As part of FISA the New York City Police Department (NYPD) twice in six months carried-out warrantless raids of my Manhattan apartment after breaking its door.
They wrote a note with the word “intel”, and the name of a high official of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as the person that sent them.
My complaints to New York City Mayor William de Blasio, Police Commissioner William Bratton, District Attorney Cyrus Vance, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer, and the Civilian Complaint Review Board were ignored.
Lawyers and news groups that I contacted such as The New York Times ran away at the mention of FISA.
WHO ARE THE TERRORISTS ?
Something called “the Police Foundation” investigates police malfeasance? Why not have the KKK investigate inner city schools?
“… the many outstanding men and women who form the thin blue line that separates good from evil, trust from betrayal, and honor from dishonor.”
No chance of innocent until proven guilty? An immediate determination that authority is “good” and the public “evil?” Will the police become so completely corrupt that we’ll all need our own private armies to protect us from them? Trump may as well put on a fake Castro beard, because he’s determined to run a banana republic. I suppose the logic of “we must fight them over there, so we don’t have to fight them over here,” is now “we must fight them here to keep them out of our gated communities.”
LOL…Love the Castro comment. I contend that if Castro hadn’t died
prematurely (at the tender age of only 90), he and Trump would have got along swimmingly for they are birds of a feather.
LOL – the old codger would likely have pulled it together long enough to stab the Great Bloviator through the throat with a fish fork. Too bad – he’d have won a lot of Nobel Prize recommendations!
Pretty much the police get to investigate themselves.