This story was supported with funds from Spotlight DC—Capital City Fund for Investigative Journalism.
On a warm afternoon in May, D.C. police believe Terry Thompson was trying to sell a long, AR-15 style gun in a duffel bag outside a 7-Eleven in Bellevue. When Thompson encountered Chris Callahan in the store’s parking lot, he allegedly slammed the duffel bag into Callahan’s head, then fired a single shot through the bag into Callahan’s face and killed him.
It’s not clear what prompted the scuffle, but witnesses say Thompson was acting “erratically” at the time, according to court documents. Thompson later told an acquaintance in the neighborhood he was given a “bad batch of drugs,” prompting the sudden outburst with Callahan. Police arrested Thompson a day after the shooting when someone spotted him in the same shopping center as the 7-Eleven, and prosecutors charged him with murder a short time later.
But just seven months earlier, prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which handles felony cases in D.C., dropped a separate gun charge against Thompson. The case fell apart because at least some of the Metropolitan Police Department officers involved in his arrest in June 2022 are now under criminal investigation by the USAO, according to court records. The investigation stems from an ongoing probe of the Seventh District crime suppression team, a specialized unit focused on violent crime working in Southeast D.C.
At least 19 sworn MPD officers are under criminal investigation, the USAO says in court records, after MPD forwarded a pair of reports to federal prosecutors to consider criminal charges. (MPD denied City Paper’s Freedom of Information Act request for the reports.) A 20th officer was also implicated in the investigation, but resigned before the probe began. The USAO’s search for criminal wrongdoing follows MPD’s internal investigation that now-former Chief Robert Contee announced in October 2022.
At the time, Contee said the investigation was limited to just seven cops—five officers and two sergeants—who had been suspended or put on desk duty. Supervisors initially noticed that officers’ body camera footage did not match what they wrote in their reports and that officers had confiscated illegal firearms but let the suspects walk free, despite having enough probable cause to make an arrest, Contee said in a press briefing announcing the investigation. Another 12 or so officers from the specialized unit were reassigned as a precaution, he said, while MPD’s Internal Affairs Division sought to root out the extent of the issue.
The day after Contee’s briefing, the Washington Post identified officers Imar Samaraay and Abdul Dieng among those under investigation, but no other officers have been identified since. There have been no public disclosures of the criminal probe, and community leaders and D.C. councilmembers alike tell City Paper they were previously unaware of its existence.
Through a review of hundreds of pages of court filings in gun seizure cases, City Paper has identified at least 16 of the officers who appear to be part of the investigation: sergeants Andrew Weiss and Brittany Cole and officers Manuel Benites, Parker Chapman, Caleb Demeritt, Abdul Dieng, Grant Gates, John Jeskie, Adam Kelly, Matthew Kelly, Jonathan Perez, Imar Samaraay, John Singleton, Morgan Smiley, Anthony Smith, and Brandon Varone.
MPD spokesperson Paris Lewbel says via email that Samaraay and Dieng are on administrative leave; Weiss, Cole, Demeritt, Jeskie, Perez, and Smiley are on non-contact status, meaning their police powers have been revoked but they are still working for the department; and Benites, Gates, Adam Kelly, Matthew Kelly, Singleton, Smith, and Varone are on desk duty due to an ongoing investigation, though Lewbel could not provide specific details of the investigation. Chapman has resigned.
Court documents show that investigators believe Seventh District CST officers also turned off their body-worn cameras during crucial moments of many gun arrests. Officers’ alleged obfuscation, along with the accusations of fabricating police reports and failing to make arrests, are casting serious doubt on criminal cases going back at least two years, according to filings from both prosecutors and defense attorneys. Dozens of criminal cases have been dropped, allowing people like Terry Thompson to walk free.
City Paper has identified 28 different cases, most of them filed between May and October 2022, involving officers on the Seventh District CST that prosecutors dropped due to the ongoing investigation. The Post reported in March that prosecutors dropped 65 gun cases that originated in 2021 and 2022 and another 25 drug cases; it’s unclear the extent to which their count overlaps with City Paper’s.
In eight additional cases where Seventh District CST officers were involved, defendants pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial before Contee announced the inquiry. Those guilty verdicts are also now in jeopardy.
