U.S. Capitol Police officers’ decision to take Patrick Kennedy home after his car crash without testing him for alcohol reveals a rudderless department plagued by a “good old boy”mentality, the Capitol Police union president said Monday.
“Right now, you’ve got a very young, professional force in one segment of the agency. But there’s still the old way of doing things,” D.C. Fraternal Order of Police President Lou Cannon said. “It’s political policing — somebody gets in trouble, your job is to take care of it.”
The watch commander who was on duty when the 38-year-old congressman slammed his 1997 Ford Mustang convertible into a barrier near the Capitol in the wee hours of last Thursday morning has already been reassigned, Cannon said.
Police officials did not respond to calls for comment Monday.
Kennedy, D-R.I., promised to check into a drug clinic last week to fight an addiction to pain pills. He said he doesn’t remember the accident and said it was caused by a bad reaction to prescription medication.
The responding officers have said that Kennedy seemed impaired on the night of the accident and told them he was on his way to a vote. But a supervisor stopped the line officers from investigating Kennedy further and took the congressman to his Capitol Hill home.
Officers later went to the famed Hawk ‘n’ Dove bar to check reports that Kennedy had been drinking there, but no credit card receipts were recovered, a source said. Kennedy has been seen at the bar before, the source said.
“If the officers had been given the opportunity, they would have done all the tests, which may have helped Mr. Kennedy,” Cannon said. “But we’ll never know now, will we?”
Cannon says that the incident is symbolic of the Capitol police force, which he said was demoralized by the sudden resignation of its chief, Terrance Gainer.
Gainer stepped down earlier this year after it emerged that his son-in-law had gotten a job on the force, which violated the department’s rules against nepotism.
“They’re just in transition now. They really need to fill the leadership … so that incidents like this don’t happen,” Cannon said.
Capitol police have opened a review into their response to Kennedy’s crash.
Patrick Kennedy has had trouble before:
» In 2000, a video camera caught Kennedy shoving an airport security guard into a metal detector.
» Later that summer, the Coast Guard removed a woman from a yacht after she and Kennedy had some sort of dispute. The owners of the yacht claimed Kennedy caused $28,000 in damage after renting it.
» Last month, Kennedy had a fender-bender in the parking lot of a Rhode Island pharmacy.
