Your Department
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Thread: Your Department

  1. #1
    Guest

    Your Department

    I was considering moving to the DC area and wanted to know if your department is good to work for? I have heard a lot of great things about your department.

  2. #2
    Guest

    MPDC

    I've been with the DC MPD for three years. If you listen to the long-term officers, the department sucks compared to how it used to be. They'll tell you "they won't let us be the police anymore." You can hardly ever chase a vehicle, officers are generally thought of to be guilty until proven innocent when it comes to complaints from the citizen, and you can no longer shoot at a moving car even if it tries to run you down. (The latest teletype from command is that a moving vehicle is no longer considered to be a deadly weapon.)
    I have never been on another police department, but from what I hear from others who have been, our arrest process leaves much to be desired. I understand that on most departments, you arrest a suspect, you bring them back to the station, you type up the arrest paperwork and turn it in, and you are done until you are subpeoned for court. In DC, you then have to go downtown to "paper" the case. This involves waiting in long lines (esp. Sat's and Mon's) to sit down in front of a "papering" U.S. Attorney and present your paperwork and make your case that the arrest and charges are legitimate and prosecutable. More often than not, the attorney will immediately knock down your charge to one more easily winable, or more likely to elicit a plea agreement with the defense attorney. So an "assault on police officer" charge will almost always be knocked down to "simple assault" (from a felony to a misdemeanor). Or a "possession of carck cocaine" will be knocked down to "attempted possession." (Don't bother asking the attorney how one "attempts" to possess a controlled sunstance, they'll ignore the question.
    I had traffic court last week. The defendant didn't even show, but because I neglected to check off one box on the original ticket, the case was dismissed. The whole judicial system in DC seems to be slanted towards the criminal or offender. That gets pretty frustrating at times.
    The Chief has created an atmosphere of fear within the department. Often, you will get disciplined by a sergeant for something the sergeant himself will admit he would have handled the same way. Everyone up the chain is afraid that if they do NOT sign off on a disciplinary action, then THEY will get disciplined by THEIR official. Example: My partner, who has only been on the street for one year, got two summons for the same trial, one for Mon and one for Tue. He showed up on Monday, and after the trial he told the US atty about the second summons. The atty told him it was an error and he was "excused" from having to appear on Tue. He made the mistake of not caontacing our Court Liaison Division with this information (as our general orders instruct), but he thought he didn't have to since it was an admin error. Well, four weeks later he receieved a disciplinary write up! That will stay in his personnel file for one year. Now they have another pissed-off young officer. All they had to do was issue a warning, and tell him if it happened again he would be disciplined.
    On the plus side of working in DC, there is the pay (better than average of all surrounding departments), but even here we have a negative aspect. The first 11 hours of OT worked in any 28-day cycle is paid at straight time. Only with hour 12 do we start getting time-and-a-half pay. This is a direct violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The union has fought this and won... twice! But the Chief refuses to comply with the court orders to pay time and a half from the first hour of OT worked.
    The retirement age is still 25 years of service, but there has been talk ever since I came on that it may eventually go down to 20 years.
    I hope this has given you a place to start your research into whether or not you want to work here.

  3. #3
    Guest
    I was a D.C. cop from 1988-1996 when I left to Miami Beach PD. I was assigned as a Investigator with the 1D Vice. I still miss you guys, knowing that I was part off a great police department, full of history and working in probably the toughest city accross the USA.
    I today use all of my on the job experiences and training gained from my time there to help on my investigations here.
    If you work 1 year street time at MPDC, you would need to work at least 5 years street time somewhere else to get the same experience. I highly recomend MPDC and "Hats off" to anybody who has or wants to work for MPDC.

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