The following testimony was submitted by the Metro DC DSA Steering Committee as written testimony to the DC Council's Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety 2024-2025 Metropolitan Police Department Performance Oversight Hearings. Testimony was arranged by Abolition working group organizer Elizabeth Tang, with research and editorial support provided by Metro DC DSA's Abolition working group.

The testimony has been republished here for record and distribution.

‍Addressed to Councilmember Pinto and Members of the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety:

We are the Steering Committee of Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America (MDC DSA), testifying on behalf of over 2,000 DC chapter members. The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) has shown time and time again that it cannot keep DC safe and is committed only to killing and endangering DC residents. In light of this undeniable reality, we urge the Council to take steps that will actually keep the DC community safe. Our testimony explains:

1. MPD is systemically and irredeemably violent.
2. MPD is already carrying out Trump’s fascist agenda.
3. Defunding DC to fund MPD is making us all less safe.
4. DC Council must address the root causes of violence.

MPD is systemically and irredeemably violent.

Every year, we have submitted a shortlist of MPD’s most egregiously violent and racist acts. This year, we highlight the following:

• Gun violence. DC cops have killed 35 people since 2013—including 33 people by gun violence¹—with Black people being 12 times more likely than white people to be killed.² MPD’s recent victims include Justin Robinson, a young Black man and beloved community member who was executed point-blank with 11 rounds by officers Vasco Mateus and Bryan Gilchrist mere seconds after they awoke him in his car at 5amand Mateus screamed, “I’m going to shoot you in the fucking face.”³ Both killers remain on the force.
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• Deadly chases. When Donald Trump pardoned MPD officers Terence Sutton and Andrew Zabavsky for the murder of Karon Hylton-Brown, a 20-year-old Black man, MPD speedily endorsed Trump’s pardon by rehiring these convicted killers.⁴ More deadly chases by MPD are inevitable going forward, especially after DC Council passed SECURE DC in 2024, making it easier for MPD to kill both suspects and bystanders in high-speed car chases and rescinding limitations put in place in 2021 after MPD chased Hylton-Brown to his death.^{5
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• Gender-based violence. During 2009-2017, MPD found that 9 officers had committed serious crimes of gender-based violence—including domestic violence, assault with a deadly weapon, indecent exposure, and stalking⁶—but all 9 abusers remained on MPD’s payroll as of December 2024.⁷ Those cases are not flukes. For example, MPD officer Larry Garrett remains on the force today despite secretly photographing a half-naked woman in her home during a 2023 arrest.⁸ Rape culture is MPD culture.
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• Racist harassment. Since DC Council revived so-called “drug-free zones” with the passage of SECURE DC in 2024, MPD has exploited its new powers to harass and target Wards 5, 7, and 8—where most Black residents live.⁹ Despite using drugs at the same rate as their white neighbors and comprising only 44% of DC’s population, Black residents make up 95% of MPD’s narcotics arrests and 91% of simple possession arrests.¹⁰ Similarly, Black residents made up 70% of warrantless stops and over 90% of frisks (pat-downs) in 2022 and 2023—despite only 1% of stops resulting in gun seizure.^{11
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• Surveillance. Since 2021, MPD has been using an online surveillance program developed by former members of the genocidal Israeli military to monitor residents using hashtags like#BlackLivesMatter.¹² This white supremacist tactic is consistent with MPD’s 2011-2017 surveillance of Black and anti-racist organizations’ emails at ~12 times the rate of openly Nazi organizations’ emails and with an MPD officer’s 2022 collusion with the Proud Boys to identify the location of racial justice activists.^{13
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• Arrest and incarceration. MPD overwhelmingly targets Black people for arrest and incarceration: 89% of people held at DC jail are Black, and 64% are being held pretrial without a conviction.¹⁴ At the jail, many are held in solitary confinement (an internationally recognized form of torture)¹⁵ and forced to pay for their own “room and board”, food, healthcare, and phone calls with loved ones—all while working at an abysmal maximum wage of $0.50 per hour, which is reduced to $0.40 per hour after a 20% tax.¹⁶ As one social worker at the DC jail put it: “I can’t believe there is a place that makes Rikers Island look good.”

Enough is enough. We don’t want a Cop City. We want a city where all community members can survive and thrive.

MPD is already carrying out Trump’s fascist agenda.

