Before filing a report claiming that her service weapon had been stolen, a D.C. police lieutenant asked one of her fellow officers to give a statement that would have thrown suspicion onto a sergeant, police sources say.
Meanwhile, in an interview, the lieutenant, Teresa Brown, says she’s being “set up.”
“I don’t know where the conspiracy starts or where it stops,” Brown told The Examiner Sunday. “I think it has a whole lot to do with the fact that I’m a strong black woman.”
Brown, 41, filed a “251,” or missing/stolen property report, on Jan. 3 — the day after returning to work from vacation. She says she was sick with food poisoning and left her Glock 17 on her desk in the watch commander’s office in the Fourth District station on Georgia Avenue.
She said she went downstairs to make copies of several documents and when she returned, the gun was gone.
On June 4, after two inmates broke out of the D.C. Jail, authorities raided a dilapidated apartment on the third floor of a low-rise building at 232 W St. NW. They found Brown’s gun in the folds of a couch.
Amid swirling rumors, numerous police sources have approached The Examiner but have asked to speak anonymously because they fear retribution from the department.
Some of those sources say that Brown asked Officer Kenneth Thompkins to file a statement saying that a sergeant had come into the watch commander’s office while Brown’s back was turned and her pistol was on her desk.
Brown was asked three times about these allegations. She refused comment all three times.
Sources say that Thompkins had been in Brown’s office earlier on the evening shift Jan. 2 and had seen a service weapon sitting on her desk. He refused Brown’s request to write a statement implicating the sergeant, sources say.
Thompkins has been on vacation and hasn’t been interviewed by internal investigators, but his account is known within the department.
