D.C.’s police union is calling on all violence interruption programs that the city funds to have their funding immediately halted until the programs can be thoroughly examined, they wrote in a statement released Monday.
The union said the move is a necessary step after Ward 8 Council member Trayon White’s arrest for allegedly accepting bribes to help a business owner renew violence interruption contracts.
“We’re asking that these programs get shut down until someone can investigate and get to the bottom of whether or not they’re operating appropriately,” union chairman Gregg Pemberton told WTOP.
Violence interruption programs include community-based strategies for tackling crime, and the city, like many others across the nation, helps fund many of the programs. In the statement, the union claims these programs are “shady businesses touting unproven approaches to improving public safety.”
In White’s case, the council member could be seen on video agreeing to accept $156,000 in payments from the business owner for offering his help in getting a contract renewed. The union called him “an unabashed antagonist of police,” and noted that his arrest “exposed the deeply flawed rationale behind” legislation passed by the D.C. Council.
“This arrest was just two weeks ago, and, obviously, while we’re processing the impact of these effects, what we’re realizing is that these violence interruption programs, potentially, have a lot of questions that need to be answered, and we think what’s appropriate is that the council shut down these programs until we get those answers,” Pemberton said.
Pemberton called for background checks for all employees of the programs, even though some of the programs hire individuals who served time for committing crimes in the past.
In addition to cutting the funding until audits are complete, the union also called for the city to terminate the contracts of programs, which are found to have not followed the rules of their contracts.
WTOP has reached out to the offices of Mayor Muriel Bowser and the D.C. Attorney General for comment.
“I think we should start asking more questions about who these (people convicted of crimes) are, and whether or not they’re actually good for these communities,” Pemberton said.
The union chair also believes the focus should be on filling officer vacancies in the city.
“I think we’re at a place where not only is it dangerous to have these people out here, but they’re now sucking up taxpayer funds to, allegedly, go out and do this job that police should be doing,” Pemberton said.
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