This story was supported with funds from Spotlight DC—Capital City Fund for Investigative Journalism.
D.C. Police Officer Roberto Amengual yanked a driver by his dreadlocks during a traffic stop in January 2020. He then told an investigator he was unaware that he had ahold of the man’s hair, despite evidence to the contrary.
“You got my hair, cuz, you got my hair!” the man yelled while standing on the side of the road. Office of Police Complaints examiner Jennifer Fischer found Amengual’s claim “not credible.”
Officer Paul Weiss was “condescending” and “patronizing” when, according to an OPC report, he illegally arrested a man in February 2021 for driving without the proper registration. Weiss then failed to alert prosecutors to his error, despite a supervisor’s instruction to do so.
“[Weiss’] actions demonstrate at least a reckless disregard for policy, procedures, and District law,” OPC complaint examiner Meaghan Hannan Davant wrote in her final investigative report.
Officer Dennis Sfoglia taunted a bunch of kids hanging around a playground in November 2021. OPC complaint examiner Peter W. Tague noted that, technically, the kids did start it—they heckled Sfoglia and another officer as they searched the area for weapons. When the officers returned to their vehicle, Sfoglia shouted at them from the driver’s seat, “Hope you don’t get shot out here like your shithead friend,” referring to a young man who recently had been shot and killed.
Sfoglia claimed that he was using the fatal shooting to illustrate the danger of firearms. But Tague wasn’t buying it. He writes in his fact finding report that Sfoglia’s “objectively derogatory” words clearly upset the boys and violated MPD’s general orders requiring officers to be civil and respectful.
OPC, the independent civilian oversight agency for police officers in D.C., determined that each of these officers had violated Metropolitan Police Department policies, the law, or both. They sent their findings to now-former Chief Robert Contee, who had sole discretion to impose discipline. But none of these officers faced any meaningful consequences. In fact, of the 41 sustained complaints for violations of the law or internal policies during Contee’s two-and-a-half year tenure as chief, only seven officers were issued suspensions, according to City Paper’s review of the cases.
Contee’s soft-on-discipline posture with respect to OPC complaints is in line with his predecessors, according to a March 2022 letter from OPC Director Michael Tobin. At that time, 10 months after Contee had been officially confirmed as top cop, Tobin writes that the chief had not handed out any suspensions.
“Particularly with citizen complaints, MPD has demonstrated on repeated occasions over many years and several police chiefs that the department is not willing or able to provide proper accountability of its members,” Tobin wrote.
Contee, who retired from MPD in early June to take a job with the FBI, declined an interview request. But in a March 2022 email, he disputed Tobin’s assertion. By Contee’s count, MPD had proposed unpaid suspensions—ranging from 12 to 15 days—for five officers referenced in Tobin’s letter. But most of the officers, Contee acknowledged, received a letter in their file or “education based development in lieu of corrective/adverse action.” Tobin tells City Paper that the discrepancy likely stemmed from the fact that his office is only notified when an officer’s discipline is finalized, not when the chief initially proposed it.
The behavior uncovered in these OPC cases ranges from disrespectful to illegal. Officers taunted and mocked citizens; they refused to identify themselves; they escalated interactions; they conducted illegal searches; and they used excessive force. OPC complaint examiners repeatedly found that officers attempted to justify their misconduct, misunderstood the laws they must enforce and obey, or both.
Tobin says that after his letter was publicized, he noticed “marginal improvement,” in that Contee had proposed harsher punishments in some cases. Still, even during Contee’s relatively short tenure, seven officers have at least two sustained complaints. (More information about those officers and the outcome of their complaints is available in this accompanying story.)
One such officer is Michael Vaillancourt, at one time, a member of the notorious gun recovery unit.
***
Ron Brown recalls a chaotic scene on Nov. 3, 2020. His daughter, Zyah, who was 9 at the time, was scheduled to perform with a go-go band as part of an Election Day rally. Brown, his longtime partner, and their kids were standing in the crowd near Black Lives Matter Plaza when, all of a sudden, police officers began pushing the crowd, he says.
“When I seen what they were doing, I’m like, ‘They don’t see all these kids?’” he says. Brown pushed his daughters to the back of the crowd, out of the path of the advancing officers, and dropped his phone in the process. When he went to pick it up, “then I have three or four cops on my back,” he says. “And I’m screamin’, ‘I have kids. Y’all are pushin’ us. We’re not doing anything.’”
