Nov 06, 2009  |  By: Lou Chibbaro Jr.  | COMMENTS     

The U.S. Attorney’s office should consider filing criminal charges against a D.C. police officer who allegedly assaulted a gay attorney in July before arresting him on a disorderly conduct charge, says the Office of Police Complaints.

An independent D.C. agency, the Office of Police Complaints asked the U.S. Attorney’s office to consider prosecuting Officer J. Culp after it processed a complaint against Culp filed by Pepin Tuma, a 33-year-old D.C. attorney. Tuma filed the complaint in August after reporting that Culp shoved him July 17 into an electrical transformer box near 17th and U streets, N.W., before arresting him.

In his complaint and a letter to D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier describing the incident, Tuma said Culp targeted him for arrest after he overheard Tuma tell two friends in a loud voice, “I hate the police.”

Lanier referred the case to the police Internal Affairs Division for an investigation separate from that conducted by the Office of Police Complaints.

“OPC suspended its investigation until the U.S. Attorney makes a decision on the case,” the complaints office told Tuma in a letter last month.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office could not immediately be reached to determine whether the office has decided to file charges against Officer Culp.

Tuma’s attorney, Bennett Borden, of the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, said the firm has filed papers seeking to have Tuma’s arrest records expunged on grounds that the arrest was improper because no crime occurred.

Another attorney with the law firm, Theodore Olson, is representing a gay organization in California that has filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn Proposition 8, which repealed California’s same-sex marriage law.