Dominique Campbell was found guilty by a jury in September 2022, but convinced a judge to overturn the verdict by raising questions about the credibility of the Seventh District CST officers who arrested him. Alonzo Hinnant also pleaded guilty in September 2022 but later got a judge to rescind his guilty plea over similar concerns.
As for Thompson, officers with the Seventh District CST claim in court papers that they saw him conduct a “hand to hand” drug transaction while sitting in his car, and then spotted a “silver handgun” on his seat when they confronted him. Officers arrested him in June 2022 outside the same 7-Eleven on Martin Luther King Avenue SW where he is alleged to have killed a man about a year later.
In 2022, prosecutors charged Thompson with carrying a gun without a license, and he potentially faced increased penalties because he pleaded guilty a decade earlier to a felony charge of evading a police officer. A judge released Thompson from custody in July 2022, seemingly unrelated to the Seventh District investigation, and federal prosecutors dropped the case entirely on Oct. 19, 2022.
Thompson is, theoretically, just the sort of person that police, prosecutors, and politicians believe should be locked up for such an offense. Leaders, from Mayor Muriel Bowser on down, have proclaimed that arresting and incarcerating people carrying illegal guns is a key way to prevent future shootings. Bowser has pointed the finger at federal prosecutors who decline to prosecute MPD’s arrests, at judges who release people accused of gun crimes while they await trial, and at weak sentencing laws. But, as the allegations against the Seventh District CST show, her officers are at least a contributing factor and are directly responsible for the dismissal of dozens of gun cases within at least the past two years.
In addition to Thompson, at least seven more people whose criminal charges were dropped due to the investigation into Seventh District CST officers have since been arrested on new, unrelated felony charges, according to City Paper’s research.
Many other cases could be impacted, too, though the exact number is unclear. City Paper’s review of court records included gun arrests in the Seventh District from May through October of 2022, but some of the affected cases date back to 2021. That’s because prosecutors rely on officers to testify as cases move through the courts, and some cases move slower than others. If a 2021 case rests on an officer’s word, for example, but the officer was later implicated in this investigation, prosecutors may choose to drop the charges instead of relying on testimony that suddenly looks less credible to a judge or jury.
“The government must assess whether it has sufficient evidence—including the availability of witnesses essential to present that evidence—to meet its burden of proof at trial,” a USAO spokesperson writes in an emailed statement responding to questions about the investigation.
“That’s a reason why this is of concern, and that is not immediately evident to the public,” says Council Chair Phil Mendelson, who’s previously voiced his displeasure about the pace of the investigation.
These revelations echo persistent claims, dating back years, that officers conducted unconstitutional searches in Southeast neighborhoods, which have long endured high levels of gun violence and a heavy police presence. Advisory neighborhood commissioners in Ward 8 (which is almost completely covered by MPD’s Seventh District) tell City Paper that the allegations are in keeping with their experiences dealing with MPD over the years.
“It’s not like I can say, ‘Wow, that’s shocking,’” Erica Green, an ANC representing part of Congress Heights, said when a City Paper reporter described details of the investigation. “That’s horrible. I certainly hope that that’s not true. However, given just the general harm that we have here in Ward 8, unfortunately, that would not surprise me.”
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Crime suppression team officers are one major piece of MPD’s strategy to address rising gun violence in D.C. CSTs, as they are known, operate within each of the seven police districts and proactively patrol neighborhoods, rather than regularly responding to calls for service.
Read enough of these officers’ affidavits in illegal gun possession cases in D.C., and a pattern will start to emerge.
Officers often claim in sworn statements filed in court that they see boys or young men smoking marijuana, drinking, or doing something else that raises officers’ suspicions. They describe how a person appears to try to conceal something along their waistband or that they see a “bulge” in a person’s pants. Nearly all of the targets are young Black boys and men.
Officer Anthony Smith wrote in an affidavit that Alonzo Hinnant “had a wide-eyed look, mouth agape” when Seventh District CST officers spotted him with a backpack on July 4, 2022. Hinnant started running toward an apartment building, and “immediately grabbed his right front waistline area, and held onto the multi-colored backpack,” Smith wrote. Officers gave chase and eventually found a gun in his waistband and about a pound of marijuana in his backpack, which he had discarded during the pursuit. Hinnant had previously pleaded guilty to carrying a pistol without a license, and was on court supervision when officers arrested him. He was charged with several new gun related crimes.
