Harry Jaffe: Is Chief Lanier losing the trust of her troops?
By: Harry Jaffe
Examiner Columnist
October 21, 2009
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| D.C. Police Officer Mike Touart says he and other street cops have lost faith in Chief Cathy Lanier, pictured. "She's a politician," he says, "not a chief of police." (Examiner) |
When D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier took over the police force, she asked her cops to send her e-mails with comments or suggestions, good or bad. She vowed to protect them and their anonymity.
Officer Mike Touart has paid for his candor.
By any measure, Touart is a dedicated D.C. cop. His parents are D.C. natives. He joined the Metropolitan Police Department in 1990.
"I'm a Washingtonian," he tells me.
Touart has spent most of his 19 plus years on the force policing the other Capitol Hill in the 1st Police District. He ticks off the public housing projects: "Potomac Gardens, Kentucky Courts, Sursum Corda, Greenleaf Gardens."
In these "gardens," people sold drugs and bled to death. Touart worked vice and gun-recovery units.
"We did some undercover buys in some fairly significant cases," he says.
But when Touart saw his partners start to treat the stress of the streets with alcohol — and suicide — the job became less fun. He came home at 3 a.m. one morning after making a drug buy and went to tuck in his daughter. She had just turned 3.
"I had been a good father," he tells me, "but I felt like I didn't even know her."
Next day he went to his sergeant and said: "I gotta go off vice."
For the past decade, Mike Touart has been a hardworking street cop, riding patrol, making arrests, keeping Capitol Hill safe. But two years ago he started wondering whether the police department was behind him and other street cops.
"The straw that broke the camel's back was what they did to Jim Haskell," he says. Haskell was involved in a shootout where a 16-year-old was shot dead. Touart felt Mayor Adrian Fenty and Lanier exposed and accused Haskell in the press.
Then last month he heard the mayor had asked the city council to cut police retirement benefits. He and two buddies went to city hall for the hearing. They expected Lanier to show up and testify on their behalf. She didn't.
A few days later, Lanier sent an e-mail congratulating cops for serving on her All Hands on Deck details. Touart responded on Sept. 23: "Here, you can have this back. Not worth the gigabytes it's written on."
Lanier wrote back: "You have obviously mistaken my kindness to be openly insubordinate. Please don't make that mistake again."
Touart thought: "How vain and pompous. Are we in Cuba?"
Later that day Capt. Jeff Brown ordered his sergeants to get a statement from Touart about the e-mail and wrote: "Do not grant him leave if requested and ensure this is done."
Touart gave his statement. The police department says he's not under investigation. "I don't have a clue," he says. "No one's told me anything."
Says union boss Kris Baumann: "They don't take statements and restrict leave if there's no investigation."
Touart says he and other street cops have lost faith in Lanier.
"She's a politician," he says, "not a chief of police."
But don't tell her that in an e-mail.
E-mail Harry Jaffe at hjaffe@washingtonexaminer.com.
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