D.C. police officers have been involved in nearly 200 wrecks through the first six months of the year, and many of those investigated by a formal review panel have been judged preventable, District officials report.
As of July 21, 186 crashes had been reported to the Metropolitan Police Department’s Crash Review Board in 2008, or more than six a week, said Cmdr. James Crane, the panel’s chair. The review panel has looked at 116 of 186, but Crane could not provide a breakdown of the board’s rulings.
A weekly report from the MPD’s Office of Human Resource Management obtained by The Examiner disclosed that 79 crashes this fiscal year had been deemed preventable accidents by investigators.
A preventable accident, Crane said, is one in which the “operator could have taken some action or done something in his driving to affect the conditions so that the accident did not occur.”
“They’re out there 24-7, out there constantly on the streets,” Crane said of patrol cars. “Just by the statistical fact that they’re out there in great number, they’re bound to have accidents just like any other driver.”
Officers are on pace this year to exceed the 98 preventable accidents recorded in fiscal 2007, according to the MPD report. The wrecks “represent themost notable” of all forms of police officer misconduct.
Although most crashes are minor, some have resulted in death, serious injury or property damage.
According to the MPD report, 28 accidents in the past two years have resulted in adverse action against an officer, which might include suspension, demotion or termination. An additional 144 have brought “corrective action,” such as retraining.
“It’s not good for the government because it takes officers off the street,” said at-large D.C. Councilman Phil Mendelson, chair of the public safety committee. “It takes the equipment off the street. It costs money to repair them, and there might be liability.”
Officers who ignore traffic laws have long been the subject of neighborhood grumbling, said Richard Rothblum, a Cleveland Park advisory neighborhood commissioner. Rothblum lives near the block of Wisconsin Avenue where George Thomas Riggs was struck by a police cruiser last September while in a crosswalk. Riggs died less than a month later.
“It’s kind of like neighborhood lore,” Rothblum said. “The police probably drive more recklessly than anybody.”
