S Street Rising: Crack, Murder, and Redemption in D.C. (38 page)

On the same day the McCollum and Robles verdicts came in, State’s Attorney Jack B. Johnson announced that he was unable to obtain a grand jury indictment against seven Prince George’s County cops implicated in the death of Elmer Clayton Newman Jr., who’d died in police custody with two broken neck bones the previous September. The state medical examiner had ruled his death a homicide, but the investigation had stalled because the officers refused to cooperate, Johnson said.

A couple of days later, Curry called a news conference to announce that he was forming a task force to review county police conduct. His tone regarding allegations of brutality was no longer glib. Speaking about the Robles verdict, Curry said, “I don’t need a jury to tell me that chaining someone to a pole at night unprotected was an act of indecency beyond the conception of most civilized people. I am not the least bit surprised or upset with the jury’s verdict. I am outraged by the conduct.”

In the hypercompetitive
Post
newsroom, high-ranking editors often talked about how much they valued “accountability stories” that had “impact.” The canine story and its follow-ups epitomized that kind of piece. Police misconduct had become the hottest issue in the county, thanks, at least in part, to my reporting. The feelings of exile I’d experienced when Jo-Ann assigned me to the county bureau were now a bad memory.

I felt great about my work. I felt great about working in Prince George’s County. I believed that I was making a difference, and that my career was resurgent.

I was only partly right.

By the summer of 1999, I was part of the
Post
’s
recruiting pitch at minority journalist conventions. That year, management put together a flier headlined “Suburban Success Stories” that featured photos of black, Asian, and Latino reporters who were supposedly thriving in suburban news bureaus.
Post
editors distributed the fliers at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists convention both that year and the next. Next to my photo was a brief biography and this sentence: “His recent front-page investigation of savage attacks by police dogs forced the Prince George’s police department to immediately change its policies on training of the canines.”

In June 2000, Jo-Ann and I shared a shuttle van that took us from the NAHJ convention in downtown Houston to the airport. Politicking didn’t come easily to me, but I made an effort: “It was a good call, assigning me to Prince George’s County,” I told her. “These stories, they’re really making a difference.”

We made awkward small talk for the rest of the ride.

Three months later, in September, a federal grand jury indicted Stephanie Mohr, alleging that in September 1995 she had intentionally released her police dog on an unarmed, unresisting homeless man who was surrounded by officers. The incident occurred in Takoma Park, a city straddling the Prince George’s–Montgomery County line. Mohr released the dog because it was new to the canine unit and needed to be broken in, federal prosecutors claimed. Her supervisor, Sergeant Anthony Delozier, had asked a Takoma Park Police Department sergeant who was on the scene for permission to let the dog “get a bite.” The sergeant said yes, prosecutors alleged.

As I prepared to cover the trial the following spring, I kept knocking out stories about police misconduct. I was so focused that I missed a big development unfolding in my own office.

In early 2001, I learned that two Metro reporters and a staff writer on the investigative unit were working on two sets of stories about police misconduct in Prince George’s. One would focus on forced false confessions in homicide cases, the other on excessive force.

At first I was puzzled that I’d been excluded from the project. Then I became angry. I felt as though I was being shoved out of my own hard-won turf. No one in management had even told me the project was in the works. It would be a high-profile series. The paper was clearly gunning for a Pulitzer Prize. Whoever got to work on the stories would likely get a career boost.

Maybe Jo-Ann or another editor thought it would be too much for me to cover my beat and work on a big project, too. Maybe I should have met with whoever had chosen the project team to make my case for inclusion.

Years later, I entered therapy to try to get through a painful breakup. I worked in some venting about the
Post
in general and Jo-Ann in particular. With the help of my therapist, I figured out that my identity was dependent on being a
Post
reporter. I took work slights too personally.

At the time, I didn’t have such insight. I also didn’t have it in me to meet with Jo-Ann or any other editor. I should have asked for a meeting and made a methodical case for inclusion. I had sources and knew background the other reporters didn’t. I might have succeeded in persuading Jo-Ann and other editors that I should be part of the team.

But I was so caught up in my anger, I assumed that Jo-Ann and other editors would brush me off. So I seethed—mostly in silence. That spring, Ashley Halsey III, the Maryland editor, sent me a message asking me to retrieve court records for a reporter working on the project. Typically, a news aide would be asked to conduct such a task. It felt like a deliberate dig. I shot a message back to Ashley, declining the assignment and offering to talk about my refusal. “Never mind,” he replied.

In March, however, I did at least ask Jo-Ann for a raise, writing a detailed memo describing the impact of my reporting, which had led to officers being indicted or suspended, as well as policy changes.

A few weeks later, the jury in the first trial involving Mohr and Delozier deadlocked on the charges against Mohr and acquitted Delozier of a civil rights violation. The government retried the officers. In August, a second jury convicted Mohr of a civil rights violation and again acquitted Delozier of conspiracy.

There was a direct line from my first major story on police-dog attacks to Mohr’s conviction. During the first trial, Terry Seamens, a Takoma Park city councilman, testified that he’d heard about the Mohr incident shortly after it occurred. He was troubled by the use of force, but he didn’t know what to do. When he read my article, Seamens said, he learned of the FBI investigation into the canine unit and called the Bureau. The FBI wired up Seamens and had him talk to a Takoma Park cop who’d witnessed the biting incident.

The officer’s recorded account gave life to the investigation. Eventually, Dennis Bonn, the Takoma Park sergeant who said he’d given Delozier permission to let Mohr’s new dog “get a bite,” pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact. Bonn testified for the government. In December 2002, federal judge Deborah K. Chasanow sentenced Mohr to ten years in prison, the maximum penalty.