Hinnant pleaded guilty on Sept. 13, 2022. But after federal prosecutors disclosed the investigation into Seventh District officers, a judge allowed him to withdraw his plea; prosecutors subsequently dismissed the case.
In the disclosure to Hinnant’s public defender, prosecutors said, “MPD has located instances where officers attempted to prevent their body-worn cameras from capturing aspects of their interactions on the scene of the firearm recovery including conversations with other officers and the suspects who were later released.”
In a motion to withdraw Hinnant’s guilty plea, his public defender, Quiana Harris, wrote: “Now, however, we know that the credibility of the officer who wrote the report—Anthony Smith—and the truthfulness of the police report, are under extreme scrutiny and must be re-examined by this Court. … We cannot trust that Mr. Hinnant ever acted in the way in which officers allege he did.”
“Here, Mr. Hinnant’s initial interaction with officers is not caught on BWC,” Harris wrote in the motion. “The statements made by officers are also not caught on camera due to the audio being muted, and several officers turned their BWCs off before they left the scene of the firearm recovery and Mr. Hinnant’s arrest.”
Defense attorneys in several other cases have raised similar issues with officers’ body cameras.
Prosecutors dropped two gun cases against Nehemiah Peoples. The then-19-year-old was already facing five charges from a 2021 arrest when officers arrested him again on Aug. 30, 2022. Seventh District CST Officer Matthew Kelly claims in the 2022 arrest affidavit that crime suppression team officers saw a group of young men smoking marijuana in a parking lot. When officers approached, they singled out Peoples because, according to the affidavit, he “began to rapidly back step and place his back up against the wall of the building and appeared to attempt to conceal himself behind a brick pillar.” Officers found a gun in his waistband and arrested him.
Candace Mitchell, Peoples’ public defender, writes in court documents that “there are gaps in time between when Mr. Peoples was stopped and when Officer [Morgan] Smiley eventually recovered the firearm that are not captured by body worn camera footage—including that belonging to Officers Kelly, Benites, and Smith—for various reasons. The government will therefore have to rely on the accounts of those Seventh District Officers to fill in those gaps.” She notes that “Officer [Anthony] Smith conceded that the officers never believed the whole group was smoking and that Nehemiah was not among the two young people that he believes were smoking.”
Mitchell also requested that prosecutors turn over any evidence of officers illegally planting guns on suspects. She did not cite any explicit evidence to support her request (she declined a request for comment through PDS’ general counsel), and City Paper does not currently have any information indicating that D.C. officers are planting firearms. But other defense attorneys have made similar requests as the lack of specific answers from the ongoing investigation fuels suspicion.
The USAO dismissed Peoples’ 2022 charges in October of that year, shortly after they disclosed the issues with the Seventh District CST officers. Prosecutors’ dismissal of the 2021 charges appears unrelated to the Seventh District investigation. In the 2021 case, officers with the gun recovery unit, working in the Seventh District, stated in an affidavit that they arrested Peoples after they found him with a “ghost gun” that had an extended magazine and a “giggle switch,” which could turn the handgun into a fully automatic weapon, allowing it to fire continuously with one pull of the trigger.
Although prosecutors initially filed oppositions to Peoples’ motion to dismiss the 2021 case, less than two weeks later, they dropped the charges without explanation.
After Peoples’ 2022 arrest, but before the charges were dropped, Mitchell filed a motion asking a judge to release him on high intensity supervision. The filing provides intimate details of the “shy 19-year-old” and the violence that has surrounded him all his life.
The document features a photo of Peoples in a cap and gown and holding a high school diploma. Mitchell tells the judge how Peoples’ youth football coach, who “treated [him] like his son” was shot to death while trying to break up a fight. She also writes about several others in Peoples’ life who have been hurt or killed by gunfire, including a cousin who lost an eye after a bullet grazed his head. In February, Nehemiah’s 25-year-old brother was shot and killed outside their home.
“I hurt that my children can’t be children,” Peoples’ mother, Levora, is quoted saying in the court filing. “This is not living. Do I have to quit my job? Should I move? I feel guilty because why haven’t I moved? But the truth is I can’t afford to move far and I don’t want to move from bad to worse.”
