City law requires that MPD officers' body-warn footage be made public after shootings. A new bill aims to extend that when federal agents who use serious use of force. (Elvert Barnes)
When federal agents fired their guns at two D.C. residents in separate incidents last year, officers with the Metropolitan Police Department were on hand — and their body-worn cameras recorded at least part of the incidents. That footage, though, has never seen the light of day.
But legislators may change that protocol.
On Tuesday, Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto — who chairs the D.C. Council committee with oversight of MPD — introduced a bill that would require MPD to release body-camera footage from any of its officers who are on patrol with federal agents who use serious force or fire their guns. The bill would also require that D.C. release the names of the federal agents involved.
The new requirements would mirror a six-year-old law that applies to MPD officers, whose names and body-camera footage are routinely released to the public after a shooting or other serious use of force. (The footage has to be released within five days, but can be withheld at the request of the next of kin of anyone killed by an MPD officer.) Almost 2,900 D.C. police officers are outfitted with body-worn cameras, which produce an average of a half-million hours of footage a year.
“That is good for transparency,” says Pinto of D.C.’s existing law. “The public deserves access to this information, as do we, and it is one way that we can get at ensuring that we are continuing our efforts that we've had for years in the District of building community trust between the public and the police.”
There’s no immediate timeline for when the new bill might move forward, though it would go through Pinto’s committee.
A surge of federal agents have continued to patrol the city, often alongside MPD officers, since President Trump declared a crime emergency in D.C. last summer. In addition to concerns about federal agents often obscuring their identities, residents have been alarmed that they don’t have to follow the same rules of policing that local officers do — including the use of body-worn cameras.
In the two shootings last fall, agents from Homeland Security Investigations fired their weapons at residents during attempted traffic stops. Local activists said the federal agents had engaged in pursuits and used their guns in ways that MPD officers wouldn’t have been able to, and also did not use body-worn cameras that could offer documentary evidence of what actually happened.
The footage from the accompanying MPD officers in the shootings last year has not been released to the public, and even the attorneys of one of the men shot at have not been able to gain access to it, largely because of existing restrictions on when such footage can be disclosed. (In January, U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro said no charges for civil rights violations would be pursued against the agents involved in both incidents “because no one was struck.”) Pinto was able to view the footage because of her role as a councilmember, but it couldn’t go any further than that.
“I'm not allowed to talk about the footage itself, which is again why we need the public to have access to the footage,” she tells The 51st. “I would say almost always additional evidence enlightens the situation, and provides another perspective and to make sure that reports are matching the video.”
During a council hearing on Wednesday evening, Interim Police Chief Jeffery Carroll said the city’s existing law generally precludes disclosing such footage, though Mayor Muriel Bowser could have released it if she deemed it in the public’s interest to do so. “Based on this case there wasn’t a determination of great public interest,” said Carroll.
“I would say there is a serious public interest in reviewing that footage,” responded Pinto.
Her bill would also require additional transparency by mandating that MPD record the names and agencies of all federal agents who patrol with D.C. officers. Since at least December lawmakers have asked MPD for details on which federal agents have been patrolling alongside local officers and what arrests they have made, but have largely been met with silence.
In responses to written questions from Pinto this month, Carroll said MPD would not “provide information on specific deployment numbers because of security considerations.” He additionally said MPD had not tracked the number and types of arrests made by federal agents while on patrol with MPD officers.
Pinto’s bill parallels similar pushes at the national level to outfit more federal agents with body-worn cameras, especially in the wake of the fatal shootings and aggressive tactics used in Minnesota earlier this year. Still, even if every federal agent operating in D.C. was given a body-worn camera, they wouldn’t have to follow the city’s laws on when the footage could be made public – much less any other restrictions on how they can police the city.
That reality seemed to exasperate Pinto during Wednesday’s hearing on MPD.
“I don’t have the level of trust that I normally would that this federal government is actually going to investigate and pursue charges if somebody did violate the law or shot a man without justification,” she said. “From MPD’s perspective, how do we ensure the community’s safety if we have agents who are not trained in our laws, who are not wearing body-worn cameras, and we don’t have insight into the status of the investigations?”
Martin is a longtime reporter and editor in D.C. He formerly worked for WAMU 88.5 and DCist.com, and has contributed to the Washington City Paper and other publications. He's been in D.C. for 25 years, and tries to ride his bike everywhere he can.
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