The conviction and the tough sentence had a dramatic impact on the police department, Sharon said. “The police department was operating lawlessly. Officers felt they didn’t have to answer to anyone. They felt they could do anything in their county. Until then, nobody had held them accountable—no county executive, no county council member, no chief of police. They ran wild. That was the first time they saw that if the federal government comes in and prosecutes a police officer, there’s going to be serious prison time.”

Before I started writing about police-dog attacks, the canine unit was registering more than a hundred biting incidents a year. By the time Mohr was sentenced, county canine bites were greatly reduced. In 2000, the first full year after the department retrained its police dogs, there were just nineteen biting incidents. The numbers remained low—nine in 2001 and eleven for each of the two ensuing years. County police dogs registered only three biting incidents in 2004, and the number of incidents remained in the single digits or teens throughout the next decade. Using less force did not seem to have any negative impact on the unit’s effectiveness. Canine officers detained dozens of suspects every year—fifty-four in 2012, for example.

Sharon stopped hearing about unnecessary or excessive county police-dog attacks.

A month after Mohr was convicted, Jo-Ann turned down my request for a pay raise. Instead she gave me a $1,500 bonus. I was disappointed, but I kept working hard, knocking out stories about police misconduct. In December, I sent her a follow-up e-mail, reiterating my request for a raise. She didn’t reply. Months passed.

In late September 2002, Jo-Ann asked me to lunch at the upscale restaurant in the Madison Hotel, directly across the street from the
Post
’s main office, downtown. Almost immediately, she handed me an envelope. Another $1,500 bonus. She was again turning down my request for a raise. Non-management employees, such as reporters, received modest raises, which are negotiated by the Newspaper Guild, which represents non-management employees at the
Post
.
In addition to those pay bumps,
editors doled out annual merit raises to reporters who’d done good work. Every year, Jo-Ann and the editors in charge of other sections, such as Style and Sports, decided who on their staffs would get merit raises. I would not have asked for a raise if I believed I had a very good or even great case. I requested a raise because I believed I had an overwhelming and undeniable case. The impact I was having in Prince George’s was unmatched by any other Metro staff writer. It wasn’t close. Also, when I had agreed to transfer from the D.C. staff to Prince George’s, I had pointed out to Jo-Ann that the commute would cost me thousands of dollars a year in gasoline and car maintenance costs. “You do a good job out there, and I’ll get you more money,” she had promised.

Jo-Ann’s refusal to give me a raise wasn’t the only bad news. She said she wanted to reassign me to Montgomery County. I’d be on not only the courts beat but also the police beat. It would diversify my portfolio, she said.

I was stunned. Leaving Prince George’s would mean losing all of my contacts and sources once more. I didn’t know anyone in Montgomery County, a well-off, majority-white jurisdiction just north of D.C. Montgomery County seemed like a sleepy beat in comparison with Prince George’s. The cops in Montgomery were accused of excessive force now and then, but they didn’t seem to have a culture of brutality. Change was always hard for me, and I loved the work I was doing in Prince George’s. There would be plenty more police misconduct for me to write about, I figured. I didn’t want to start over in what seemed a far less interesting place from a journalistic standpoint.

I didn’t say yes to the reassignment. I didn’t say no. But Jo-Ann could clearly see that I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect.

“Think about it,” she said.

Two days after our lunch, a man was killed by a rifle shot while walking across the parking lot of a Montgomery County grocery store. The following morning, four more people in Montgomery were similarly killed, all in the midst of everyday activities—mowing the lawn, pumping gas, sitting on a bench, vacuuming out a minivan. Police determined that each of the victims had been shot with the same gun. So began the three-week siege of the so-called D.C. Sniper.

While the rest of the newsroom mobilized, I stewed. I decided I needed to stand up for myself. I called Phil Dixon. He’d been away from the
Post
for seven years, but we’d remained friends.

I ran down my situation, then told Phil my plan: “I’m going to file a discrimination lawsuit. I know the paper could retaliate, could pick apart anything I do, could make my life miserable. I figure this could blow up my career. I don’t care if I go up in flames, so long as Jo-Ann gets burned, too.”

Phil suggested a more measured approach.

“That would be a really big step, filing a lawsuit. You
could
do that,” he said. “Or you could try to work it out internally. Management always prefers that.”

“Go over her head? Won’t management just support her?”

“It’s worth a try,” Phil said. “If that doesn’t work, you could still go the legal route.”

I decided to take Phil’s suggestion. I started with Milton Coleman, the former Metro editor who’d hired me. At the time, he was a deputy managing editor, the third in command of the newsroom, just below Len Downie and managing editor Steve Coll. I gave Milton copies of my memos requesting a raise. I included a copy of the flier touting me as a “Suburban Success Story.” In a cover letter, I went for broke, asking not only for a bump in pay, but also that I be allowed to stay in Prince George’s.

We met a couple of days later. “If you show these memos to Len Downie and Steve Coll, you will get a raise,” Milton said.

My eyes lit up. “So I should go to them, right?”

“Go back to Jo-Ann,” Milton said. “Give her another chance.”

I wrote Jo-Ann an e-mail asking for a response to my latest request for a raise. Three days later, she hadn’t responded. She was no doubt busy directing the coverage of the sniper shootings, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t stop now. I sent her another e-mail advising her that I was taking my case directly to Downie and Coll. She replied immediately, saying that of course I had the right to go to upper management if I had an issue.

For three months, I heard nothing. Then, in January 2003, Jo-Ann called me to a meeting in her office.

She acknowledged the good work I was doing in Prince George’s and said I didn’t have to worry about being reassigned to Montgomery. She also said that I would be getting a raise. She’d been scripted, it seemed to me.