Local
Security guard says company suspended him for being gay
DNC investigating allegation against contractor
Robert Miller claims that CSI Corporation discriminated against him because he’s gay while working as a security guard at the DNC headquarters. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Robert Miller, 32, a D.C. resident, says he’s filing a discrimination complaint with the D.C. Office of Human Rights against CSI Corporation of D.C., a private contracting firm that provides security guards for many prominent buildings in the city, including the DNC headquarters and the Washington Convention Center.
“I’m a gay man and he says he’s uncomfortable working with me,” Miller said of fellow security guard Julius Crumlin.
Crumlin declined to comment when contacted by the Blade. Officials with the Silver Spring, Md., based CSI Corporation did not return repeated calls.
City records show that CSI Corporation of D.C. listed a D.C. address to obtain certification in 2009 as a small, local business enterprise eligible for special preference for D.C. government contracts.
But the management company for the office building that CSI listed for its address at 7600 Georgia Ave., N.W., told the Blade CSI moved out of the first floor office it rented in that building last month.
A spokesperson for the D.C. Department of Small and Local Business Development couldn’t be immediately reached to determine whether CSI was in violation of its contract preference status by moving out of the city. The DSLBD regulates the city’s small and minority business contracting preference program, which is restricted to companies whose “principal” location is in D.C.
Miller said he and Crumlin had a cordial working relationship for nearly a year and sometimes had dinner together while on break at the DNC building. He said Crumlin became hostile after discovering in a desk drawer at the DNC building a personal letter that Miller said he wrote to his cousin about his romantic feelings toward another man.
Miller says he thinks Crumlin thought the flowery language he used to describe his feelings in the letter were directed at Crumlin.
“He had no business going through my personal things in that desk drawer,” said Miller. “That letter had nothing to do with him, but he took it the wrong way.”
Crumlin responded by writing his own letter to a CSI Corporation supervisor accusing Miller of sexually harassing him on the job, Miller told the Blade. On Aug. 30, the supervisor called Miller to a meeting at CSI’s office in Silver Spring and confronted him with Crumlin’s complaint.
Miller said he tried his best to explain that Crumlin was not the subject of the letter in question. But he said the supervisor and at least one other CSI official told him the company wanted to investigate the matter. Miller said the supervisor, whom he knows only as Mr. Covington, told him to go home that day and to not return to work until contacted by the company.
“They never called,” Miller said. “I kept calling them but they didn’t answer. They didn’t return my calls.”
After three weeks of not knowing his job status and not being paid, Miller said a company official called him and informed him that he was being transferred to another building on an interim basis while the company continued its investigation into the matter.
Miller’s reinstatement came a short time after the Blade began making calls to the company and to the DNC to inquire about Miller’s status and the circumstances that led to his suspension.
DNC spokesperson Melanie Roussell said the DNC didn’t learn about Miller’s suspension until contacted by the Blade.
“The DNC does not exercise authority over or make hiring, firing or suspension decisions regarding any of the security guards working at DNC facilities, as they are employed by an independent contractor,” Roussell said in a statement.
“Nevertheless, we are taking these allegations very seriously and will do everything within our power to investigate this matter to the fullest extent possible, and resolve it accordingly,” she said. “The DNC has an absolutely resolute policy of commitment to diversity among its staff, and recognizes that our continued success requires the highest commitment to obtaining and retaining a diverse staff that provides the best services to supporters and constituents.”
Roussell added that the DNC is an equal opportunity employer that hires a diverse staff without regard to a wide range factors such as race, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity.
Miller said he quickly learned that the pay scale at the building to which he was transferred is lower than what it was at the DNC building. According to Miller, he’s now being paid $11 per hour at the Fairchild Building located across South Capitol Street from the DNC headquarters. He had been paid $16 per hour at the DNC building.
Miller gave the Blade a copy of his hand-written responses on an intake questionnaire he obtained from the D.C. Office of Human Rights, which serves as the first step for filing a discrimination complaint against an employer.
A spokesperson for the OHR said the office uses the questionnaire responses — along with an interview with the person making the complaint — as the basis for determining whether grounds exist for a formal complaint, which the office would then investigate.
The spokesperson, Tonya Gonzalez, said the OHR doesn’t publicly disclose or comment on a complaint unless and until the investigation results in a finding of probable cause that discrimination occurred. She said it could take several months before such a determination is made.