Levora Peoples also describes in court records how the crime suppression team is “ever-present” in their neighborhood, and the residents “are constantly subjected to unwanted contact, including unlawful stops and searches.”
“Of course, no one thinks of Nehemiah and the other boys of 22nd Street … as vulnerable or scared, but they are,” Mitchell writes in the filing. “The tacit assumption is that kids like Nehemiah have done something to deserve this. That they are not quite innocent and what is happening to them makes sense and does not cause genuine terror or pain.”
Peoples has avoided further run-ins with the police since his charges were dropped, according to the court docket. Others have not managed the same.
That includes Terry Thompson, the man facing murder charges. The shooting outside the 7-Eleven rattled neighbors, according to Bellevue ANC Wendy Hamilton, particularly because several people were alarmed upon seeing a man trying to sell a large gun in the convenience store parking lot before the shooting. But guns and violence have also been recurring themes in accusations against others whose charges dropped due to the CST investigation.
Daeyon Ross, 22, was arrested in August 2022 by the Seventh District CST on several gun charges, but the case was dismissed shortly after Contee announced the investigation into Seventh District officers. Less than a year later, Ross is now accused of murder and several other charges related to a fatal carjacking spree that ran from Capitol Heights into Northeast D.C. Ross allegedly shot and killed off-duty Metrobus driver Kurt Modeste, 56, along with two dogs, at a McDonald’s drive-through lane on July 2.
The Seventh District CST arrested Dennis Vanison on gun charges in September 2022, but prosecutors dropped the charges a short time later. In May, he was arrested again for a string of carjackings and robberies in Southeast (and MPD found he was wanted on robbery charges in both Anne Arundel County and Howard County as well), according to court documents.
The crime suppression team also arrested Marcus Brockington on gun possession charges in September 2022, which prosecutors dropped a few weeks later. Then in February, police claim Brockington boarded a train at the Potomac Avenue Metro station and robbed a young boy at gunpoint. When that boy provided information to Metro Transit Police and officers arrested Brockington, the boy claims Brockington contacted him via Instagram and threatened him with a gun because he “got the police involved,” according to court records.
And last August, members of the CST arrested Tyrone Watts on gun charges, which were also dropped shortly after the Seventh District investigation began. In April, police say they found Watts scuffling with another person in the parking lot of Stanton Elementary School while holding a gun. Watts fled the scene, police claim, and hid behind a car that was stopped at a traffic light before he inadvertently fired the gun. Officers eventually caught up with him and arrested him.
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By the end of 2022, overall violent crime in D.C. had dropped 7 percent from the previous year, according to Metropolitan Police Department statistics. Homicides dropped by 10 percent. But those figures are little consolation when the total number of homicides in 2022 surpassed 200 for the second consecutive year. The trend is well on its way to continuing in 2023.
More alarmingly, 12 children have been fatally shot in D.C. as of the end of June, more than double the number through the same time in 2022, and at least 65 more kids have been struck by gunfire in the same time period. An overwhelming proportion of victims and suspects of gun violence are Black men between the ages of 18 and 34, according to a 2021 analysis by the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform.
Along with the CSTs, MPD’s notorious gun recovery unit, which patrols citywide and is known for abusive, unconstitutional tactics, is another major piece of the department’s violence reduction strategy.
The D.C. Police Reform Commission recommended in April 2021 that MPD disband crime suppression teams and the gun recovery unit unless the department could show that they are more effective at reducing crime than traditional patrols. The commission says in its report that the units are “emblematic of the ‘warrior’ model of policing,” and note that 18-year-old Deon Kay and 20-year-old Karon Hylton-Brown were killed during encounters with crime suppression team officers. Two members of the Fourth District CST, Terence Sutton and Andrew Zabavsky, were recently convicted in Hylton-Brown’s death.
“Typical of ‘proactive policing’ units in other departments, CSTs and GRU use aggressive stop, pursuit, and search tactics that bump up against—and sometimes cross—constitutional boundaries,” the Police Reform Commission’s report says.
Contee rejected the commission’s recommendation, and MPD has not published statistics on the efficacy of these specialized units.
