We hit the banks of the Potomac and Anacostia with "Ernie the Hog Snatcher" and a host of other locals, who say fishing brings them peace, community, and fun.
When Phillip Brown was pulled over for a traffic violation back in January, D.C. police officers saw red Solo cups in the car and suspected they contained alcohol. When asked, Brown handed them over to the officers, but then drove away from the scene. Following MPD policy, the officers didn’t chase after him. They had his tags on camera, and, according to court records, found and arrested him the next day without incident.
Ten months later, when officers believed Brown, 33, tried to flee again from a traffic stop on Benning Road NE, he narrowly missed being killed by three bullets. The difference? Federal agents were involved this time.
The incident in mid-October was one of two shootings that took place in the span of a month involving agents from Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The agency has been embedded with the Metropolitan Police Department since President Donald Trump surged federal resources into the city in August to fight crime. The second shooting, which took place on the same road and also involved HSI officers, occurred after federal officers tried to pull over a driver and then gave chase after he refused to stop.
The cases – both of which happened in Ward 7 – highlight how federal agents patrolling in D.C. don’t follow the same protocols that MPD officers do. Most of them also undergo different types of training, have vastly different levels of experience policing in an urban environment, and answer to different political leaders and priorities.
“We have rules and regulations we operate by,” says Ronald Hampton, who was an MPD officer for 23 years and served as a member of the D.C. Police Reform Commission in 2020 and 2021. “It’s not perfect, but at least there’s accountability. The feds don’t have anything like that. And federal police don’t have the kind of training that local police do. Realistically they can do almost anything they want, and no one is there to check them.”
On October 17, Brown was driving to get milk for his three young kids, according to his lawyer. D.C. police patrolling with federal agents tried to pull him over because the car had tinted windows and was missing a front license plate. Believing that the driver was trying to flee, a federal agent shot three times into the car. Brown’s lawyer said the gunfire came so close that a bullet hole was found in the collar of his jacket.
An HSI spokesman told The Washington Post that the agent was “in fear for his life,” though Brown was unarmed and a D.C. police officer later said that none of the officers involved had been standing in front of the car. All charges against Brown were eventually dropped.
Less than a month later and just a few blocks away, local and federal police attempted to stop Justin Bryant Nelson for allegedly running a red light. When Nelson refused to stop, federal agents started pursuing him, according to court documents. At one point, Nelson allegedly threw his car in reverse to get around traffic and hit a police cruiser. An HSI agent shot at the car before the chase continued. Amid the pursuit, an unmarked federal vehicle struck a Metrobus. Nelson was later detained, and now faces felony charges of fleeing from police, leaving after a collision, and reckless driving.
Both incidents highlight significant differences in how local and federal police respond to crime, as well as what systems of accountability exist for when they use deadly force.
"As a mayor I would be very concerned that a fatality could happen on my watch because the feds are running roughshod," says Yaida Ford, a D.C.-based attorney who has sued both local and federal police for excessive uses of force. "We need some transparency. At least then we know that someone is fighting on our behalf."
Training and tactics
Ever since Trump surged federal agents into D.C., residents have struggled to identify and keep track of the alphabet-soup of agencies on the ground. Most visible have been HSI, ICE, CBP, the U.S. Marshals Service, the FBI, and the Diplomatic Security Service (which normally protects diplomatic interests and personnel worldwide). But the DEA, ATF, and IRS Criminal Investigation (they usually go after tax cheats and financial crimes) have also been seen on patrol.
Both shootings over the last month involved HSI agents – whose typical remit is digging into the illegal movement of people, goods, money, contraband, weapons, and sensitive technology into the U.S. – raising significant questions about their training to operate in an urban environment and the tactics they may be using. (The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions from The 51st.)
“It’s pretty clear that Homeland Security does not have the kinds of carefully thought out requirements for hiring officers. It doesn’t have the extensive training for its officers, and we’re seeing this in these shootings,” says D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson.
Some residents also worry that these officers lack an intimate understanding of the city’s neighborhoods and nuances, which could result in overly aggressive policing.
“I don’t think it’s folks who are familiar with D.C.,” says Chioma Iwuoha, a Ward 7 resident and member of the leadership of the D.C. Democratic Party, of the federal agents she has seen out in neighborhoods near her.
And there are significant differences in rules and policies the forces abide by. Residents have been outraged for months, for example, that federal agents have been obscuring their identities, but it is entirely legal for them to do so. In contrast, D.C. police officers are required by law to be identifiable when in uniform, and, according to MPD’s code of conduct, must provide their name and badge number “in a respectful and polite manner.” And while local police officers have to wear body-worn cameras and turn them on anytime they interact with the public (and residents are entitled to view footage in which they are a subject), most federal agents do not.
Of relevance to both recent shootings, D.C. police are barred from chasing a driver unless they’re suspected of having committed a violent crime or posing a direct risk to others. Thousands of people have been killed in police chases, and the District is among a number of jurisdictions that have sought to limit their use. (Prince George’s County just approved new restrictions in the wake of a crash that killed a three-year-old earlier this year. New York City also imposed new limits on car chases after data showed that 25% of chases resulted in property damage or injuries.) Federal agents, though, do not have to abide by the city’s restrictions.
That federal agents are able to do things that D.C. police can’t raises another critical question: When they all patrol together, who’s actually in charge? We didn’t receive any answers when we put the question to MPD, but a source within the department says it’s safe to assume that federal agents operate independently of any rules that apply to local cops.
“It is definitely troubling that as the District government we don’t have the same authority over the increasing number of federal agents,” says Ward 7 Councilmember Wendell Felder.