Gonzalez said anyone filing a discrimination complaint is free to publicly disclose the fact that they have filed such a complaint, even though the OHR cannot comment on it or acknowledge that it has been filed.
CSI describes itself on its website as “a minority owned firm, certified as a Local Small Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (LSDBE)” with a pending certification from the U.S. Small Business Administration.
City records show that the company listed its headquarters in D.C. in an office at a building at 7600 Georgia Ave., N.W. However, a reporter visiting the office building last week found a vacant office suite with the CSI Corporation name on a locked door. A staff member with Capitol Realty Management Group, which manages the office building, said CSI Corporation had just moved out of the building and the office suite was being listed as being available for rent at $2,100 per month.
Miller said he and other security guards he worked with only had dealings with the company’s Silver Spring office, located on the seventh floor of a building at 1320 Fenwick Lane.
District of Columbia
‘Sandwich guy’ not guilty in assault case
Sean Charles Dunn faced misdemeanor charge
A jury with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday, Nov. 6, found D.C. resident Sean Charles Dunn not guilty of assault for tossing a hero sandwich into the chest of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent at the intersection of 14th and U streets, N.W. at around 11 p.m. on Aug. 10.
Dunn’s attorneys hailed the verdict as a gesture of support for Dunn’s contention that his action, which was captured on video that went viral on social media, was an exercise of his First Amendment right to protest the federal border agent’s participating in President Donald Trump’s deployment of federal troops on D.C. streets.
Friends of Dunn have said that shortly before the sandwich tossing incident took place Dunn had been at the nearby gay nightclub Bunker, which was hosting a Latin dance party called Tropicoqueta. Sabrina Shroff, one of three attorneys representing Dunn at the trial, said during the trial after Dunn left the nightclub he went to the submarine sandwich shop on 14th Street at the corner of U Street, where he saw the border patrol agent and other law enforcement officers standing in front of the shop.
Shroff and others who know Dunn have said he was fearful that the border agent outside the sub shop and immigrant agents might raid the Bunker Latin night event. Bunker’s entrance is on U Street just around the corner from the sub shop where the federal agents were standing.
“I am so happy that justice prevails in spite of everything happening,“ Dunn told reporters outside the courthouse after the verdict while joined by his attorneys. “And that night I believed that I was protecting the rights of immigrants,” he said.
“And let us not forget that the great seal of the United States says, E Pluribus Unum,” he continued. “That means from many, one. Every life matters no matter where you came from, no matter how you got here, no matter how you identify, you have the right to live a life that is free.”
The verdict followed a two-day trial with testimony by just two witnesses, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent Gregory Lairmore, who identified Dunn as the person who threw the sandwich at his chest, and Metro Transit Police Detective Daina Henry, who told the jury she witnessed Dunn toss the sandwich at Lairmore while shouting obscenities.
Shroff told the jury Dunn was exercising his First Amendment right to protest and that the tossing of the sandwich at Lairmore, who was wearing a bulletproof vest, did not constitute an assault under the federal assault law to which Dunn was charged, among other things, because the federal agent was not injured.
Prosecutors with the Office of the U.S. Attorney for D.C. initially attempted to obtain a grand jury indictment of Dunn on a felony assault charge. But the grand jury refused to hand down an indictment on that charge, court records show. Prosecutors then filed a criminal complaint against Dunn on the misdemeanor charge of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers of the United States.
“Dunn stood within inches of Victim 1,” the criminal complaint states, “pointing his finger in Victim 1’s face, and yelled, Fuck you! You fucking fascists! Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city!”
The complaint continues by stating, “An Instagram video recorded by an observer captured the incident. The video depicts Dunn screaming at V-1 within inches of his face for several seconds before winding his arm back and forcefully throwing a sub-style sandwich at V-1.
Prosecutors repeatedly played the video of the incident for the jurors on video screens in the courtroom.
Dunn, who chose not to testify at his trial, and his attorneys have not disputed the obvious evidence that Dunn threw the sandwich that hit Lairmore in the chest. Lead defense attorney Shroff and co-defense attorneys Julia Gatto and Nicholas Silverman argued that Dunn’s action did not constitute an assault under the legal definition of common law assault in the federal assault statute.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael DiLorenzo, the lead prosecutor in the case, strongly disputed that claim, citing various provisions in the law and appeals court rulings that he claimed upheld his and the government’s contention that an “assault” can take place even if a victim is not injured as well as if there was no physical contact between the victim and an alleged assailant, only a threat of physical contact and injury.