Brown was arrested for inciting a riot and resisting arrest (“That’s the stupid shit they say just to [have an excuse to] arrest you,” he says) and was held in a police wagon before he was transported to booking. Not long after the incident, he and his partner filed complaints with OPC against several officers, alleging excessive force and illegal arrest, among other violations. Tobin and the Police Complaints Board, which oversees OPC, dismissed most of their allegations except for some against Vaillancourt and MPD Commander Jason Bagshaw, a polarizing police leader who has frequently clashed with protesters and fatally shot a man wielding a gun at the Wharf. Bagshaw is now in charge of the Special Operations Division.
OPC determined Vaillancourt violated MPD policy when he taunted and teased Brown while the 45-year-old sat handcuffed in the police wagon. Vaillancourt was responsible for transporting Brown, and asked whether he was restrained with a zip tie or metal cuffs. When Brown didn’t respond, Vaillancourt asked, “Are you high? Do you understand English?”
“Is your fucking mother high, bitch?” Brown replied, according to the OPC investigation. Vaillancourt continued to engage with Brown, calling him “handsome” and telling him to “have a nice day” in a “sing-song voice,” the OPC report says. At one point, Brown stopped talking, but Vaillancourt continued to engage, according to OPC, and the two went back and forth, with Brown insulting Vaillancourt’s mother, and Vaillancourt responding to each of Brown’s invectives.
“Is that the worst thing you can come up with? Seriously?” Vaillancourt prodded. And “with a laughing tone, [Vaillancourt] said, ‘Nothing’s bothering me,’” according to the investigation.
Bagshaw, for his part, was found to have used excessive force on a separate, unnamed person and failed to properly identify himself when Brown asked. MPD officers are required to identify themselves upon request.
Before he was arrested, Brown says he watched as Bagshaw drove a police vehicle through the crowd of people and almost hit his children.
“The streets were blocked off so the public can be in the streets, and he almost hit [my daughter],” Brown says. “A few people was tapping on the cop car windows, saying, ‘Be easy, slow down.’”
Later, as Bagshaw was walking among the crowd, he shoved a person “of minimal stature” who was “danc[ing] calmly near the truck,” according to the OPC report. The shove was so forceful that the person “lifted off the ground.”
Bagshaw told OPC complaint examiner Rebecca Goldfrank that he didn’t recall shoving the person, and the contact was unintentional. She reasoned that he could not have perceived any threat, and therefore his use of force was not justified.
In Vaillancourt’s case, Goldfrank wrote that while several other officers maintained a professional demeanor and did not engage with Brown, Vaillancourt taunted him and escalated the interaction. “Here [Vaillancourt] abused his position of authority and demonstrated a profound lack of professionalism expected of MPD,” Goldfrank writes in the report.
In response to OPC’s findings, Contee ordered “education-based development” and an dereliction report (known as a PD 750), according to OPC, though it’s unclear based on publicly available information which resolution applied to which officer.
Brown says he received a letter informing him of the resolution, but he believes it’s vastly inadequate.
“They don’t care because they don’t get punished,” Brown says. “They still get our money, our tax dollars. And then they’re gonna talk to us like that. … You talk to somebody like that during any other job, and your ass is fired.”
Although the complainants in OPC’s final reports are not named, City Paper was able to identify Brown using the details in OPC’s records and some previous reporting on his arrest. He agreed to speak publicly for the same reason he decided to file the complaint.
“Let it be known,” Brown says. “Shit happens to real people. It happens. It’s happening.”
About a year and a half before Vaillancourt’s run-in with Brown, OPC found that he illegally searched and detained Alpha Jalloh, who later filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court.
On June 6, 2019, police received a tip that people were shooting dice in front of a home on Fourth Street SW. An officer, who is unnamed in the OPC investigation, said “There can always be a gun at a dice game,” and instructed other officers over the radio to “meet up there in case we get a runner” and “watch if he grips his waist band.”
Vaillancourt and Officer Dustyn Hugee arrived a short time later, and Hugee approached Jalloh, who was sitting in his car, not playing dice. Hugee opened the car door and asked Jalloh to step out. When Jalloh questioned Hugee’s instruction, the officer “yelled a couple more times to get out of the car,” the OPC report says.
OPC complaint examiner Fischer says in her report that Jalloh’s hands were in sight for the entire interaction, and when he turned to get out of his car, Hugee drew his weapon and yelled “Don’t you fucking do anything stupid, get out of the car right now.”
That’s when Vaillancourt pulled Jalloh out of the car, slammed him to the ground, and drove his knee into Jalloh’s shoulder and back, smashing his face into the cement, according to the lawsuit.
