Two OPC investigators at the March for Justice. Photo by Sarah Anne Hughes.
Among the thousands of demonstrators gathered at Freedom Plaza on Saturday to protest police violence and the dozens of law enforcement officials stationed to maintain order were a handful of D.C. government investigators there to watch these two groups interact.
Investigators from the Office of Police Complaints were tasked with evaluating and monitoring how members of the Metropolitan Police Department responded to the general public.
“We want to make sure that the police officers are respecting the First Amendment right to protest while keeping law and order,” Nicole Porter, an attorney and special assistant with the Office of Police Complaints since 2006, said near Freedom Plaza.
As one of two teams, Porter and another OPC investigator walked around the protest, observing MPD officers as they helped maintain road closures. Each member of OPC was armed with a video camera, ready to film both good and bad interactions. While OPC has the right to monitor MPD, they do not have jurisdiction over the federal police agencies, like the U.S. Park Police, many of which deployed officers during the march.
There is no federal equivalent to D.C.’s OPC, which opened in 2001. OPC — which last deployed teams to monitor 2009’s International Monetary Fund protests — is overseen by the Police Complaints Board, an independent agency that “investigates police misconduct complaints filed” against MPD and D.C. Housing Authority Office of Public Safety officers.
A spokesperson for OPC was unable to say if any complaints have been filed against MPD officers during recent protests related to the Michael Brown and Eric Garner grand jury decisions. Recent cases are considered open, the spokesperson said: “We don’t generally give out info on open cases.”
In fiscal year 2013, 1,046 people contacted and 440 people filed complaints of alleged police misconduct with OPC. Of the 18 complaints referred to the complaint examination process, 15 “decisions sustained at least one allegation of misconduct.” By the end of that period, 312 complaints were still open.
Like all of the recent demonstrations in D.C., Saturday’s march was a peaceful one, with no arrests made by the U.S. Park Police. A request for information from MPD was not immediately returned.
