Police in other cities shake their heads when talk turns to the nation’s capital. True, crime in the District is down 18 percent this year, following a national trend. But while Washington is said to have more cops per capita than any other major city, the force had managed to solve just a third of the murders committed there through September. Auditors allege gross mismanagement through the ranks. Community leaders say cops are slow to get to crime scenes and don’t answer their phones. And then there are the allegations of corruption in the wake of the Soulsby affair. ““This is just the tip of the iceberg,’’ says Dwight Cropp, a former aide to Mayor Marion Barry. ““The department is probably corrupt through and through and needs a thorough cleaning out.’’ Now even those who supported Soulsby see his departure as an opportunity to bring in an outsider who can rebuild the department. But that’s assuming someone wants the job–and can actually pull it off.
One person who won’t be applying is Soulsby’s roommate and longtime buddy, Lt. Jeffrey Stowe. The two were friends who bonded on the golf course and often dined together at the Prime Rib restaurant on K Street–where Stowe frequently picked up the check. It was no secret in the department that Stowe was living way beyond his means. He filed for bankruptcy protection in 1995 and barely held off foreclosure of his family’s suburban-Virginia home earlier this year. But Stowe did have access to cash. As commander of the unit responsible for fraud and extortion, he controlled three separate police funds–and the Feds say he stole more than $5,000 from those accounts. They also charge that Stowe tried to extort $10,000 from a man he caught leaving a gay bar, threatening to tell the man’s family and employer where he had been hanging out. Stowe says he’s innocent and was set up by people who wanted to get Soulsby.
No longer living with his wife, Soulsby apparently had been staying with his brother for a while, then moved in with Stowe at a plush downtown apartment. The building’s management claims that Stowe rented the apartment for police business, for about $600, roughly a third of the going rate. Soulsby said he never knew the place was supposed to be used for surveillance. He hasn’t been charged with anything, but investigators want to know if he signed off on Stowe’s withdrawals from the police funds.
Soulsby’s downfall is one more problem for the troubled capital. A federal ““control board’’ that was given unprecedented power over the District in March initially backed Soulsby. The chief, whom Barry hired two years ago, was said to be agreeable to the board’s changes in personnel and to initiating the kind of community-policing approach that has worked so well in cities like New York. But as the months wore on, the control board lost control of the cops. Inefficiency in the ranks became an issue last summer after three people were shot dead in a Georgetown Starbucks. The police never solved the case; they let a suspect with what appeared to be bloody shoes walk out of the station house. By last week, even Soulsby’s supporters were backpedaling. ““There seems to be too much cronyism within the department,’’ admitted Jack Evans, a city councilman who had backed Soulsby. ““He was close to a group of guys, and they brought him down.''
Chastened, District leaders seem to agree that the next chief should come from outside the department. One person mentioned for the job, former New York and Boston chief William Bratton, doesn’t want it. But he says a strong leader can turn the D.C. cops around in less than a year. The same may not be true for the District as a whole. ““It’s not just the police,’’ says Jamie Raskin, an American University professor. ““Agency after agency, commission after commission. Spend five minutes investigating any one of them, and you find the most outrageous things going on.’’ Until now, those agencies had been looking to one city department as the model for reform–the cops.
