Nearly two dozen D.C. police officers who were fired for misconduct but were reinstated after a court found the police department violated their due process rights are suing the city for a total of $140 million, according to court documents.
The officers charge that Chief Cathy Lanier went back on agreements to bring them back to work, according to the lawsuit filed earlier this month.
The 20 officers were all fired over the course of several years for a variety of causes. But they were all ordered back on the job by the D.C. Court of Appeals, which held that the city violated their right to speedy hearings. After media reports about the reinstatements, Lanier and D.C. acting Attorney General Peter Nickles vowed to fire the officers again.
The officers’ lawyer, Jim Pressler, says not so fast.
“Some of these officers have been back to work for months. And working hard and serving the public and serving without any incident at all,” Pressler said. “I think it’s outrageous — to enter into a settlement agreement and then to break it.”
Many of the officers had been formally cleared of wrongdoing even before their settlements and were unfairly targeted by Lanier and Nickles, Pressler said.
Nickles declined comment Monday.
Central to the officers’ case, filed last week and alleging breach of contract and emotional distress, are statements that Lanier made at a May 23 news conference after media reports surfaced about the reinstatements. Lanier said she was going to re-fire the officers for “inefficiency” and told the public that her department “can’t have officers testifying in court when their credibility can’t be trusted.”
“The press conference made it look like [the reinstatements] were just these little technicalities,” Pressler said. “That’s really not what happened here — and they know it because they’re the ones who took it to the Court of Appeals.”