The DC community is in Trump’s crosshairs, and we cannot count on MPD to protect us. MPD has already revealed that it will gladly carry water for Trump’s fascist agenda. Just last week, when unelected billionaire Elon Musk ordered his sham agency, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), to raid the Institute of Peace, a DC nonprofit, MPD was there to facilitate this illegal power grab.¹⁷

Is this an agency to which DC Council wants to give more power and money? A police department that will gladly do Trump’s bidding when he again seeks to weaponize MPD’s firepower against our own community? As astute journalists have pointed out, the truth is that local Democratic officials’ strategy to “Fund the Police” has backfired spectacularly; it “didn’t just help them lose the presidency—it handed a dangerous man an even stronger police and surveillance state.”¹⁸

 DC Council cannot afford to keep going down this path—not when Trump and his cronies in Congress have clearly set their sights on destroying DC’s autonomy. In their first two months in power, these alt-right extremists have already tried to rob DC of $1 billion in local funds.¹⁹ The next four years will only get worse as Trump pursues his agenda to take over DC completely.²⁰ He will undoubtedly ask for MPD’s collaboration again, and they will undoubtedly comply.

We urge you not to give arsonists kerosene today that they will use to burn your house down tomorrow.

Defunding DC to fund MPD is making us all less safe

Despite MPD’s egregious track record, DC Council approved a whopping $632 million for MPD in FY 2025—20%higher than in FY 2024² and 12% higher than even requested by the Mayor.²² This is especially stunning because the DC Auditor’s 2024 report found that DC did not need to hire any more patrol officers.²³ After all, DC already has the most police per capita of any major U.S. city.²⁴ Yet DC Council has repeatedly chosen to invest in MPD’s violence.

Meanwhile, DC residents continue to face organized abandonment regarding access basic goods and services that would ensure true public safety. For example:

• Housing injustice. Homelessness in DC has skyrocketed for the second year in a row—growing 14% in 2024²⁵ and 12% in 2023²⁶ —to more than 5,600 unhoused community members. Just a few years ago, DC was ranked the most intensely gentrified city in the entire country.²⁷ In 2024, DC saw the highest rent hikes of any major metropolitan area, with median rents soaring 12% in just one year to $2,100 per month.^{28
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• Food injustice. Nearly 1 in 3 Black children in DC live in poverty.²⁹ Residents in majority-Black Wards 7 and 8 (who make up 20% of DC’s population), have only 3 full-service grocery stores,³⁰ while the other six wards enjoy 72 full-service grocery stores.³¹
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• Drug overdoses. Black Washingtonians are both 10 times more likely to die of a drug overdose³² and 7 times more likely to be arrested for drug possession than their white peers, despite using drugs at similar rates.³³ Yet MPD’s operating budget is nearly twice that of the Department of Behavioral Health, which offers substance use disorder treatment instead of violence and death.^{34
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• Educational inequity. In DC, nearly 100% of school-based arrests are of youth of color,³⁵ and Black girls in DC are more than 30 times more likely to be arrested than white children of any gender.³⁶ They are also highly vulnerable to sexual assault by police, who assault at double the rate of the general public.^{37
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Our community urgently needs the investments that are currently being poured with abandon into MPD’s coffers. The safest places have the most resources. As DC Council’s Police Reform Commission recognized back in 2021: “Violence is most pervasive and takes its greatest toll in areas of the District where predominantly Black and Brown residents have the least access to wealth.”³⁸ It is no coincidence that 40% of all gun violence in DC takes place in one square mile (2% of the city) in Southeast DC, in one of the most neglected, policed, and criminalized places in the District.³⁹ In fact, rates of gun violence in Southeast, where police are rampant, are more than 10times higher than in Northwest DC, where communities have far more resources and support and far fewer cops.⁴⁰ These statistics demonstrate that not only are police not a solution to the problem of violence, but they also actually contribute to it. On the other hand, research repeatedly shows that when all of our neighbors have their basic needs met—affordable housing, well-funded schools, youth programs, job training, trauma-informed healthcare, and other community services—violence is lower and we are all safer.

DC Council must address the root causes of violence

We urge the Council to adopt non-carceral alternatives to public safety. For example:

