Heat on MPD Coming From More than Just the Weather
It's not exactly a banner day for D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier. The Examiner takes the chief to task a bit this morning for her latest "All Hands on Deck" initiative: four people were shot in the course of an hour during the second night of the effort, which also coincided with National Night Out events, and the force is seriously short handed today as well as Wednesday and Friday to avoid spending millions on overtime. Fewer than half the number of officers needed to patrol some neighborhoods are available to work the second half of this week. Some officers are estimating the entire police force is down by about a third right now.
And then there's that canceled move to a new headquarters in Southeast we mentioned briefly earlier. The story goes like this: Back in December, before Lanier was on the job, the city signed a 20-year lease for the site, a 400,000 square foot building at 225 Virginia Ave. SE. But Lanier and other city officials had a six-month grace period to change their minds before paying any rent. After, we can only presume, examining their options during that time, the D.C. Council went ahead and approved $6.5 million in April so that Chief Lanier and about 200 officers could make the move in 2009, with over 1,100 officers eventually scheduled to be transferred to the new facility. The city made the first $542,000 payment in July.
Then suddenly yesterday, everything went a little nutty. The DC Office of Property Management put out a cryptic press release saying the move had been canceled, with the following statement from Director Lars Etzkorn:
“We have found this deal to be too expensive for the District,” Etzkorn said. “Fortunately we realized before it was too late that forcing three dissimilar police functions in this building (a local police station and its cell-block, a warehouse for secure evidence storage along with regular office space) is not cost effective. In addition, we have found the facility to be inconsistent with the adjacent neighborhood. OPM is now studying the future of the building.”Are we to believe that Etzkorn has a different definition of "too late" than the rest of us? The city has already spent $542,000 on the building, and is signed on for a 20-year lease that presumably would also be costly to break. The notion that we should all be relieved that OPM caught this potential disaster in the nick of time is laughable. Where was this cost analysis in April, when the decision was made to go forward with the move? And what on Earth does it mean to suggest the facility would be "inconsistent with the adjacent neighborhood?"
Both Mayor Adrian Fenty and Chief Lanier, who vocally supported the move back in April, have some serious explaining to do. No doubt looking into this debacle will be high on the to-do list for the D.C. Council when they come back to work next month -- Phil Mendelson (D-At large) has already sent an angry letter to the Mayor. Just a few months ago, Fenty and Lanier were convinced that the new location wouldn't be too remote, and that the current police headquarters was rundown and insufficient to meet the future needs of the MPD. The details of what has changed since then, including what's in Etzkorn's report and what the MPD plans to do instead, will surely be a source of contention between the Council and the Mayor this fall.