D.C. neighborhood upset over fake televised raid
By: Alan Suderman
Examiner Staff Writer
July 7, 2009
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| (Examiner file) |
Montgomery County police officers staged a fake raid in Northwest D.C., complete with guns drawn and police lights blazing, sparking outrage from local residents who were not warned that the cops were acting for a TV show.
About a half dozen off-duty officers, who wore county uniforms and drove county police cars, were hired by a local production company to stage a police raid on 315 Aspen St. NW, which is about a quarter of a mile from the Montgomery-D.C. border.
"If the D.C. police had been in Montgomery County, that's all [anyone] would have talked about," said an irate Kelly Craven, who lives a few houses down from the raided house.
The filming was for a show called "Prison Wives," which is about women who fall in love with and marry prisoners, according to neighbors. The show is in development for the cable channel Investigation Discovery, according to its Web site.
Filming went on for half a day and looked like the real thing, neighbors said.
"They stormed the house like a SWAT team and they said, 'Police, search warrant, open up,'" said James Hall, who lives next door and shares a driveway with the house that was used in the filming.
D.C. Councilwoman Muriel Bowser, D-Ward 4, said in a letter to Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger that she shares the outrage of her constituents.
"The neighbors ... were never notified of this disruption to their lives, and were justifiably terrified when they saw uniformed officers swarming a neighbor's house with guns drawn," Bowser said.
Julie Schor, who lives across the street, said she was working at home when she heard yelling and went to her window to see what was going on outside.
"There was probably about three cop cars in front of this house, and there was a cop standing in the middle of the street loading his gun," she said. She said she was told later that the bullets weren't real ammunition.
Schor said she thought a "heavy-duty crime" must have been committed to have drawn Montgomery County police across the county line.
"Somebody mugs you on the street and steals your iPod -- that isn't necessarily the reason why a D.C. police officer is going to cross over into Maryland or vice versa," she said. "I was home by myself. I was in a panic."
Schor and other neighbors said they were angry when they found out that the police were there to be filmed and the community had not been notified.
"I wasn't told nothing," Hall said, adding that the police "took their time" when he asked them to move their cars out of his driveway.
The police also tied up traffic by speeding up and down the two-lane residential street with their flashing lights on, neighbors said.
Police spokeswoman Lucille Baur said the blame for the "very unfortunate" incident lies with the production company for not alerting residents before filming.She said the department allowed officers to participate because it was told that filming would occur inside the county's borders.
The Silver Spring production company, Sirens Media, issued a statement apologizing to the residents for not following the "correct protocol" to notify the District before filming.
Had they cleared the film shoot with the city first, Sirens would have been required to get a permit and paid to have traffic diverted, according a spokesman for the District's film office, who added that the city would have "over-communicated" to the neighborhood about any planned filming involving guns.