• Ban police violence (100% cost-free). End pretrial detention, solitary confinement, qualified immunity, jump-outs, and racial profiling; and limit search warrants and traffic stops. Repeal SECURE DC’s “drug-free zones,” which were already unanimously repealed by Council in 2014 as unconstitutional and racist.⁴¹ Repeal SECURE DC’s overbroad anti-mask law, which was already unanimously repealed in 2021 as discriminatory.⁴² Reinstate limitations on deadly vehicular chases that were first enacted by Council in 2021 after MPD chased Karon Hylton-Brown and Jeffrey Price to their deaths.^{43
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• Invest in children and families. Give $750 monthly stipends to Black families in Wards 7 and 8 with children below age 10 and household incomes below $50,000, as recommended by DC Gun Violence Reduction Strategic Plan (GVRSP).⁴⁴ Fund expanded access to fresh and nutritious food, including by increasing the number of full-service grocery stores in Wards 7 and 8.
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• Invest in housing. Increase funding for Permanent Supportive Housing, the single most effective solution for helping people experiencing chronic homelessness, with a 92% success rate in DC.⁴⁵ Pass the Green New Deal For Housing Amendment Act, which would foster the growth of District-owned mixed-income housing, with at least 2/3 of units designated as family units and as permanently affordable units for extremely-,very-, and low-income households.^{46
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• Invest in workers. Create a Violence Intervention Worker Training Academy to train outreach workers and violence interrupters and create new jobs, as recommended by GVRSP.^{47
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• Invest in harm reduction. Pass DecrimPovertyDC’s Drug Policy Reform Act to decriminalize personal drug use, invest in an evidence-based harm reduction infrastructure (including 24/7 harm reduction centers), and address the life-long consequences of drug-related convictions.⁴⁸ Note: When our neighbors in Baltimore City, Maryland stopped prosecuting drug possession 2020, they saw no increase in 911 calls regarding drugs and almost no rearrests for serious crimes, such as robbery and assault.⁴⁹

• Invest in real school safety. Pass the School Safety Enhancement Amendment Act, which would fund school safety directors in every school and establish school safety teams that promote non-carceral interventions like restorative justice, mediation, de-escalation, and violence interruption.⁵⁰ Reinstate Council’s 2021 plan to remove all police from schools by 2025. Students deserve care, not criminalization.
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• Invest in real traffic safety. Invest in more speedbumps, pedestrian-only zones, bike lanes, and public transit. Fully fund the Metro For D.C. Amendment Act of 2022 to address the root causes of traffic problems like speeding and accidents.⁵¹ Prohibit MPD from issuing tickets for traffic violations that do not pose an immediate danger to public safety, as recommended by the District Task Force on Jails & Justice.⁵² Transfer enforcement of all traffic violations that do not imminently threaten public safety from MPD to DDOT, as recommended by the Council’s Police Reform Commission.⁵

^‍FOOTNOTES

1. Campaign Zero, Mapping Police Violence (last updated Mar. 8, 2025).

2. Campaign Zero, Mapping Police Violence (last updated Jan. 28, 2024).

3. Mitch Ryals, D.C. Police Officers Will Not Face Charges in Shooting Death of Justin Robinson, Washington City Paper (Jan. 16, 2025).

4. Mark Segraves et al., DC officers reinstated after conviction in man's scooter crash death, pardon by Trump, NBC (Mar. 3,2025).

5. Caroline Jones, D.C. Council Breaks Down the Police Reform Commission’s Report in a Marathon Public Hearing, Washington City Paper (May 21, 2021).

6. Dhruv Mehrotra et al., D.C. Police Tried To Fire 24 Current Officers For ‘Criminal Offenses.’ A Powerful Panel Blocked Nearly Every One, Documents Show, DCist (Dec. 18, 2021).

7. Metropolitan Police Department, Schedule A (as of December 31, 2024).

8. Alex Koma, D.C. Cop Will Face No Legal Consequences After Secretly Photographing a Half-Naked Woman During an Arrest, Washington City Paper (Sept. 26, 2024).

9. Council for Court Excellence, Is D.C. More Secure? A Criminal Legal System Overview 12 (Sept. 23, 2024), available at Council for Court Excellence Report.

10. Id at 13.

11. Mathew Schumer, D.C. Police Continue to Disproportionately Target Black People for Warrantless Stop-and-Frisks, Washington City Paper (Sept. 18, 2024).

12. Mathew Schumer, D.C. Purchased a Controversial Web-Surveillance Platform But Won’t Say How They’re Using It, Washington City Paper (Nov.14, 2024).

13. Creede Newton, D.C. Police Closely Watched Anti-Racist Groups For Years, Southern Poverty Law Center (Dec. 23, 2021).

14. DC Department of Corrections Facts and Figures January 2025, at 9, 17 (Mar. 12, 2025).

15. Brittany Vazquez, Inside Voices: Frequent Use of Solitary Confinement at DC Jail May Be Worse Than Rikers Island, Washington City Paper (May 3, 2024).

16. Michael Johnson, Jr., Hidden Price of Justice: Fines and Fees in DC’s Criminal Legal System, DC Fiscal Policy Institute (June 25, 2024).

