Denise Price has lived most of her life in predominately Black neighborhoods in Washington, D.C.’s Ward 7. Last May, she was sitting outside her home when an officer with the city’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) barged into her yard without a warrant or any apparent probable cause.

At the time of officer’s intrusion, Ms. Price, her brother Jay Brown, and other members of her family were planning the funeral for her son Jeffery, who had died just a few days earlier at the hands of officers from the same department. 

For Mr. Brown, the warrantless search was consistent with MPD’s general approach to policing—one in which officers view themselves as possessing unbridled dominion over Black neighborhoods. Reflecting on the Department’s aggressive tactics, Mr. Brown observed that MPD is carrying itself “like a lawless gang.”

At the ACLU-DC, we hear complaints like Mr. Brown’s all the time. Yet neither MPD nor D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has attempted to investigate—much less address—concerns about racial bias at MPD, or the Department’s use of coercion, rather than communication, in its interactions with District residents.

In fact, Mayor Bowser is asking the D.C. Council to add $3 million to MPD’s budget to hire more officers, even though the Department already has one of the largest police forces per capita in the nation, and already receives over $500 million in annual funding.

Hiring more police is the wrong idea. Here’s why.

In March 2018, Open the Government and the ACLU-DC submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to MPD asking for all "arrest"^[1] data from 2013–2017. The information we received appears to confirm what we and member of the community have long suspected: racially disparate policing is a real problem in D.C.

The ACLU’s Analytics team found that Black people composed 86% of arrestees, despite making up just 47% of the population.

1. UPDATED August 1, 2019: After the ACLU’s report was published, a researcher with the Vera Institute informed us that, with respect to a relatively small subset of offenses, MPD defines the term “arrest” to include instances where officers issue citations as well as ones where officers take suspects into custody. At this time, MPD has not made public the share of arrests that fit each category. No matter the definition, the data shows that MPD officers disproportionately “arrest” Black people in D.C. To the extent that the definition of “arrests” affects other aspects of this blog post, we have so noted.

This disparity cannot be explained merely by a large concentration of MPD officers in predominantly Black neighborhoods. Rather, as the graph below shows, Black people are disproportionately arrested in over 90% of the District’s census tracts, including the whitest parts of the city.

Black People Disproportionately Arrested Everywhere They Are

Black proportion of arrests exceed Black proportion of population in almost all D.C. census tracts (2013 - 2017)

The data also shows that MPD is subjecting thousands of people—and particularly Black people—to the humiliation and terror of an arrest even when they’re suspected of committing a relatively minor non-violent offense.

2. At least three of the offenses listed in this table—possession of an open container, public marijuana consumption, and noise complaints—are ones for which MPD officers can issue citations rather than make a custodial arrest. As noted in footnote 1, MPD defines the term “arrest” to include both responses, meaning that, for at least those three offenses, the numbers reported in the table includes both custodial and non-custodial arrests. 
3. As defined here, this offense excludes people arrested for public drunkenness or possessing an open container of alcohol in a vehicle.
4. Data from 2015 to 2017, after legalization of personal possession of small amounts of marijuana.

The disparities in arrest rates for low-level offenses may arise from officers making racially biased decisions.

An alternative explanation—or perhaps one that works in tandem with racial bias—could turn on the high correlation between race and poverty in the District and the fact that D.C.’s criminal code too often punishes people for being poor. For example, although Black and white people consume marijuana at similar rates^[5], Black residents may be more likely to use the drug in public because they are less likely to own property where they can consume it in private.

Even if the District wants to continue proscribing conduct such as public marijuana consumption and public possession of open alcohol containers, there’s no need to allow MPD to arrest individuals for such low-level offenses, as officers could easily issue citations instead.

Indeed, permitting officers to arrest, rather than cite, people for committing relatively minor offenses is inefficient. If Mayor Bowser thinks the police need more resources, she should instruct MPD to spend less time arresting people who sip beer on the corner and more time looking for homicide suspects.

But Mayor Bowser and MPD appear uninterested in analyzing the Department’s arrest statistics or the racial disparities they reveal.

Indeed, MPD waited nearly a year to supply the arrest data that formed the basis of this analysis.

As important as this information is for litigation and advocacy, D.C.’s residents of color don’t need more data to know that they’re overpoliced.

MPD made that point quite clear to Denise Price when one of its officers conducted the warrantless search of her yard. (Read about ACLU-DC’s suit challenging the search here).  

For former ACLU-DC client M.B. Cottingham, MPD similarly made its presence felt when Officer Sean Lojacono repeatedly probed Mr. Cottingham’s crotch area, despite not having any probable cause to conduct the search.

This March, MPD revealed that Lojacono conducted a similar search of another Black man approximately 30 minutes after he completed his search of Mr. Cottingham. In a termination hearing arising from the second search, J.J. Brennan, a retired MPD sergeant who was still serving as a civilian supervisor with the Department, testified that he saw nothing wrong with the search, and, in fact, observed that he “always told people [who] worked for me[,] [d]on’t be afraid to go up in the crotch. A lot of the people who complain about that [type of search] being too intrusive have something up there.”

MPD fired Lojacono in April, and relieved Brennan from his responsibilities as a civilian supervisor for good measure. But the Department will not solve its race problem solely by purging individual officers. Nor will the mayor address the issue by rewarding MPD with extra funding.

Rather than expanding MPD, Mayor Bowser should demand change in how the Department conducts itself.

First, Mayor Bowser should work with the Council to repeal statutes that indirectly criminalize people for being poor. At minimum, she should demand that MPD issue citations, rather than conducting arrests, for non-violent offenses that disproportionately affect people in poverty.

Second, the mayor should collaborate with the Council to conduct an independent investigation into the Narcotics Special Investigations Division—a unit that previously employed Officer Lojacono and Sgt. Brennan and one that both officers suggested tolerates invasive groin searches. The D.C. Council funded this investigation in its latest budget. Now, it is the Mayor’s  responsibility to ensure that MPD fully complies with that mandate.

Finally, Mayor Bowser should endorse D.C. bill 23-0320, which would enable the D.C. Office of Police Complaints, an independent reviewing body, to assess more incidents of police misconduct.

MPD is arresting Black people at 10 times the rate that it arrests white people. That disparity should prompt inquiry and that inquiry should prompt change.

5. See, e.g., National Survey on Drug Use and Health: 2-Year RDAS (2016 to 2017), SUBSTANCE ABUSE & MENTAL HEALTH DATA ARCHIVE, https://rdas.samhsa.gov/#/survey/NSDUH-2016-2017-RD02YR/crosstab/?column=MRJYR&control=STATE&filter=STATE%3D11&results_received=true&row=RACE4&weight=DASWT_1 (click “Run Crosstab” to view results) (last accessed May 10, 2019).