MPD is blessed with a diverse, highly-educated, highly-trained and highly-motivated force. Fear and intimidation is no way to command such professionals.

Thank you for your comments here. And thank you for your service to all of our city’s communities.

Resent? Jayson, do tell. Just exactly what do you refer to as “pulling the gay card” with respect to bias in DC’s Metropolitan Police Department?

Be reminded (and/or informed), it was not all that long ago that both *institutional* AND *individual* anti-LGBT bias was alive and thriving in the highest echelons of MPD. A MPD Assistant Chief was actually tied to what amounted to criminal extortion of gay and bisexual patrons of LGBT business establishments in DC.

Frankly, that’s one of the reasons Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier’s immediate predecessor, Chief Charles Ramsey was brought in from Chicago. That’s also one of the reasons Chief Ramsey later established MPD’s award-winning GLLU unit– a unit Chief Lanier sought to degrade and dismantle as soon as she became chief in 2007.

Much more recently than MPD’s anti-LGBT extortion practices of the late 90′s– I have personally witnessed and experienced– up close and personal– INDIVIDUAL homophobic bias by MPD officers in DC, which required the involvement, multiple times, of MPD’s GLLU unit.

That’s not a matter of opinion. It is a matter of record. I could say a lot more about that, but our family happens to have a particular abiding respect for the service, sacrifice and honor of the overwhelming number of professional men and women of MPD, and that of those serving in other law enforcement agencies all across our nation.

However, be assured, Jayson, when it comes to anti-LGBT bias at MPD– both INDIVIDUAL and INSTITUTIONAL– I really have “been there, seen it, lived it.”

Moreover, for quite a number of years, DC’s undisputed LGBT community-supported public-safety/ community policing advocacy organizations, GLAA, GLOV, RRC and DCTC, as well as our city’s LGBT press, have had to repeatedly chronicle instances of MPD failures with respect to LGBT public safety, that in the aggregate and in the opinion of many, amount to continuing INSTITUTIONAL anti-LGBT bias at MPD, at the very least.

Unfortunately, just this summer, Chief Lanier and/or her immediate office(s) has continued to publicly send mixed messages regarding the need for MPD’s GLLU core unit, as well as MPD’s commitment to enforce and respect the provisions of DC’s 23-year old Bias-Related Crimes Act (hate crimes law). That too, is a matter of record.

But hope springs eternal. Every new day can bring new opportunities for Mayor Gray, the Council and MPD’s chiefs to get ahead of MPD’s institutional bias problem and to seriously deter the ever growing threat of violent anti-LGBT hate crimes that threaten the physical and mental well-being of our LGBT residents, our families and our neighborhoods.

INSTITUTIONAL BIAS, DISCRIMINATION, HOMOPHOBIA and TRANSPHOBIA continues TODAY at the highest levels of the Metropolitan Police Department.

Only credible, rigorous oversight of MPD’s behind-the-scenes operations at its highest levels, by COUNCIL, is likely to bring said MPD Institutional Bias and Discrimination to an end.

Kudos to the Blade for continuing to drill down on cases of apparent MPD Institutional Bias.

Yes, MPD’s responsibility in this case occurred in 2007, but it was also just after Chief Lanier’s tenure began– and shortly after Lanier’s infamous attempt to all but destroy MPD’s Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit’s (GLLU) core team in 2007.

I agree with Chair Mendelson that the city should seek to settle this embarrassing claim. Indeed, it is outrageous that MPD failed to even investigate the EEO claims of the lesbian MPD officers in 2007.

Chiefs Lanier and Newsham should still be called to account to Council’s Judiciary Committee for that MPD failure to investigate internally.

Moreover, respectfully, to all of our Councilmemebers, I’m afraid “hoping” that the department has gotten better since the time of these allegations, is no longer sufficient MPD oversight by COUNCIL.

MPD’s chiefs appear to have an extraordinary set of tin ears when it comes to addressing Institutional anti-LGBT Bias right under their own noses.

Last month, in publicly addressing allegations of MPD Transphobia by Human Rights Watch in a report by the Blade, we saw A.C. Newsham go out of his way to DENIGRATE the messenger (HRW) with more MPD obfuscating double-speak, rather than address MPD’s INSTITUTIONAL BIAS issue…

“Human Rights Watch uses anecdotal examples that are really uncorroborated and unsupported to make their point,” he said. “That being said, there’s nothing to suggest either that they are true or not true. They could potentially be true; they could potentially be not true.”

http://www.washingtonblade.com/2012/07/19/human-rights-watch-criticizes-d-c-police-in-new-report/

Also, just a few weeks ago, IMO, MPD Chief of Police Cathy Lanier appeared to DENIGRATE and impeach the account of two gay men brutally beaten in Eckington. Lanier asserted a misleading account of what she claimed *BOTH* victims said in a single media interview. Lanier’s representation of what either victim reported was just plain false on its face.

A similar outrageously misleading account, again, in effect casting doubt upon the gay victims of that hate crime was permitted to be posted on MPD’s 5th District listserv a few days later.

Under DC’s hate crimes law (22-3701). MPD is responsible for protecting the rights of victims of hate crimes. That the chief of police and/or her MPD Office of Communications appear to be trampling on the rights of LGBT hate crimes victims– even in the midst of an ongoing MPD investigation of said hate crime– is outrageous conduct.

That is just another example of ongoing MPD INSTITUTIONAL BIAS against LGBT residents and hate crimes victims.

COUNCIL needs to thoroughly investigate the unethical PR operations of MPD’s Office of Communications.