Judge’s Ruling Creates Possibility Police
Will Need to Hire Mental Health Staff
Mental health advocates won a significant victory this week when a federal judge in Washington, D.C., decided they could move forward with their lawsuit that challenges the use of police to handle mental health crises.
They argue that mental health experts should be sent when 911 gets a call about someone who is suicidal or overly emotional, not police who are likely to aggravate the risk of violent confrontation.
The lawsuit was filed by the ACLU on behalf of a nonprofit organization called Bread for the City that assists underprivileged persons.
Attorneys for the District of Columbia filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. The federal judge denied the motion, saying the civil rights issues in the case need to be decided at a trial.
Implications of the lawsuit extend nationally. Police departments could be required to hire mental health experts for some emergency calls.
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Antitrust Trial Against Google
Aimed at its Ad Business
Google tries to dominate both the competition and its customers with its online advertising business strategy, a Justice Department prosecutor said during an ongoing antitrust trial for the internet giant in Alexandria, Va.
The outcome of the trial in federal court threatens to break up Google’s internet advertising dominance.
Google used tactics such as acquisitions of competitors and restrictive contracts that gave customers no other options for online ads, Julia Tarver Wood, a Justice Department antitrust division lawyer said.
“Google is not here because they are big, they are here because they used that size to crush competition," she said.
Google argues that consumers will be hurt if they are forced to sell off parts of their business to competitors.
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Letters to the Editor
D.C. in Brief
D.C. Council Bill Would Require
Closer Oversight of 911 Calls
A District of Columbia council member introduced a bill last week that takes a tough stance toward management of the city’s 911 emergency call center.
Council member Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) said she wants to get rid of the kinds of delays and mistakes that sent emergency responders to wrong addresses or made them arrive too late to provide critical assistance.
“The standard for our emergency response must be 100 percent accuracy,” Pinto said as she introduced the Transparency in Emergency Response Act. She chairs the council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety.
A key part of the proposed legislation would require the Office of Unified Communications to publicly release audio and transcripts that might demonstrate dispatching errors.
Pinto said she plans to hold monthly oversight hearings of the agency and to make unannounced visits to the 911 call center every other week.
The legislation responds to audits from inside and outside the city administration that found systemic failures in the Office of Unified Communications. Chief among them is low staffing levels tied to pay and employee morale.
Last year, the 911 dispatchers sent firefighters to the wrong address for a call about a newborn in cardiac arrest, canceled a call over an unconscious child in a hot car and classified a call about a man who collapsed as a low priority. In all three cases, someone died.
Last month, firefighters arrived 23 minutes after the first call about flooding at a dog kennel. By then, 10 dogs had drowned to death in their cages.
Pinto said she plans the unannounced visits to monitor dispatcher training, check on staffing levels and to listen to concerns of employees.
Top Senator Calls for Justice Thomas
To Recuse After Wife’s Comments
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is calling on U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from cases involving a religious legal group that won praise recently from his wife.
Ginni Thomas sent an email to First Liberty Institute complimenting it for its opposition to Supreme Court reforms suggested by President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress.
“You guys have filled the sails of many judges,” the email to a First Liberty Institute lawyer said. “Can I just tell you, thank you so, so, so much.”
The lawyer read the email during a conference call with the institute’s top donors.
Clarence Thomas is at the center of a reform movement after it was disclosed in media reports that he accepted lavish gifts from a friend and Republican campaign donors who had business before the Supreme Court.
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That way, DC residents like Keith King (pictured above) can get the legal representation they need to win their cases. As Mr. King put it, if it wasn’t for his Legal Aid lawyer, “I would have been homeless again.”
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Two D.C. Police Officers Sentenced
After Deadly Car Chase of Moped
Two former Washington, D.C., police officers were sentenced to prison last week after a deadly chase of a 20-year-old man on a moped and their attempt to cover it up.
The Oct. 23, 2020 incident prompted protests outside a police station.
Karon Hylton-Brown was spotted by Metropolitan Police Department officer Terence Sutton riding a moped on a city sidewalk without a helmet. Sutton ordered him to stop but Hylton-Brown instead sped away.
Sutton pursued him for about three minutes and 10 blocks in an unmarked police car. At times, they ran through stop signs and went the wrong way on a one-way street.
Shortly after Sutton turned off his red lights and siren while continuing the pursuit, Hylton-Brown was hit by an oncoming car as he emerged from an alley.
He died after being flung into the air and losing consciousness from severe head trauma.
“Hylton-Brown was not a fleeing felon, and trial evidence established the officers had no reason to believe that he was,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing. “There was also no evidence that he presented any immediate risk of harm to anyone else or that he had a weapon.”
District of Columbia law allows police to pursue criminal suspects in car chases only if they pose a likelihood of harm to other persons and it can be done without risk to other persons.
After Hylton-Brown died, Sutton is accused of submitting a falsified police report to hide any appearance he did anything wrong. His supervisor, former police lieutenant Andrew Zabavsky, was charged with conspiring to help Sutton in the cover-up.
They did not follow required police procedures after a serious injury, denied there had been a police chase and falsely alleged that Hylton-Brown was drunk.
Sutton, 40, was sentenced to five years and six months in prison for second degree murder. Zabavsky was sentenced to four years on conspiracy-related charges.