Happening in Washington D.C. …

The District will pay four D.C. police officers $900,000 due to retaliations from their supervisors after the officers filed racial discrimination complaints in 2006.

The orders, decided on by a U.S. District Court panel, is expected to be appealed by the D.C. police.



From The Washington Post:

City labor leaders said the award marks a rare victory for officers in a civil rights claim against the Metropolitan Police Department. Although there have been a couple of such settlements paid since 2007, employee rights litigation against the District is mounting.

“We have so many of these type of cases, whether it’s retaliation for bringing an Equal Employment Opportunity situation or retaliation against a whistleblower,” said union leader Kristopher Baumann, chairman of the Fraternal Order of Police MPD labor committee, citing four active cases. “One of the problems we have in this department is, management personnel do not understand how the law operates, and they don’t particularly care to understand how it operates.”

D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), chairman of the judiciary committee, said there is no place for discrimination in the District’s 4,000-member force and that he hoped it is not the “tip of the iceberg.”

Read the full story here.