Metropolitan Police Department Chief Cathy Lanier defended her officers’ tactics at a D.C. Council oversight hearing Tuesday.
Lanier said she plans to more than double the number of officers wearing body cameras and to keep adding more cameras each year until almost all officers have one.
“All the units that are out having front-line contact will have the body cameras,” she said.
“The suggestion that you have to put a camera on a cop for them to act right is a further indictment of their brutality, that you don’t trust them,” D.C. resident Kymone Freeman said.
Lanier answered questions about the use of what protesters call “jump-out tactics,” when undercover officers in unmarked cars jump out of their cars and swarm a group of suspects.
That tactic is used mostly in undercover drug stings, Lanier said.
“They’ll come in two separate cars, usually they’re unmarked cars, and once the drug transaction is made with the undercover [officer], they will come into the area and stop the individuals involved in the drug transaction,” she said. “So that’s the most common scenario.”
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Lanier and the head of the police union disputed accusations that D.C. police officers routinely use military-style tactics and excessive force when stopping and questioning suspects.
