Dozens of D.C. police were called into headquarters for two days this week to fill out thousands of incomplete work forms that were to be delivered to the D.C. Council as part of the crime emergency, police sources say.
The council asked for the work forms so it could monitor the actions of the police department over the first 30 days of the crime emergency. But with the deadline approaching, D.C. police department officials realized that hundreds of documents were incomplete and some supervisors had simply written “unknown activity” for work that they couldn’t account for.
“That is unacceptable,” said First District Commander Diane Grooms. “We had a big pow-wow in there,” she added, indicating police headquarters. The discussion resulted in dozens of police officers being assigned to rewriting the reports, she said.
A source familiar with the process told The Examiner that at least 500 reports were missing from Grooms’ district, and that hundreds of reports contained inaccurate information because they were filled out by supervisors who could not possibly remember what their officers did last week or last month. The source had agreed to talk to The Examiner on the grounds that they would not be identified because they feared retribution on the job.
In Grooms’ district, about 10 supervisors — some pulled from patrols — and several administrative officers worked overtime hours tosort through 1,600 documents to determine which reports were missing and then faked new reports for the 500 that were missing, the source said.
Each form had to be filled front-to-back, signed by the officer and reviewed and signed by the supervisor.
Grooms contradicted The Examiner’s source, saying no police officers were pulled from patrols and no reports were missing, they were just incomplete. Although many of the original reports didn’t have any information about the activities of some officers, others simply hadn’t been signed or didn’t have the officer’s badge number.
Lt. Mike Bunner, chief of staff for Executive Assistant Chief Michael Fitzgerald, said the administrative staffs logged many hours to make sure the information was filled out correctly, but he said he did not know of any reports that had been missing.
D.C. Council Member David Catania asked for the work sheets so the council could monitor the actions of the police department. Catania’s office had not received the work forms Thursday and said he wouldn’t comment until he had a chance to review them.