Before and since the commission’s report, the actions of crime suppression teams and the gun recovery unit have contributed to some of the major D.C. Court of Appeals decisions where judges have thrown out criminal convictions due to unconstitutional policing tactics. Police and prosecutors have argued those decisions make it harder than ever for officers to confiscate illegal guns.
In order to conduct a pat-down, or frisk, of a person, police officers must articulate a “reasonable suspicion” that the person has committed a crime. To detain, or “seize” someone, officers must meet the higher standard of “probable cause” that a crime has taken place, or is about to. A key question to determine if a police interaction amounts to a seizure is whether a person believes they are free to walk away.
Three recent Court of Appeals rulings, in particular, have rejected various gun seizure tactics. In each case, appeals judges ruled that D.C. police illegally stopped and searched young Black men, for various reasons, in violation of their Fourth Amendment rights. Each of the three convictions were overturned, and the rulings set a precedent for officers’ future actions.
In the most recent case, decided in April of this year, the Court of Appeals reversed Terry Ward’s gun-related convictions despite the fact he gave officers permission to frisk him, and they found a loaded gun with an extended magazine in his waistband.
In 2018, officers with the 7D crime suppression team saw Ward “pop out” of an alley off of Ainger Place SE before he walked back toward a nearby apartment building. Officer Dmitry Gendelman thought the 21-year-old’s behavior looked suspicious, and two police vehicles pulled into the alley, essentially blocking Ward in, according to the Court of Appeals.
Ward denied having a gun, and Gendelman asked if he could “pat you down just to make sure.” Ward agreed, and Gendelman quickly found the firearm. The whole encounter lasted about 10 seconds, and Ward was arrested without incident, according to court records.
In court, ahead of his trial, Ward said he was “scared and nervous” and thought he couldn’t refuse the officer’s request. “I felt like I couldn’t walk away,” he said. The officers “essentially jumped out on [me] and immediately began asking accusatory questions.”
Court of Appeals Judge Joshua Deahl, writing for the majority, said “the number of officers who approached [Ward], the manner in which they approached him, and their persistent accusatory questioning despite [Ward]’s repeated denials that he had a gun,” amounted to an illegal seizure.
But before the Court of Appeals vacated Ward’s conviction, he was arrested again, on Aug. 9, 2022, and charged with several more gun-related crimes. Ward asked the judge to throw out the charges, arguing that he was again illegally stopped by police. Prosecutors dismissed the case about two months later, before the judge could rule.
The officers behind that arrest were part of the gun recovery unit.
The D.C. Council also recently tried to address MPD’s history of illegal stops and searches. Legislation that came out of the summer of 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s death, established a requirement that if officers don’t have reasonable suspicion, they must first explain that a person “is being asked to voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently consent to a search.” Officers must also tell them they have a legal right to refuse a search and “a search will not be conducted” if they refuse.
“This is essentially ending stop and frisk,” Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, then-chair of the judiciary and public safety committee, said at the time.
Taken together, the appeals court rulings and the new legislation are major reasons why police are feeling increased pressure to get guns off the street.
“Some people believe that MPD does have a right to break certain laws in order to find criminals,” says Amanda Beale, advisory neighborhood commissioner for 8C06 in Congress Heights. “So that was a concern from some people. I don’t agree with it. But I understand why some people feel that in order to catch criminals, sometimes you have to play a little dirty.”
D.C. Police Union President Gregg Pemberton has defended Seventh District officers’ aggressive tactics. In response to news of the investigation into the Seventh District CST, Pemberton told the Post last October that “this is exactly what [Contee] and MPD supervisors told the officers to do—get the guns off the street and obtain direct evidence linking the gun to the person.”
But even as dozens of criminal charges have been dismissed, the involvement of a Seventh District CST officer doesn’t necessarily guarantee the charges will be dropped.
John Mathis, for example, pleaded guilty to gun possession charges in May 2022. It wasn’t until April 2023 that his attorney sought to withdraw his plea, claiming that prosecutors had a duty to disclose information about the investigation into officers Dieng and Samaraay seven months after the case was finalized.
Those officers were the only ones to stop and search Mathis and they “most likely engaged in clear misconduct” during that search, Mathis’ attorney argues in a motion to toss out the guilty plea and re-open the case.