Mayor Muriel Bowser – who formalized cooperation with federal agencies by creating a task force – conceded this month that law enforcement agencies under the Department of Homeland Security have been “problematic.”
Federal law enforcement officers don't have to wear body-worn cameras or follow the same restrictions on police chases as local officers. (Tyler M. Andrews)
Transparency
When shootings involving MPD officers happen, there are laws and regulations requiring that specific information be shared. The two recent shootings, though, show the significant gap in transparency that exists when federal agents pull the trigger.
Under D.C. law, body-worn camera footage and the names of involved officers are usually released within five days of any significant use of deadly force. Federal agents don’t generally use body-worn cameras, though, and it seems that the city’s law on disclosing related footage doesn’t apply when federal agents use force. Even local lawmakers haven’t been fully briefed. Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto, who chairs the D.C. Council’s judiciary committee, has requested body-worn camera footage from the officers who accompanied the federal agents during those two shootings but has yet to receive it.
Relatedly, the federal agents can continue to remain anonymous, identified only by the agency they work for. In Nelson’s case, for example, it was a mix of agents from HSI, DSS, and the U.S. Marshals Service. And in Brown’s case, the shooting by the HSI agent wasn’t even included in the initial police report of the incident, sparking cries of a potential coverup. D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith rejected those accusations late last month, but it still remains unclear why the shooting wasn’t initially reported in official documents.
Some civil rights attorneys say that not identifying federal agents who shoot their guns in D.C. complicates attempts to hold them accountable and can embolden such behavior in the future – including by D.C. police.
“The difficulty here is that we don’t know who the officers are and so, from a civil rights perspective, not knowing who to sue is the first problem,” says Ford, the civil rights attorney. “From a social governance perspective, when there is no transparency, the rotten apples … are emboldened. I’m not saying we have a majority of rotten apples, but you have the few who will use this lack of transparency as a license to abuse their authority. This is what I’m afraid we’re going to see.”
MPD leadership immediately held press briefings on both incidents and placed the involved officers on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of an internal investigation. Each of those incidents will additionally be scrutinized by MPD’s Use of Force Review Board. (Reports from all the incidents reviewed in 2024 and 2025 are here.)
It isn’t clear whether any such comparable process exists for federal agents, and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions on whether it will investigate the incidents itself. While DHS does have a use-of-force standard and has published data on incidents for as recently as 2023, HSI is not listed as one of the agencies covered. (An update to the use-of-force standards from that same year also restricts shooting into or at vehicles, spare under the most extreme circumstances.)
And while MPD takes the lead on digging into the use of deadly force by any type of police officer or agent operating in D.C., including feds, there’s no standard for how federal agencies would respond to the outcome.
All such investigations are ultimately shared with the U.S. Attorney for D.C.’s office, which can pursue civil rights charges if the facts point in that direction. (Last year, for example, the office pursued charges against a special police officer – a licensed private security guard with arrest powers – for unreasonably using force against someone they were arresting.) But the Trump administration and its U.S. attorney in D.C., Jeanine Pirro, may be less likely to do so. Earlier this year, Trump granted clemency to Terence Sutton, the D.C. police officer who was convicted of second-degree murder in the 2020 death of a 20 year old during a chase along Kennedy Street NW.
Put together, Iwuoha says she doubts that there will be much – if any – accountability for the two recent shootings involving HSI agents.
“If MPD has a shooting, there is a system of accountability. I could submit something to the Office of Police Complaints, I could ask the [district] commander to review it,” she says. “But I don’t know who the hell these [federal agents] are. If the only system of accountability I have is to reach out to MPD leadership and have them reach out to the federal agency, that doesn’t feel like a system of accountability.”
These issues could get worse
While Trump’s official crime emergency ended in September, his surge of federal agents and their cooperation with MPD is expected to continue for the time being. The mayor has said that she’s working to pull ICE and HSI agents off of D.C. streets, but she doesn’t have the power to make that happen.
Ford tells The 51st that she’s worried that there may be more incidents to come like the two recent shootings. “I’m afraid it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” she says. “We’re fortunate that no one was killed. But if there is a fatality … that changes things for everyone.”
Mendelson is concerned that the continued presence of federal agents on D.C. streets could diminish the trust that residents have in MPD.
“The public generally does not distinguish between different police agencies,” he says. “If a police officer is busy shooting innocent people, that’s a bad look for all of law enforcement even though most of the departments have nothing to do with it. So it’s hurting MPD.” (Similar concerns have been raised around MPD's apparent cooperation with ICE.)
In the meantime, other federal agencies have shifted toward more aggressive policing tactics that could be used in D.C.
And even the city’s own efforts at transparency and accountability are under threat, as Republican lawmakers try to reverse local police reforms. In September, the House passed a bill that would essentially gut the city’s policies that restrict police chases, and on Wednesday night it approved a measure to repeal the D.C. law that requires the disclosure of body-worn camera footage and the names of officers involved in deadly uses of force. (That same laws also bars MPD from hiring officers fired from other police agencies for misconduct.)
“What’s dangerous is that Congress is trying to repeal all that stuff that we did that led to accountability,” says Hampton, the former D.C. police officer. “And for what reason? Police shouldn’t have carte blanche when they have the power to take a person’s life.”
If the federal government cuts funding, local investments we make in community schools and family supports are the buffer that keeps neighborhoods from unraveling.
With your help, we pursue stories that hold leaders to account, demystify opaque city and civic processes, and celebrate the idiosyncrasies that make us proud to call D.C. home. Put simply, our mission is to make it easier — and more fun — to live in the District. Our members help keep local news free and independent for all:
