D.C. Council member Kathy Patterson wants to know whether residents killed in the poor part of town get the same kind of police response as the man who was killed in Georgetown last month.
In the July 9 slaying of a London political activist outside a Georgetown mansion, officers from each of the seven districts were called in to search a 20-block radius for evidence, according to a police document.
But two nights earlier, when four men were shot and two killed in a pair of attacks in the Sixth Ward on the other side of the Potomac, police there received no assistance from the other wards, according to police documents.
“People are concerned that there’s a disproportionate response when someone is killed in Georgetown than when someone is killed in other parts of the District,” Patterson said.
Patterson said she understands police will respond differently depending on the information available at the time, but she wants to be assured that the department is using all its resources in the crucial first 24 hours of homicides in other parts of the city, too.
Police spokesman Joe Gentile said it’s not uncommon to draw officers from other wards to help with a crime scene. He wasn’t able to provide any documentation supporting that claim.
Patterson said she asked the police department nearly a month ago for recent instances in which extra help was called in to help with crime scenes. She said she has not received a satisfactory answer.
Officer Kristopher Baumann, chairman of the D.C. police labor committee, said he is unaware of any instance when officers were called from other parts of the city to help with homicides in Anacostia.
“It shouldn’t matter who you are or who you know,” Baumann said. “A life’s a life.”