17. Meg Anderson, Law experts raise alarms over police action in DOGE Institute of Peace dispute, NPR (Mar. 20,2025).

18. Jerry Iannelli, ‘Fund the Police’ Backfired—and Gave Trump More Power Than Ever, Appeal (Nov. 13, 2024).

19. Frank Thorp V, Senate passes bill that seeks to keep D.C. government's use of local tax dollars intact, NBC (Mar. 14, 2025). .

20. Qasim Nauman, Federal Takeover or 51st State? Trump Weighs In on D.C. Debate, NY Times (Feb. 20, 2025).

21. Office of Chief Financial Officer, 2025 FA0 Metropolitan Police Department, Chapter, 1 (July 30, 2024), approving $632 million for MPD in FY 2025.

22. Muriel Bowser, Mayor, Gov’t of D.C., FY 2025 Fair Shot Budget 18 (Apr. 3, 2024), requesting $563 million for MPD in FY 2025.

23. Alex Koma, Study Finds D.C. Doesn’t Need More Police Officers Walking the Beat. Will Anyone Listen?, Washington City Paper (Sept. 12, 2024).

24. Eliana Block, VERIFY: Does DC have more police per capita than any other US city? WUSA9 (July 15, 2020).

25. Jessica Rich, Rates of homelessness in DC region climb for the second year in a row, according to the 2024 PIT count, Street Sense Media (June 5, 2024).

26. Sarah Y. Kim, Homelessness In D.C. Increases For The First Time In Years, DCist (May 5, 2023).

27. Cordilia James, D.C. Has Had the Most Gentrifying Neighborhoods In The Country, Study Finds, DCist (Mar. 19, 2019).

28. Jeff Clabaugh, DC-area rents post largest annual increase among large metro areas, WTOP (Oct. 15, 2024).

29. Connor Zielinski, DC Contends with Extreme Child Poverty Disparities by Race, Place, and Age, DC Fiscal Policy Institute (Mar. 10, 2025).

30. Lindiwe Vilakazi & Sam P.K. Collins, Residents in Wards 7 and 8 Struggle with Food Insecurity Amid Grocery Store Shortage (Sept. 13, 2023).

31. Vanessa G. Sánchez, Black-owned stores work to end D.C.’s food deserts, Washington Post (July 7, 2022).

32. Kaiser Family Foundation, Drug Overdose Death Rate (per 100,000 population) by Race/Ethnicity: 2022 (last visited Mar. 25, 2025).

33. Colleen Grablick, D.C.'s opioid arrests reflect racial disparities, WAMU (Sept. 6, 2022).

34. Council for Court Excellence Report, supra note 9, at 13.

35. Jenny Gathright, In The Middle Of A Pandemic And Protests, D.C.'s Young Black Voters Head To The Polls (June 2, 2020).

36. Rights4Girls and the Georgetown Juvenile Justice Initiative, Beyond the Walls: A Look at Girls in D.C.'s Juvenile Justice System 29 (Mar. 2018).

37. Cato Institute, National Police Misconduct Reporting Project, 2010 Annual Report, 3 (2010).

38. District of Columbia Police Reform Commission, Decentering Police to Improve Public Safety: A Report of the DC Police Reform Commission, 76 (Apr. 1, 2021), [Police Reform Commission Report].

39. Peter Hermann & John D. Harden, Thousands of bullets have been fired in this D.C. neighborhood. Fear is part of everyday life., Washington Post (July23, 2021).

40. Police Reform Commission Report, supra note 38, at 76.

41. DC Council, Committee Report on B20-0760, the Repeal of Prostitution Free Zones Amendment Act of 2014, at 4 (Sept. 17, 2014).

42. Police Reform Commission Report, supra note 38, at 119.

43. Jones, supra note 5.

44. District of Columbia, Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, Gun Violence Reduction Strategic Plan, 22 (Apr. 2022), [hereinafter GVRSP].

45. Miriam’s Kitchen, Advocacy (last visited Mar. 25, 2025).

46. https://lims.dccouncil.gov/Legislation/B25-0191

47. GVRSP, supra note 44, at 16.

48. DecrimPovertyDC, District of Columbia Drug Policy Reform Act of 2021.

49. Saba Rouhani et al., Evaluation of Prosecutorial Policy Reforms Eliminating Criminal Penalties for Drug Possession and Sex Work in Baltimore, Maryland, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Department of Health, Behavior and Society 3 (2021).

50. https://lims.dccouncil.gov/Legislation/B25-0234

51. https://code.dccouncil.gov/us/dc/council/laws/24-335

52. District Task Force on Jails &Justice, Jails & Justice: Our Transformation Starts Today 35 (Feb.2021).

53. Police Reform Commission Report, supra note 38, at 21, 93.