City lawyers scrambled to recast legal justifications for Mayor Adrian Fenty’s controversial neighborhood anti-crime program within a week of throwing up police checkpoints and limiting entrance to the violence-wracked Trinidad neighborhood, internal documents obtained by The Examiner show.
On June 4, the day Fenty announced his no-go zones, Deputy Attorney General Wayne C. Witkowski wrote a memo in defense of the roadblocks. Witkowksi relied on a New York appellate decision in a 1990s case called Maxwell v. New York. There was mention of only one other possibly contradictory 2000 case from the U.S. Supreme Court.
Six days later, as public criticism mounted, Witkowski wrote another memo regarding a whole new set of cases — including two appeals from D.C. where courts either struck down or raised serious questions about barricades. In one 1991 case, Gilberth v. U.S., the D.C. Court of Appeals struck down a checkpoint two blocks from the Trinidad neighborhood Fenty sealed off last week.
Witkowski claims in his June 10 memo he had previously reviewed all of those cases and that they “do not change my earlier conclusions.”
Some critics say the Witkowski memos show the Fenty regime hasn’t done its homework.
“They threw this together,” said Kristopher Baumann, chair of the D.C. police union and a former lawyer. “At absolute best, this was sloppy analysis. When you’re dealing with constitutional issues, you can’t rush.”
Interim Attorney General Peter Nickles, the architect of the police cordon, could not be reached for comment.
The Fenty administration has given conflicting messages on the program:
– In announcing the checkpoints, Fenty and his police chief, Cathy Lanier, said that visiting friends was “a legitimate reason” to be allowed through the barricades. That is contradicted by internal police memos and the department’s Web site.
– Nickles promised that all officers on the checkpoints would be well trained. Within a day, officers and supervisors were sent to a barricade without having undergone training.
n Last week, Lanier announced that she would extend the Trinidad checkpoints. A day later, she ordered them scrapped.
D.C. Councilman Phil Mendelson, D-at large, has scheduled hearings on the barricades for today.
