National Police Week rampage

Last week was National Police Week in Washington, D.C., which prompted D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier to attempt to prevent problems (as reported in the Washington Post):

D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier put out fliers yesterday warning officers in town for National Police Week that they must obey city laws covering disorderly conduct, public drunkenness and other "unacceptable behavior."

Lanier ordered the fliers distributed around downtown in hopes of curbing complaints about officers drinking in public, playing loud music and causing other trouble.

This did not, however, prevent some abuses from occurring:

I am actually the citizen, who filmed 48 hours of misconduct out my window during police week.

The visiting officers did not have any problem drinking in public, howling, screaming, yelling and playing bagpipes until 2, 3 and 4 am below our window. They were taking open conatiners of beer into the Irish Channel. They were urinating on the church steps across the street and left behind half empties for the homeless, when they staggered back to the hotels.

I also have video, which has not been released, of DC MPD sitting in their cars, standing by their cars, while these guys started a bagpipe parade at 12:45 AM on Tuesday morning. For them, I have close ups of the car numbers and the officer's faces as much as my camera would allow.

I called a total of 9 times, which I documented with times and which officer answered the phone and sent an email to the Mayor, the City Council Members, Chief Lanier and NBC 4.

Chief Lanier showed up at my door 4 hours later and has thus far, at least tried to show some interest in making positive changes.

In fact, I have been asked to meet with Commander Burke, Commander Groomes, representatives from DCRA (permits), ABRA (Alcohol Regulations) and EMA this week to further address the problem.

I had the video posted on youtube.com. My account was hacked after I received threats from a self identified "DC police Officer" warning me about the size of the "Brotherhood and airing dirty laundry."

I have started trying to get the video back up and should have it put together again by tomorrow.

I ask that if you have specific complaints about National Police Week, you please forward them to me. I have set up an anonymous e-mail to collect those complaints. As of today, I have 57 pages of comments, complaints and threats.

I have not had much support and in fact do fear for my safety. I signed my name to the complaint to the Chief, and am not 100% certain that information will stay confidential.

Any input, help, support or even a few kind words at this point, would be appreciated.

You can look up the videos on youtube.com by searching Inthepubliceye. The e-mail account is a gmail account using the same name.

Here's one of the videos, which shows a number of laws being violated--drinking alcohol/having open containers on the public street, operating a Segway on the street while drinking alcohol, leaving empty bottles on church steps, and so forth.