Federal prosecutors are opposing those efforts, and in a response filed on June 20, they say the body camera footage from multiple officers “corroborates much of, and does not conflict with” the officers’ sworn affidavit describing Mathis’ arrest.
“Critically, the body-worn camera footage unmistakably shows the entire search of defendant and recovery of the firearm,” prosecutors say in response.
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The secrecy surrounding the investigation means that many D.C. officials and community leaders have been completely in the dark about its progress.
Mendelson and Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto, the chair of judiciary committee, both say they were unfamiliar with these latest developments until City Paper reached out for comment. (Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White did not respond to interview requests on the issue.)
Even ANCs representing the areas where many of these arrests take place say they were previously unaware of the investigation’s existence, despite being in frequent contact with police officials in the Seventh District. Beale, the Congress Heights ANC, says she’s been following the news about the probe, but has been “surprised” her neighbors didn’t take a similar interest and press the police for details. She wonders whether MPD’s longstanding reputation in Southeast has numbed her neighbors to news of police abuse.
That pessimism is prevalent among at least some subset of Southeast residents, and it’s not without justification. Michael Bruckheim, a longtime D.C. defense attorney who represented one man whose case was dropped due to the Seventh District investigation, says, “you can’t even walk down the street without being stopped or harassed by police for whatever reason” in these communities.
“You can talk to virtually anybody in those neighborhoods who have personally been affected or know somebody who has,” Bruckheim says. “These tactics aren’t getting to the root of the problem, and they’re just building a mistrust with the community they’re trying to help.”
Many of the same officers under investigation have also previously faced other allegations of misconduct, contributing further to this sense of suspicion about Seventh District police.
For instance, Imar Samaraay was accused of a “serious use of force” after wrestling a 14-year-old boy to the ground and seizing a gun from him in June 2021 near the Woodland Terrace public housing community, according to a disclosure MPD provided to the Council’s judiciary committee. In body camera footage of the incident released shortly afterward, a woman can be heard yelling, “He’s a child!” repeatedly as the altercation escalated; the boy fractured his hand during the scuffle. The Office of Police Complaints also sustained allegations on two different occasions that Samaraay and Abdul Dieng conducted illegal searches last year.
Shadonie Paylor claims in a lawsuit against Caleb Demeritt and several other officers not named in the Seventh District investigation that the cops “chased and tackled [her] to the ground, punched her in the face and brutally assaulted her” as she attempted to film a different arrest near Woodland Terrace in 2019. Paylor says the incident left her with “a black eye” and swollen elbows and knees.
Demeritt has denied all wrongdoing in that case, and attorneys for the city have asked a federal judge to dismiss it; it’s still pending. Notably, Demeritt also attracted scrutiny in 2018 for fatally shooting Marqueese Alston alongside another officer; Alston’s mother subsequently filed a $100 million wrongful death lawsuit against the city and the officers involved. Demeritt has also asked for that case to be dismissed, and it’s also still pending.
Several other Seventh District officers under investigation (John Jeskie, Anthony Smith, Adam Kelly and Manuel Benites) were among the cops named in an excessive force lawsuit filed in 2021. Marcus Purnell claimed the officers tried to grab him as he got into his car outside a Southeast gas station, using nightsticks to smash his car windows and causing glass to fly into his eyes; the District settled the case for undisclosed terms in February.
Another officer, Brandon Varone, was one of several cops accused of illegally stopping and searching a man in Anacostia in September 2019. Samuel Giles claims Varone and his colleagues had no good reason to pull him over, then illegally searched his fanny pack after it fell off while they confronted him. A federal judge ultimately disagreed, and Giles accepted a plea deal on gun and drug charges.
Despite all these incidents and the unfurling investigation, Hamilton, the Bellevue ANC, says many of her neighbors still aren’t willing to criticize police. The persistent drumbeat of gun violence has made many residents feel as if officers are beyond criticism, she says, as they work to get guns off the street. Others can’t envision an alternative to the police if they hope to stay safe. She wonders: Could these revelations about the Seventh District start to change minds?
“They’re not above the law, even if they are the law,” Hamilton says. “There are things that I just don’t see questioned enough here in Ward 8… Because you cannot just stick your head in the sand and act as if these things aren’t happening.”
This story was supported with funds from Spotlight DC—Capital City Fund for Investigative Journalism.