the hearing today will prove through the FBI that that policeman never shot his gun. Yet, there are 6 or 7 eye-witnesses who swear to God under oath that that policeman shot this man point blank. This is what the police in the city of Washington are worried about. I have said in the past, because I represent a great many policemen in retirement cases and other cases-I have said and will continue to say what the man who wants to be a policeman in the District of Columbia ought to be given a medal. Any man who will walk up the back streets of Washington at 2:00 o'clock in the morning should be given a pat on the back and some encouragement, and not be shot at every time he goes on the street. This is the toughest job in the world. You could not give a normal citizen this job for $50,000 a year, and yet you expect these men, young kids, 21 years of age, still wet behind the ears, to come out there and walk the streets of Washington and, on the spur of the moment, as we have heard many times, be a law enforcement officer, be a judge, be a prosecutor, make decisions which we as lawyers cannot make unless we go to the books, and these men are called upon on the spot to make decisions. The consequence of making a wrong decision is a complaint and possible action before a civilian complaint review board and trial board, with the disgrace that comes to the family that accompanies those actions. This is what these men are up against. Gentlemen, I would like to tell you I have a young man-maybe I am talking too long Mr. JACOBS. Go right ahead. I have another question. Mr. MARGOLIUS. I have a young man in my office who is up for retirement. He has been on the force a short time, maybe a year and a half. He was struck by an automobile. He has not worked for 20 months. As a result, his left leg is more than an inch shorter than his right leg. He has a plate in his hip. The clinic wanted to retire him with full benefits, giving him 66 percent of his salary for the rest of his life, tax free. I said to this young fellow, "Why didn't you take it?" He said, "I want to be a policeman." He said, "I thought if I waited long enough, I would be all right and I could go back on the street." Here is a boy 22 or 23 years old now, who has not worked in 20 months, and he has given up the ship. He now realizes he cannot be a policeman. These are the fellows who are on the street enforcing the law. These are good men. I do not make a distinction between white and colored; 99 percent of them are excellent men, regardless of their color. I do not think it would make any difference whether they were white or black or yellow. These men work hard. They are underpaid. They ought to be given a medal for what they are doing. That is all. Mr. JACOBS. I recognize the problems you have described perhaps as well as any member of this committee. I am a former police officer myself. My question is: How do those problems change when you transfer the administrative authority to a legislative body, namely, the Congress? How does that improve the problems? Mr. MARGOLIUS. Not having gone into this in the detail I perhaps should, I can see one thing. You keep saying, Congressman, turn these over to Congress. I do not look on this as turning it over to Congress. I look on it as turning it over to a Commissioner. Mr. JACOBS. The bill says it turns it over to Congress. Mr. MARGOLIUS. The President pro tem and the Speaker of the House appoint this Commissioner. I assume, unlike the Rayburn Building, this Congress will be sufficiently cognizant of the problem to pick out the best man in the United States they can find to be the Commissioner. Mr. JACOBS. Are you saying a kind word about Mr. Stewart, by implication? Mr. MARGOLIUS. No. The design of a building is a matter of opinion. Mr. JACOBS. He is one individual. Mr. MARGOLIUS. This involves law enforcement. Once that Commissioner is picked out and appointed Mr. JACOBS. He can be removed at will. Mr. MARGOLIUS. No. His is a 4-year appointment. Mr. JACOBS. As I read this bill, he could be removed at any time. Mr. BROYHILL. Will the gentleman yield? I think the gentleman from Indiana has brought up a very good point. As I stated earlier, the bill was drafted to accomplish the main thrust of consolidating the departments and bringing them under the jurisdiction of Congress. There are several co-sponsors, and I am sure they all feel some reservations on some details. They are not endorsing every bit of the language in the bill. It is all subject to change and improvement, which is the purpose of the hearings. The gentleman brought up the point about the White House Police. Actually, as I stated before the gentleman arrived, there is recruitment from the Metropolitan Police Department. They are dependent upon the Metropolitan Police Department for training and recruit ment. There is no intention in the bill that we take over the White House Police, but merely to coordinate their training and recruitment. We have some coordinated supervision in the event of an emergency, to provide additional police for the White House in