U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor said he’s smoothing the delays in the police booking and charging system, but he said he has no plans to scrap the District’s one-of-a-kind practice of having officers meet with prosecutors immediately after each arrest.
Since becoming U.S. Attorney for the District in September, Taylor has sought to make the prosecutorial review process more efficient. He’s considering nightshifts for prosecutors so that police officers won’t have to wait until the next morning to meet with the attorneys.
But, he told The Examiner, he plans to continue to require the city’s police officers to meet face-to-face with the attorneys the morning after each arrest, a practice that is unique to D.C., and one that takes between 100 and 200 police off the street each day and costs the MPD hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime.
Incoming D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier has vowed to overhaul the “court-papering” system, which she calls a “morale buster.” The police union chief calls it “a disincentive to make arrests.”
Assistant Chief Pete Newsham said that within a year, police officers should be able to write arrest reports with enough information that they do not need to meet with prosecutors until later in the process.
“That’s a bridge too far,” Taylor said. The immediate contact with police saves the court and his office money, and prevents prosecutorial problems down the road, he said.
In the meantime, Newsham said, the department would like to establish within 60 days a “night-papering” program, where a prosecutor would work overnight to formally charge suspects. A night-duty prosecutor in each district would save the police department $1.4 million and 31,000 man-hours a year, according to 2002 estimate by the department. But the U.S. Attorney’s office would likely need to hire more assistant prosecutors and staff.
Taylor told police last week that he’d consider a night-papering program, but he has not agreed to it.
On Thanksgiving, Taylor worked as a screener in the basement of the D.C. Superior Court to learn more about the process. He said he was surprised to see that police had to bring in paper copies of their reports, which then were retyped into several different computer systems.
Taylor wants to connect the computer systems between the police, the prosecutors and the courts. He has also agreed to stagger the times that officers meet with prosecutors in the morning to avoid a glut of officers and allow night-shift workers to come in later so they can sleep in.
