Jul 31, 2009  |  By: Lou Chibbaro Jr.  | COMMENTS     

D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier has ordered an internal investigation into a gay man’s arrest for disorderly conduct after the man filed a complaint alleging that an officer detained and arrested him for expressing his dislike for police.

District resident Pepin Tuma, 33, an attorney in private practice, said the arrest took place at 17th and U streets, N.W., shortly after midnight July 26, seconds after a police officer overheard him telling two friends “jokingly” and in a loud voice, “I hate the police.”

Tuma said he made the comment in jest as he and two friends, who also are lawyers, were walking to Dupont Circle gay bar Cobalt while talking among themselves about the controversial arrest of Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates in Cambridge, Mass., for disorderly conduct.

Police spokesperson Traci Hughes said she could not comment on Tuma’s arrest because it’s a pending case.

Hughes said the arresting officer’s version of what happened is in a police report that is not publicly available under police rules governing disorderly conduct charges.

In an e-mail to Lanier, Tuma said that after repeating twice to his friends in a “sing-song” voice, “I hate the police,” an officer “charged 40-50 feet towards us while yelling at me phrases like ‘who do you think you are’ and ‘who do you think you’re talking to.’”

“I said nothing at this time, except asking why I was being detained, whether I was being arrested, and my belief that it was not a crime to offer an opinion to my friends about the police,” Tuma wrote in his e-mail to Lanier.

He said the officer, later identified as Second District Officer J. Culp, pushed him against a transformer box, placed him under arrest and handcuffed him without immediately informing him of the charge.

“As Officer Culp moved me toward a police cruiser, he told me to ‘just shut up, faggot,’” Tuma told Lanier in his e-mail.

He said police took him to the Second District station at Connecticut and Idaho avenues, N.W., near the National Cathedral, where he was booked and released about four hours later. He said his release came after he agreed to pay a fine as part of a “post and forfeit” plea, which is an acknowledgement of possible guilt.

Tuma said he agreed to the post and forfeit plea after officers who processed his arrest told him he would be forced to remain in a holding cell before being presented before a magistrate in D.C. Superior Court had he pleaded not guilty to the charge.

He said he had a longstanding commitment that morning and did not want to miss it by having to appear in court. Tuma said he plans to exercise his right to withdraw the post and forfeit the plea at a later date and fully contest the charge in court.

D.C. attorney Luke Platzer, one of Tuma’s two friends to witness the arrest, said he and a second friend, attorney Dave Stetson, were approached by a D.C. police sergeant shortly after police drove Tuma to the station to process his arrest. Platzer said the sergeant, whose last name is Geer, told them he observed Tuma attempting to “resist” arrest in a disorderly way and asked them if they would give a statement confirming his observation.

“We said, ‘No, we did not see that at all,’” Platzer told the Blade. “We thought he was trying to trick us into saying that there was physical resistance by Pepin to the arrest. That is not true.”

Platzer said he and Stetson took a cab to the Second District station to meet Tuma when he was released.

Steve Block, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of the National Capital Area, said prosecutors often drops disorderly conduct charges when cases come before its office for review. The D.C. Attorney General's office is in charge of prosecuting disorderly conduct charges in the city.

Block said the ACLU believes police routinely use the city’s disorderly conduct statute as a “catchall” means of making an arrest, often without proper justification.

He said the statute, and subsequent court rulings, limit disorderly conduct arrests to cases where the behavior of someone being charged threatens or endangers public safety or has the potential to put a police officer at risk of harm.

“As a general proposition, saying the police are no good or that you hate the police — that’s not grounds for a disorderly conduct charge,” Block said. “There are court decisions holding that you can’t be charged with disorderly conduct by merely insulting or even cursing at a police officer.”

Nykisha Cleveland, a ...