Good morning, D.C. Scanning today’s headlines offers a pretty bleak assessment of the District of Columbia’s public servants. Apart from the top story that D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier has been forced to rehire 17 officers who were fired for misconduct because the department missed a crucial deadline, which we’ll get to below, we’ve also got the D.C. DMV employee who has pleaded guilty to bribery charges associated with her participation in a scam to sell phony driver’s licenses, and a D.C. homicide detective who has been convicted of income tax evasion (not to mention last night’s reminder of the Office of Tax and Revenue case). Must be tough out there for honest city employees to be so often represented by the worst kind of greed and disregard for the difference between right and wrong. Any D.C. government employees who feel like venting in the comments, have at.
MPD Forced to Rehire Officers Fired for Misconduct: That’s the top Metro story in today’s Washington Post, and it’s got teeth. A total of 17 officers, who were fired for misconduct ranging from lying about having given blood in order to get four hours off of work to covering up for fellow officers who were involved in fist fights, are back on the force with back pay and seniority, all because the Metropolitan Police Department apparently can’t keep track of deadlines. This sort of failure to keep on top of disciplinary deadlines has been a problem for the department before, and Lanier has said these current cases actually predate her tenure. Assistant Chief Peter Newsham told the Post that this problem shouldn’t happen again, because, he claims, the department had been misinterpreting a deadline that they now will follow more precisely. Which part of the word deadline could the department have not understood?
D.C. Area Struck by Counterfeit Bills: The Examiner reports on a warning from the U.S. Secret Service that the D.C. metro area is being plagued by counterfeit $100 bills. Many different individuals who appear not to be working together have been arrested in the region for using a bleaching technique to turn $5 bills into $100. Since they are printed on real currency paper and still contain security strips, the only way to tell if you have a fake $100 bill is to hold it up to the light and check for an old Abraham Lincoln next to a reprinted Benjamin Franklin that do not match up.
Briefly Noted: Four people shot in Southeast drive-by … Stabbing on National Mall … Man shot, killed in Southeast … DCPS security contract set for renewal.
Photo by tzakielmuto