“You guys broke my jaw,” Jalloh said, according to the OPC report. “I gotta get y’all names now.” An MRI later revealed he had a broken shoulder, according to the lawsuit.
Vaillancourt handcuffed Jalloh, and both officers searched him and his vehicle over his objections. OPC concluded that officers had reasonable suspicion to frisk Jalloh, but had no probable cause to search him by reaching into his pockets. Hugee incorrectly told Jalloh that he did not have a right to refuse a search because he was in handcuffs, Fischer notes in her report. The officer also incorrectly told him that he would be arrested if he refused to verbally identify himself.
“Simply being in handcuffs does not give [Hugee] the right to search,” Fischer writes in the report. “Only being put under arrest would have.” Jalloh was never arrested and the officers never found any drugs or weapons on him or in his car.
“Based on [Hugee’s] interaction with [Jalloh], he seems unfamiliar with the law relating to searches, requiring citizens to identify themselves, and arrest for failure to obey,” Fischer writes in her report.
“No reasonable police officer could have believed that there was a need to assault, detain or arrest [Jalloh] even though he had not committed any crime and was not resisting arrest,” the lawsuit says. Jalloh’s attorney, Brain McDaniel, did not respond to requests for comment.
Fischer notes in her report that Hugee initially believed Jalloh could be a suspect in a separate crime because his car matched a “Be On The Lookout” alert. But, she writes, “the evidence does not support this claim,” and Jalloh did not match the photos of the person police were searching for.
Although Tobin dismissed the use of force allegation against Vaillancourt, Fischer says in her report that the officers’ reactions were “exaggerated” compared to [Jalloh’s] behavior. His hands were visible, and the slight movement he does make “along the center console and along the steering wheel appear to be those of a person about to get out of a car,” as Hugee had ordered him to do. Fischer also notes that Hugee’s descriptions on the scene and later in an interview with OPC that Jalloh “reached down by [his] waist” and “did not show his hands” are inconsistent with the body camera footage, and calls into “question the credibility of his testimony as to his recollection of the incident.”
Ultimately, Fischer found that Hugee illegally searched Jalloh and that both officers illegally detained him in handcuffs for longer than they were allowed. Both officers also failed to identify themselves when asked.
Contee did not impose discipline against either officer because of the pending lawsuit, according to OPC.
***
The complaint that prompted Tobin to raise the alarm about Contee’s disciplinary decisions involves John Wright, an officer who has a documented history of credibility issues, yet was recently promoted.
According to the March 2022 letter, Contee told the woman who filed the complaint that he intended to fine or suspend Wright for what ended up being an illegal search of the woman’s apartment. Instead, Contee gave Wright a slap on the wrist and issued a PD62-E, a form used to document an officer’s behavior that “does not constitute corrective action,” according to Tobin’s letter.
The inciting incident took place in late June 2020, when the complainant, a single mother, called MPD for help finding her missing teenage daughter, whom she feared was somewhere in Maryland and having a mental health crisis. The mother met officers outside her apartment building, explained the situation, and repeatedly told them she did not want them to enter her home. She said that the last time she called police for help with her daughter, her landlord sent a concerning email to her and the rest of the building about police presence.
“As a result, she worried about being evicted,” the OPC report says. “It was an expensive building and as a single black woman she didn’t want to draw attention to herself with having officers at her door nor did she want her neighbors seeing the police searching through her residence because she was afraid it would cause further problems with the building managers.”
Officers told the complainant that they could not file a report without searching her home to make sure her daughter was not injured or deceased inside. She insisted they could not come inside and showed officers evidence that her daughter was in Maryland with friends, via her phone.
Wright arrived a short time later, and after speaking briefly with the woman, grew suspicious that she was hiding a fugitive in her apartment. No other officers on scene shared his hunch, but Wright hatched a plan to knock on the woman’s door while she was standing outside to see if anyone would answer, according to the OPC investigation. When he did, the woman’s 7-year-old child, who had been sleeping, came to the door.
“Mommy, there’s someone at the door,” the child said, thinking her mother was still inside.
Wright knocked three more times, but did not say anything. Eventually, he pushed the door open, put one foot inside the apartment and straddled the threshold. He remained there for the rest of the interaction, occasionally poking his head into the apartment and shining his flashlight around, according to the OPC report.
By this point, the woman and several other officers had also come into the building. The woman said she no longer wanted to speak to the officers and told Wright she did not consent to a search of her home.
