Contee’s message comes after a year of significant criticisms of the department, including an investigation of the police union’s vice chair who was placed for an alleged misdemeanor sex abuse charge months before Bower entered into a union contract.
For D.C. police, 2022 ended with the loss of more than 200 people to violent crimes. A number that police chief Robert Contee said is “one crime too many” despite “an overall decrease in crime in 2022.”
“Last year, 203 people lost their lives to senseless violence in our city. That’s 203 too many, period,” Contee wrote in a message to the community Sunday. “Over and over, we see people turning to illegal guns to commit acts of violence. It is completely unacceptable, and it must stop now.”
Contee also noted a roughly 7% reduction in violent crimes from the previous year while acknowledging that these statistics don’t comfort victims’ families.
“It is up to all of us, as we start 2023, to do everything in our power to continue the downward trend of violence in the District of Columbia,” Contee wrote.
The chief added that the year also marked a record number of illegal guns retrievals, the continued use of “an intelligence-led policing strategy,” and a focus on community policing. Contee said these tools don’t match up to the power of the community in helping solve violent crimes.
“We all have the opportunity to continue the downward trend of crime in our neighborhoods and hold people accountable,” Contee said.
Contee’s message comes after a year of a disconcerting feeling across the District that he said “scares the hell out of people.”
“It’s the feeling that people have of being unsafe, and that has to be acknowledged,” Contee said in October.
It also follows a year brimming with controversies for D.C. police and officers across the country, including the revelation that more than $91 million dollars had been paid to settle police misconduct cases in the District, Fairfax County and Prince George’s County combined.
D.C. police spent the earliest parts of the year navigating criticisms, including a steep racial divide in reported use of force by its officers, a lawsuit alleging that the Metropolitan Police Department maintained a watchlist of its critics, and an investigation of the police union’s vice chair for an alleged misdemeanor sex abuse charge months before the District agreed to a new labor agreement.
Individual officers also remained mired in controversy throughout the year, some for violent crimes of their own.
Officers Terence Sutton and Andrew Zabavsky were found guilty in December for the death of 20-year-old Karon Hylton-Brown, who was hit and killed during a police chase in 2020
Nevertheless, police union representatives have blamed the more than 200 homicides in 2022 on the D.C. Council, claiming that the legislators had some responsibility for the number of violent crimes. Union Chair Gregg Pemberton told WTOP that the measures passed over the previous years limited stops based on reasonable suspicion or placed a heavy amount of work and liability on officers, discouraging them from doing their jobs.
“The message that’s received by the rank and file police officer is that the city doesn’t want them engaging in … responsible, proactive police work. They want them sitting in their cars, sitting on the corner, and just telling citizens that they’re around,” Pemberton said, adding that it led to the violence.
Some measures passed include the requirement that D.C. police be identified and body camera footage released if they use deadly force in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.
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