Great street cops are hard to come by in any city, but they are especially precious in the nation’s capital. I’m talking about native Washingtonians who rise in rank from patrolling in cars to solving murders as top detectives, local boys with roots so deep in the community that grandmothers call them to finger their grandsons.
Cops like Michael Irving.
Why, then, is the Metropolitan Police Department in such a hurry to end his career? Follow this tangled web: Remember the thugs who broke into Colonel Brooks’ Tavern one Sunday morning in 2003 and murdered three employees? Two confessed to Irving; the third committed suicide before Irving got to him. Or the drive-by shooting that took the lives of two Wilson High School students in 2000: Irving led the investigation and nailed the shooter. Then there was the case of “Little D.”
In 2001, a shooter gunned down Kenny Barnes Jr. in broad daylight in his boutique on U Street. A postman witnessed the hit. Irving learned the bad guy lived in the Trinidad neighborhood and knocked on doors. A sweet, older woman fingered her neighbor, James “Little D” Devon Hill. And by the way, Hill was behind two other murders.
Irving stitched together the cases, got the postman to ID Hill and got Hill to admit to more mayhem: three murders in all.
“He got life,” Irving tells me. “He’s gone.”
Unfortunately, Mike Irving might be gone from the MPD. His troubles began around the time he was putting Little D behind bars. Irving’s tax adviser told him he was eligible for a tax exempt program. The same adviser had told at least a dozen D.C. cops they could avoid taxes. Irving bought it, stopped withholding and joined other cops in not paying taxes.
In 2004 the IRS told Irving he owed back taxes, another tax advisor told him to pay up, so he sold some property and prepared to make amends. Then three armed IRS investigators showed up at his door; they woke him, his wife and child to say he was under criminal investigation. He was later indicted on nine counts of tax evasion. Earlier this year, a jury acquitted Irving of three counts, hung on four, convicted him of two.
Now the MPD wants to toss him out of the department by forcing him to a trial board hearing on Oct. 21.
Let’s put aside the question of why the feds prosecuted Irving, when he was duped and ready to pay up. Surely the MPD can wait for the judicial process to run its course. He’s awaiting sentencing in early November. He could get probation and return to policing. He intends to appeal the convictions. Top cops are rallying for him.
Seems to me if Marion Barry can get slapped on the wrist for not paying taxes from 1999 to 2004, the Police Department could give one of its best officers time to clean up his record. Why not root out the cops who still don’t pay taxes?
