As Washington, D.C., sues the Trump administration for attempting to install DEA Administrator Terrance Cole as the Metropolitan Police Department’s “emergency police commissioner,” D.C. police chief Pamela Smith on Friday filed a scathing rebuke of the move with the court.
On Thursday, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi issued the now-challenged order, which states—among other directives—that MPD officials would need Cole’s approval “before issuing any further directives.”
As Smith’s statement lays out, this would create chaos at the MPD.
“If effectuated, the Bondi Order would upend the command structure of MPD, endangering the safety of the public and law enforcement officers alike,” Smith said. “In my nearly three decades in law enforcement, I have never seen a single government action that would cause a greater threat to law and order than this dangerous directive.”
Requiring MPD leadership to receive Cole’s approval for all their directives would upset the department’s “deeply familiar” and effective command structure, Smith said.
“Imposing a new command structure ‘effective immediately’ will wreak operational havoc within MPD and create tremendous risk for the public,” stated the police chief. This would sow confusion among the thousands of officers lawfully required to report to her—and, she said, “There is no greater risk to public safety in a paramilitary organization than to not know who is in command.”
Smith also railed against the delays that the new emergency commissioner, who would be unfamiliar with “MPD procedures” and “the communities in which we police,” would create.
Manifold MPD leaders are constantly issuing directives, she noted—“from routine paperwork and personnel assignments to responding to domestic violence calls to crowd management to the execution of high-risk warrants.” The cumbersome demand that they all pass through Cole “would effectively freeze public safety operations,” Smith said, creating “confusion and delays [that] will endanger public safety, placing the lives of MPD officers and District residents at grave risk.”
This would be all the more disruptive, she added, at a time when hundreds of federal agents and National Guard members—all “unfamiliar with MPD procedures”—are descending on the city’s streets on Trump’s orders.
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