NEWS LOOSE LIPS
Protest and Serve
Darrow Montgomery
Black women cops have spoken out against harassment and retaliation in MPD for decades. Now they’re filing lawsuits and injecting themselves into the 2022 elections.
Felicia Carson, Leslie Clark, Lisa Burton, and Tabatha Knight
By Mitch Ryals @MitchRyals Tabatha Knight and Leslie Clark were leaving the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice in October 2019 when a staffer caught up with them. “Her exact words to us were, ‘If you’re looking for any justice from this office or the mayor’s office, you’re looking in the wrong direction. They’re not going to help you,’” Knight recalls in a recent interview with Loose Lips. The two former Metropolitan Police Department officers visited then-Deputy Mayor Kevin Donahue’s office that day three years ago to report a culture of harassment, retaliation, and discrimination they observed and endured during their long careers. Donahue, who now works as Mayor Muriel Bowser’s city administrator, was unable to meet with the two women, but they made their case to an employee in the office. In the hallway of the Wilson Building
after the meeting, the deputy mayor’s staffer directed the women to Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, who, as chair of the D.C. Council Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, oversees MPD. Knight and Clark went directly to Allen’s office, where they were told they needed to make an appointment, Knight says. She sent an email requesting an appointment before she left, but says she never received a reply. (Knight later also reported to Allen that MPD was allegedly manipulating its crime statistics, prompting the councilmember to hold a hearing at which Knight testified in 2020.) Fast-forward to 2021, when Knight and Clark joined a group of 16 current and former Black female MPD officers who are plaintiffs in three lawsuits filed last year. Together, the suits allege MPD leadership has discriminated and retaliated against Black female officers. The suits are collectively seeking monetary damages and back pay as well as a court-supervised investigation into
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MPD’s internal affairs division. The women who were fired or forced to retire are seeking reinstatement. Each of the officers “has had to endure the victimization of an MPD enterprisewide culture of race and sex discrimination and intense pervasive retaliation” for reporting or opposing unlawful discrimination, according to one lawsuit that has 10 plaintiffs and is seeking class action status. “This is about ignoring Black women and ignoring the issues raised by Black women,” says the women’s attorney, Pam Keith. MPD did not respond to LL’s specific emailed questions about some of the allegations in the three lawsuits. The department does not comment on pending litigation, but a spokesperson says via email that MPD is committed to fair and equitable treatment and will review the allegations thoroughly. The allegations come at a time when D.C., like many other parts of the country,
is reimagining the role police play in society. Keith offers these alleged patterns of retaliation and a lack of accountability for superior, often White officers, as examples of why police reform is slow and difficult. “It feels on the street like nothing’s changing because nothing is changing,” Keith says. “A deep-seated police mindset tells them they don’t need to change.” Knight says she and other female officers have raised concerns for decades to people in and outside the department, but they’ve gotten little traction. Now, with their claims pending before a judge, Knight and her fellow plaintiffs are also looking to inject themselves into the local 2022 elections. “We’re trying to bring awareness to how the police department operates … and help with police reform,” Knight says. “What better way to reform the police department than to hear how we operate and hear the things that go on? We are trying to let the world know … [change isn’t] going to work from within the police department.” Knight, who retired from MPD in 2021 after more than 30 years as a sworn officer, says she and others plan to attend as many campaign events for the mayoral and D.C. Council races as they can to raise awareness about their cases. One of their first trips, to a Ward 5 Council candidate forum, ended in a shouting match. In December, Officer Kia Mitchell, joined a group of fellow former officers, and asked the five candidates running for the Ward 5 Council seat for their reactions to claims that Black women inside MPD have been discriminated against for years. Every candidate expressed their version of support (anything else would have been political suicide) and escaped the question unscathed, except for Vincent Orange. Sinobia Brinkley, one of the officers who joined Mitchell at the Church of the Redeemer on Girard Street NE, confronted Orange during the forum, saying they had reached out to him several times while he was previously in office but never received a response. Orange served as the Ward 5 councilmember from 1999 to 2007 and as an atlarge member from 2011 to 2016. Later, as Orange was on his way out the door, he challenged the group of former officers to post the letter they had sent him. Brinkley followed him outside. “I went outside to question him as to why did he make that statement. Because we were not lying,” Brinkley tells LL. “He went on and on and he really acted in an aggressive manner toward me, and I didn’t like it. I said, ‘If this is how you treat the women, I can’t imagine what you do to the citizens.’ I said, ‘I wish I had recorded this interaction.’” Knight says she and others could hear the heated exchange from inside the church.
