Police union chief Kristopher Baumann grabbed the phone first thing Monday morning when he showed up at the Fraternal Order of Police offices in the first row of brownstones just west of the Anacostia River.
Lt. Linda Nishan was on the line.
“Bring all your stuff down here,” she said. “You are being revoked.”
“Revoked” is cop talk for busted down to zero. The Metropolitan Police Department was taking Baumann’s police powers.
“It means I am no longer the police,” he tells me. “This is one of the worst things they can do to a police officer.”
A cop of seven years, Baumann gathered up his gun, his clips of bullets, his badge, the nameplate from his hat. He put them in a bag, drove down to police headquarters at 300 Indiana Ave., took the elevator up to the fourth floor and handed the bag over to Nishan. She’s head of the MPD’s Labor and Employees Relations division.
Why are the police brass busting Baumann?
Could it be the letter he sent to Nishan on July 9 asking her to investigate whether Police Chief Cathy Lanier’s attendance at a training session was doctored? The letter says Baumann has records showing Lanier “was documented for attending 2008 Annual Professional Development Training that she may have not actually attended.”
Nope. That is but a spark in the bitter firefight between the department and the union. Ostensibly, the police busted Baumann back because it was he who didn’t complete required training. Or it was because he sued the department as a whistleblower in a case alleging Mayor Adrian Fenty intervened when a gunman barricaded himself in a house in June.
I ask Lanier if she was retaliating against Baumann.
“Of course it’s not true,” she responds. “He was treated like everyone else.”
D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles has been battling Baumann in court for two years. “There’s no singling out of Mr. Baumann,” he says. “Fact is, Baumann for at least two or three years has been pursuing a scorched-earth policy after the chief.”
Now we are getting closer to the truth. Baumann has indeed been a constant, public critic of Lanier and Fenty. He’s smart, backs up his comments with documents, and he’s willing to blast Fenty with his name attached, as opposed to making weaselly off-the-record comments.
Baumann, the first union boss who’s also a lawyer, has filed scores of grievances and lawsuits over the years. Nickles calls it “a concerted policy to bog down the police department with lawsuits, arbitrations and press releases.”
Baumann calls it doing his job to protect the rank and file. They have elected him twice by landslide votes.
“This is a very public hit job,” Baumann says. “They are out to show people the lengths they will go to silence critics.”
Taking Baumann’s badge and gun might have the opposite effect — he will have more time to file lawsuits.
This battle has just begun.
E-mail Harry Jaffe at [email protected].