the event of emergency as well as to assign additional off-duty White House Policemen for emergency service. If there is objection to that, I, as one of the sponsors of the bill, am certainly willing to consider any alternative proposal. There is precedent for bringing these things under the control of Congress. I mentioned the Scotland Yard situation before the gentleman arrived. The Chairman of the House District Committee and the Senate District Committee now appoint the D.C. Armory Board, and there might be a question as to whether that is within the constitutional prerogative of Congress. I mentioned the Capitol Police, who are under our complete jurisdiction, and they certainly have a feeling of much more support behind them than the Metropolitan Police have. Yet, we do not have the harassment that you hear so much about, or the low morale, and we haven't had any charges of police brutality against these members. Mr. JACOBS. I might point out to my colleague, whose sincerity I do not question in the least, that the Capitol Police do not deal with the same problems that the Metropolitan Police do. It is a little like the difference between the highway police and city police. Mr. BROYHILL. That is one of the main reasons for the bill. There is presently a great deal of overlapping and duplication of jurisdiction. We have members of the Metropolitan Police Department in the House Gallery right now, in plain clothes, because it is felt we do not have enough trained personnel in the Capitol Police Force. We always have members of the Metropolitan Police Department up here alternating or working with the Capitol Police because we need more help. We need the Metropolitan Police up here. If we had problems downtown, we would use additional Capitol Police, wouldn't we? This bill would provide better coordination and administration of the problem. We can take all the police forces and put them under the District of Columbia Commissioner, if the gentleman desires. I would oppose that, however, and I think the Metropolitan Police Association would also. The main purpose is coordination. That is the No. 1 goal. The No. 2 issue is who is to be in charge of and responsible for it? I think, as the Chairman said earlier, the Congress created a Federal area because we wanted the Congress and the Federal Government to be protected. I think that is the primary concern. I say they all have to be fitted together, not separately. Mr. JACOBS. I think that is a very important point, and I think it is something this committee should be enlightened about. My own judg ment is that among police departments, cooperation is probably higher than any other kind of organization in this Nation. By that I mean when a policeman from one end of the country passes through a jurisdiction where you are a policeman, the courtesy and camaraderie that exist are probably greater than in the case of any other kind of organization in the country. Let me illustrate what I mean. We are in a metropolitan area here. Just a few short steps across the river we are in Arlington, and there must be cooperation between the Arlington Police Department and the police authority on this side of the river. I am sure the gentleman would not suggest they be controlled by the same metropolitan organization. Maybe he would. I do not know. In any case, I think there would be a great deal of problem. I want to conclude, Mr. Chairman, with this comment, if I may. I think one of the great dangers to city government any place in this country-Washington, after all, is a city-is the fragmentation of authority of the city government, what I used to call the dangling participle agency. The gentleman from Virginia himself, I think, has observed the misfortune of the National Capital Planning Commission being autonomous and outside of coordination with the city government. Ours is a city police department, and if there is something wrong with the Office of District Commissioner-of course, I think there is, for I think there should be home rule-if there is something wrong with the Commissioner's Office, perhaps that should be studied. But this separating away, taking a police department away from the left arm, whatever it might be, does not make for efficiency of government. I might say one of the grave ills of our cities today is that there is not the authority in the Mayor and city governments to coordinate and to act. The CHAIRMAN. I may say to the gentleman, we have to hold our question for each member down to 5 minutes. Mr. JACOBS. Speaking as one who has been left out because people did not hold it down to 5 minutes in past hearings, I yield back the balance of my time. The CHAIRMAN. We have a roll call on the floor of the House. Does anyone wish to ask questions at this time? Mr. WHITENER. Will the gentleman yield for just one observation. I do not understand this removing at will section. As I read the bill, it says the Speaker and the President pro tem may remove the Police Commissioner "for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office." If those are not proper