Results tagged “chiefcathylanier”

D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier and Mayor Adrian Fenty announced Wednesday that they have doubled the reward money, to $50,000, for anyone with information leading to the arrest and conviction of the two gunmen who shot and killed 17-year-old Kenyetta Nicholson-Stanley on Oct. 8. Nicholson-Stanley was shot while standing in a playground in the 500 block of Edgewood Street NE, and was merely a bystander. The suspects are believed to have been targeting a security guard who worked in the Edgewood Terrace apartments.

An amendment attached to the D.C. House Voting Rights Act that would gut the District's gun laws has remained a point of heated debate in recent weeks, and today Police Chief Cathy Lanier heads to the Hill to testify on the dangers it would pose to the city. She is scheduled to join a number of security officials in a hearing titled, "Disaster Capacity in the National Capital Region: Experiences, Capabilities, and Weaknesses," being held by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management. The subcommittee is chaired by D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton and is meeting as of 10 a.m. in Room 2167 of the Rayburn House Office Building. You can also watch a live web cast of the hearing.

Charles Ramsey can't be too jealous of his former protégé and now D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier. After all, he's got good numbers; she doesn't. In his first year as Philadelphia's Police Commissioner, the District's former top cop saw a 15 percent decline in homicides, handing Mayor Michael Nutter a substantial victory in his pledge to reduce citywide crime. Lanier, on the other hand, had to deal with a second straight year of increases in the District's homicide tally, the first back-to-back jump since 1990-91. Lanier and Ramsey did rely on similarly controversial police tactics to clamp down on crime though, with Lanier resorting to police checkpoints outside of Trindad and Ramsey allowing officers to more aggressively stop, question and frisk Philadelphia residents.

D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier announced this afternoon that five men have been arrested for the killing of 13-year-old Alonzo Robinson and shooting of four other people in Trinidad last July. The shooting spree was one of the worst incidents in a wave of increased violence in Trinidad that lead police to establish controversial checkpoints in the area. Police say the five men, all from the Kenilworth-Parkside area, sprayed gunfire in the neighborhood in an attempt to settle a cross-neighborhood dispute with members of the Trinidad neighborhood. One of the suspects was arrested in early July and has been cooperating with the police.

We balked at the initial news that the Metropolitan Police Department planned to throw up barriers and checkpoints in certain D.C. neighborhoods experiencing excessive violent crime. Later, when we learned the details of the first case, the week-long checkpoint that was established in Trinidad, the MPD's plan appeared to be both constitutionally dubious and potentially not very effective. So it's with great interest that we read today's Washington Post editorial lambasting critics of the checkpoints for getting more upset about murky constitutional issues than about high rates of violent crime and murder.

There's a dispute over whether the operation violated Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. There is some merit to the claim that police were using the checkpoints for general law enforcement, which could render them unconstitutional. But city attorneys make a convincing argument that because the program's goal was the physical safety of roadways, it passes constitutional muster. Indeed, they liken the Trinidad stops to sobriety checkpoints, which have been upheld by the Supreme Court.

Most of us who felt that the checkpoints bore a far too close resemblance to police state tactics would argue in return that all of us want an increased police presence in Trinidad that could ensure the physical safety of the neighborhood's roadways -- just not at the expense of hassling and turning away District residents without probable cause. Well via City Desk, it turns out Chief Cathy Lanier says she actually had a specific reason for putting up the Trinidad checkpoint. D.C. Watch has the recap of her testimony at a D.C. Council hearing on the matter.

Chief Lanier announced for the first time that the stated reasons for instituting a blockade of the Trinidad neighborhood were not the true reasons, or at least not the major reason, behind the cordon. There was another, more important, reason, she told the committee, but she could not reveal what that reason was. If the committee members knew what she knew, she was confident that they would agree with her actions, but she couldn’t tell them what she knew. She had, she said, specific information that there were specific individuals who were going to enter that neighborhood to commit a particular crime. Preventing that crime was the real reason for quarantining Trinidad. No lesser measures — tracking those specific individuals, warning the intended victims of the crime, etc. — would have sufficed to prevent the crime. Only a full-scale lock down of the neighborhood and lockout of other citizens was enough. But councilmembers would have to take her word for it, because she couldn’t tell them anything more.

Of course, that's not at all the reasoning Lanier gave when the "Neighborhood Safety Zone" initiative was first announced.

WTOP's Mark Segraves has the scoop that interim D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles has advised Police Chief Cathy Lanier that she may legally fire the 17 officers (though Segraves now says it was 20 officers -- that's first time we've seen that number) she was forced to rehire. Lanier has reportedly already begun the process of terminating the officers again, who were originally fired for violations ranging from lying to get time off to posting personal information about a Washington City Paper reporter on the internet.

A while back, Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier announced she wanted to start a book club of sorts, and now, the date of the book club discussion has been finalized. On Thursday, May 1, at a location yet to be determined, the Chief will host a public discussion of pop-sociology books The Tipping Point and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.