“This is why I didn’t want to call,” she said. “This is why I don’t call the police.”
Ultimately, the woman was able to reach her missing daughter via FaceTime, allowing the police to confirm that she was not in the apartment. The officers left, and D.C.’s child welfare agency took over.
In his interview with OPC, Wright claimed that he “did not know opening the door and stepping his foot inside constituted an entry for Fourth Amendment purposes.” But Fischer, the OPC complaint examiner, notes in her report that Wright repeatedly tried to justify his actions during the encounter, indicating “that [he] knew that his actions did, in fact, constitute a Fourth Amendment entry, and that he was seeking hindsight support to justify it under an exception.”
Fischer’s report says Wright’s union representative presented a “vastly incorrect representation” of the Fourth Amendment and exceptions to the requirement that police need a warrant to search a home in an attempt to justify Wright’s actions.
“[Wright] alone thought something more sinister was happening, despite having limited information, and took it upon himself to find out what it was, which led to the Fourth Amendment violation,” Fischer writes.
Wright had had his fair share of issues leading up to this encounter.
In 2013 and 2014, two different D.C. Superior Court judges determined that Wright was not credible and threw his testimony out of court, City Paper previously reported. In 2015, he and another officer illegally stopped and searched a man who they found was carrying an illegal firearm, but the D.C. Court of Appeals threw out the man’s conviction because of the officers’ illegal tactics. And in June 2019, Wright engaged in a vehicle pursuit in violation of MPD’s general orders, according to documents that were part of a trove of records hacked from MPD’s internal databases. MPD’s Use of Force Review Board determined the pursuit was “not justified, not within policy,” and Wright served a 23-day, unpaid suspension, which he completed, the documents show. He was also transferred from the Narcotics and Special Investigations Division to the patrol division. The OPC complaint was finalized in November 2021, and Contee made a final decision in March 2022. Wright was promoted from an officer to a detective sometime between December 2021 and January 2023, according to MPD rosters submitted to the D.C. Council.
Contee’s 2022 response to Tobin’s letter says the director of MPD’s Disciplinary Review Division determined that Wright’s actions were “not as egregious as described in the OPC report.
“While the OPC report has the hindsight of all witness statements, it is important to understand what information officers knew as their on scene investigation progressed,” Contee explained in the email provided to City Paper. Contee said he was “disheartened” by OPC’s conclusion in Wright’s case.
Tobin says Contee’s email response is precisely the issue he was trying to call attention to. If the chief disagreed with OPC’s conclusion, he is required to send it back to Tobin, who then refers the case to a panel of complaint examiners. If the panel decides there is still a violation, the case goes back to the chief, who then must impose discipline.
“He made a decision not to follow the law rather than request a review of our decision,” Tobin says. “The department has purposely chosen to not follow the law, which gets to the crux of the entire problem with the disciplinary process. If the chief disagreed with our decision, there’s a process to follow, and that’s not to say, ‘I’m just not going to do anything.’ They’re well aware of that but they chose not to follow the law. And that should be a great concern to every member of the community.”
MPD spokesperson Dustin Sternbeck disputes Tobin’s characterization and says MPD is only allowed to send a case back to OPC if the conclusions are “not supported by substantial, reliable, and probative evidence.”
“The purpose of the disciplinary process is to ensure members are held accountable,” Sternbeck says via email. “But also that they have due process rights and to ensure all information is considered.” When making disciplinary decisions, Sternbeck says MPD considers the severity and nature of the violation, past discipline imposed in similar circumstances, and an officer’s disciplinary history.
A package of police reform legislation the D.C. Council officially passed in December 2022 was intended to strengthen OPC’s authority. The bill allows the OPC director to recommend disciplinary action that they believe is appropriate (an option the director previously did not have). If the chief disagrees with the OPC’s recommendation, they must explain why in writing.
The legislation, which just became official law following Congressional Republicans’ failed attempt to block it, also allows OPC to receive anonymous complaints and to initiate investigations into conduct that is not specifically the subject of a complaint. It also requires OPC to publish and maintain a public database of sustained findings of misconduct with respect to officers’ commission of any crimes, officers’ interactions with the public, and officers’ integrity in criminal investigations.
But D.C. residents will have to wait at least another several months for OPC to create the database. The funds approved as part of the 2024 budget won’t become available until Oct. 1.
Correction: This story previously reported that OPC could not build a database of sustained police misconduct due to lack of funding. This version has been updated to show that funding will be available as part of the 2024 budget.