grounds for removal-and they are the only ones mentioned in the bill-I do not know what would be proper grounds. Mr. MARGOLIUS. I might say I just saw this. I did not know what the provision was. It does list those causes. I think the chief of any department is subject to removal for those reasons. Mr. JACOBS. Obviously, there is no trial procedure, no appellate procedure. It would be in the judgment of the man who occupied the Speaker's chair as to whether he was inefficient. Mr. WHITENER. It would be the judgment of both the President pro tem of the Senate and of the Speaker of the House. Mr. GUDE. In your response to a question posed by Mr. Jacobs, you mentioned hearings presently under way concerning some shootings by the police, and I gathered that this was a reason for your support for this legislation. You referred to the fact that evidently, according to everything that you knew, certain witnesses were coming up and making false statements. Mr. MARGOLIUS. I did not say false. Mr. GUDE. I mean there was contradictory testimony. I was wondering how would this change or help that situation? Very often you have trials and court proceedings where people come in and make statements which are challenged and questioned. How would this legislation help that situation where citizens come before a review board or a trial board or a court and make false statements! I think it is very deplorable when people make false statements, particularly against a policeman who does his duty, but I was wondering how this legislation would help in that aspect. Mr. MARGOLIUS. I can only refer to some of the comments made by these policemen. They use the word "harassment." In the community today, speaking personally, not speaking for the Association because they have not gone into this, there is tendency by the people who need to have the law enforced against them more than anybody else to downgrade and destroy the law enforcer. Mr. GUDE. That is very deplorable. Mr. MARGOLIUS. There is in the community today an organization known as the Black United Front which has a group of militants in it. and also has within it certain respectable people who are giving the Black United Front some degree of respectability. The Black United Front has come out with a proposal that the police precincts should be controlled by the communities of those precincts, by boards who will select or pass upon the competency of the policemen and also discipline those police; and who will elect those boards? It will be the people who choose to vote in those particular areas, and those elected boards will then control who is going to be the police, even to the point of being able to select their own captain. The CHAIRMAN. We will be compelled to adjourn at this time. We will meet again at 10 o'clock next Monday morning. (Whereupon, at 11:30 o'clock a.m., the committee adjourned, to reconvene at 10 o'clock a.m., Monday, July 29, 1968.) COMMISSIONER OF POLICE MONDAY, JULY 29, 1968 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, Washington, D.C. The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:00 a.m., in Room 1310, Longworth House Office Building, the Honorable John L. McMillan, chairman of the committee, presiding. Present: Representatives McMillan (presiding), Dowdy, Whitener, Sisk, Fuqua, Adams, Jacobs, Walker, Broyhill (Virginia), Winn, Gude, and Zwach. Also present: James T. Clark, Clerk; Hayden S. Garber, Counsel; Sara Watson, Assistant Counsel; Donald Tubridy, Minority Clerk; Leonard O. Hilder, Investigator. The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. The Commissioner is not here this morning, I don't believe. Mr. Fletcher, would you care to make a statement on this bill? STATEMENT OF THOMAS W. FLETCHER, ASSISTANT, FOR THE COMMISSIONER OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Mr. FLETCHER. Yes, sir. The CHAIRMAN. We will be happy to hear any statement you would care to make. Mr. FLETCHER. Mr. Chairman, I would like to make the following statement on behalf of Commissioner Walter E. Washington. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee: I appreciate this opportunity to present the views of the District of Columbia Government on the legislation before you, which deals with the crucial problem of crime in the Nation's Capital. The purpose of this legislation (H.R. 14430 and H.R. 14448), as explained by one of its sponsors, Congressman Broyhill, is to consolidate the five separate police forces now operating in the District of Columbia; the Metropolitan Police, United States Park Police, Capitol Police, White House Police, and National Zoological Park Police. These forces would all be placed under the jurisdiction of a Commission of Police. This Police Commissioner would be appointed for a four-year term by the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate. A nine-member advisory commission would also be appointed by the Speaker and President pro tempore. The District of Columbia Government is strongly opposed to the removal of the Metropolitan Police Department from the municipal government. |