The dispute over the intricacies of the assault law and whether Dunn’s action reached the level of an assault under the law dominated the two-day trial, with U.S. District Court Judge Carl J. Nichols, who presided over the trial, weighing in with his own interpretation of the assault statute. Among other things, he said it would be up to the jury to decide whether or not Dunn committed an assault.
Court observers have said in cases like this, a jury could have issued a so-called “nullification” verdict in which they acquit a defendant even though they believe he or she committed the offense in question because they believe the charge is unjust. The other possibility, observers say, is the jury believed the defense was right in claiming a law was not violated.
DiLorenzo and his two co-prosecutors in the case declined to comment in response to requests by reporters following the verdict.
“We really want to thank the jury for having sent back an affirmation that his sentiment is not just tolerated but it is legal, it is welcome,” defense attorney Shroff said in referring to Dunn’s actions. “And we thank them very much for that verdict,” she said.
Dunn thanked his attorneys for providing what he called excellent representation “and for offering all of their services pro bono,” meaning free of charge.
Dunn, an Air Force veteran who later worked as an international affairs specialist at the U.S. Department of Justice, was fired from that job by DOJ officials after his arrest for the sandwich tossing incident.
“I would like to thank family and friends and strangers for all of their support, whether it was emotional, or spiritual, or artistic, or financial,” he told the gathering outside the courthouse. “To the people that opened their hearts and homes to me, I am eternally grateful.”
“As always, we accept a jury’s verdict; that is the system within which we function,” CNN quoted U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro as saying after the verdict in the Dunn case. “However, law enforcement should never be subjected to assault, no matter how ‘minor,’” Pirro told CNN in a statement.
“Even children know when they are angry, they are not allowed to throw objects at one another,” CNN quoted her as saying.
Maryland
Democrats hold leads in almost every race of Annapolis municipal election
Jared Littmann ahead in mayor’s race.
By CODY BOTELER | The Democratic candidates in the Annapolis election held early leads in the races for mayor and nearly every city council seat, according to unofficial results released on election night.
Jared Littmann, a former alderman and the owner of K&B Ace Hardware, did not go so far as to declare victory in his race to be the next mayor of Annapolis, but said he’s optimistic that the mail-in ballots to be counted later this week will support his lead.
Littmannn said November and December will “fly by” as he plans to meet with the city department heads and chiefs to “pepper them with questions.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
Democrats on Tuesday increased their majority in the Virginia House of Delegates.
The Associated Press notes the party now has 61 seats in the chamber. Democrats before Election Day had a 51-48 majority in the House.
All six openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual candidates — state Dels. Rozia Henson (D-Prince William County), Laura Jane Cohen (D-Fairfax County), Joshua Cole (D-Fredericksburg), Marcia Price (D-Newport News), Adele McClure (D-Arlington County), and Mark Sickles (D-Fairfax County) — won re-election.
Lindsey Dougherty, a bisexual Democrat, defeated state Del. Carrie Coyner (R-Chesterfield County) in House District 75 that includes portions of Chesterfield and Prince George Counties. (Attorney General-elect Jay Jones in 2022 texted Coyner about a scenario in which he shot former House Speaker Todd Gilbert, a Republican.)
Other notable election results include Democrat John McAuliff defeating state Del. Geary Higgins (R-Loudoun County) in House District 30. Former state Del. Elizabeth Guzmán beat state Del. Ian Lovejoy (R-Prince William County) in House District 22.
Democrats increased their majority in the House on the same night they won all three statewide offices: governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general.
Narissa Rahaman is the executive director of Equality Virginia Advocates, the advocacy branch of Equality Virginia, a statewide LGBTQ advocacy group, last week noted the election results will determine the future of LGBTQ rights, reproductive freedom, and voting rights in the state.
Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin in 2024 signed a bill that codified marriage equality in state law.
The General Assembly earlier this year approved a resolution that seeks to repeal the Marshall-Newman Amendment that defines marriage in the state constitution as between a man and a woman. The resolution must pass in two successive legislatures before it can go to the ballot.
Shreya Jyotishi contributed to this article.
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District of Columbia2 days ago‘Sandwich guy’ not guilty in assault case
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