The head of the D.C. police department’s internal affairs division has been shifted to a research bureau, an internal police memo obtained by The Examiner shows.
Inspector Matthew Klein has been in charge of the department’s internal reviews for years. But the department has been shaken by revelations that nearly two dozen officers fired for misconduct had to be reinstated because the department routinely violated their due process rights.
Those officers have since been re-fired and are suing the city for tens of millions of dollars, alleging that Chief Cathy Lanier reneged on lawsuit settlements to re-sack them.
Though not officially a demotion, Klein is losing a job with immense authority in the department to join the “research analytical services division.” At the research division, he’ll replace former commander Hilton Burton, who was demoted after he sent a series of lurid e-mails to a girlfriend on his government-issued computers.
Burton will now become the liaison officer for the D.C. courts, according to the police memo.
Lanier has shuffled her department brass several times already in her short tenure.
Klein’s transfer comes just after an internal investigation into the fatal shooting of 14-year-old DeOnte Rawlings wrapped up. Nearly a year after DeOnte was killed in a furious gunbattle with two off-duty officers, the department reinstated Officer James Haskel fully and gave a written reprimand to Anthony Clay, ruling that he didn’t have adequate ammunition in his service weapon and that he shouldn’t have moved his vehicle after DeOnte was killed.
The DeOnte case divided the city and caused a rupture between Lanier and her rank and file, many of whom accused her of siding with outraged neighbors and activists instead of her officers in the DeOnte matter.
Neither Klein nor Lanier responded to requests for comment.
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