D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier gave “demonstrably false” testimony when she denied reports that untrained officers were dispatched to her controversial neighborhood barricades, a union representing D.C.’s rank-and-file police officers charged Monday.
Requesting a formal inspector general’s investigation into Lanier’s testimony on her neighborhood quarantine program, Fraternal Order of Police Chairman Kristopher Baumann said Lanier “may have provided misleading and inaccurate information” to the D.C. Council.
At the heart of Monday’s complaint is Lanier’s denial of an account in the June 10 edition of The Examiner. The newspaper reported that officers were sent to checkpoints despite not having gone through constitutional training that Lanier promised every officer would undergo before standing at the barricades.
“That is inaccurate, that is false, that is not true,” Lanier said in response to a question about the report. “I don’t know what The Examiner is talking about.”
In his letter to the inspector general, Baumann attaches five statements from police officers who staffed the barricades in Trinidad. The officers’ names are redacted, but they all claim that they weren’t trained before being sent to the checkpoints.
Lanier didn’t respond to requests for comment. Her spokeswoman, Traci Hughes, said she hadn’t seen Monday’s complaint and therefore couldn’t comment.
“The FOP can afford themselves of the administrative process, and we’ll respond accordingly,” she said.
When Lanier, Mayor Adrian Fenty and acting Attorney General Peter Nickles began the checkpoint program in violence-wracked Trinidad, they promised to train officers thoroughly to circumvent civil rights lawsuits.
The chief hailed the program as a successful tool in stemming violence in the city.
Baumann, a critic of the checkpoints as well as the chief, said he was unimpressed with Lanier’s testimony.
“Either the chief of police is lying to the council, or she has no idea what is going on in her own police department,” he said.
