Taking a lesson from fellow big city mayor Rahm Emanuel, Muriel Bowser’s administration isn’t about to let a crisis go to waste. Faced with video of Metropolitan Police Department officers manhandling a black college freshman, Bowser deputy mayor Kevin Donahue has found the real culprits: the D.C. Council.

Bowser is still at odds with the Council over how to handle open records requests for body camera footage. Bowser originally wanted to exempt all the footage from Freedom of Information Act requests; Ward 5 councilmember and judiciary committee chairman Kenyan McDuffie (among others) didn’t.

With a compromise deal to resolve the dispute and fund the cameras set to go before the Council’s judiciary committee next week, Donahue lamented that the officers involved in handcuffing didn’t already have cameras.

“If the officers involved here had been wearing body cameras, a recording of the entire incident—from the moment the call came in, to the end of the incident—would be available to those involved, and ultimately to the public,” Donahue said in a statement on the handcuffing of freshman Jason Goolsby. “The program has not moved forward because the Council has not finalized rules.”

Is it chilly around here, or is it just LL? McDuffie wasn’t available to comment on Donahue’s jab.

Correction: The statement came from Deputy Mayor Kevin Donahue, not Muriel Bowser.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery