The D.C. police lieutenant at the center of a controversy over whether Mayor Adrian Fenty meddled in a tense standoff with a wounded gunman has asked to be relieved of his command, The Examiner has learned.
“… I have encountered some issues with team moral [sic] which have influenced my abilities to effectively lead,” Lt. Scott Dignan wrote in a memo to Police Chief Cathy Lanier. “At this point and with the recent false allegations, with regret I feel I am no longer in a capacity to lead this team of officers.”
Dignan was a leader in the department’s Emergency Response Team, D.C.’s version of a SWAT team. He was the point man in a May 30 standoff with alleged gunman Terrence Moore, who had holed himself up in a home in Northeast after being shot four times by narcotics officers.
As first reported by The Examiner, internal department records show that Dignan told his officers to lob tear gas into the home. The officers resisted, fearing that the gas would panic Moore and provoke another round of gunfire, records show.
Records show that Dignan told his officers “I’m getting pressured” by higher-ups in the department. He would later tell his officers that the pressure came from Fenty himself, who told Lanier “to end this situation asap,” internal documents show.
Police regulations discourage even the chief from intervening in ERT negotiations.
Neither Dignan nor Lanier could be reached for comment. Lanier has called allegations of Fenty’s meddling “absurd.”
The controversy has resulted in a federal lawsuit filed by police union Chairman Kris Baumann, who claims he is being illegally targeted in an internal investigation probing the source of leaks from the May 30 standoff.
