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In December 2022, Terrence Sutton became the first D.C. cop convicted of murder for actions on duty. Last September, he was sentenced to 5.5 years for murdering 20-year-old Karon Hylton-Brown. But getting this cop off the streets of the nation’s capital has only revealed a bigger issue with D.C. police.
Only 44.4% of D.C.’s population is Black. But 95% of people in D.C. Jail are Black. The same year Sutton made history, 90% of police use of force was against Black residents. In 2023, that number jumped to 94%. Use of force overall increased by 11% between 2022 and 2023. But how these statistics came to be may surprise you.
First, the violence wasn’t committed by a few “bad apples”: 1,017 officers were responsible for 1,142 use-of-force cases—25% of the force. Additionally, most incidents didn’t involve guns. Only 25% of the incidents that did involved someone allegedly assaulting an officer. What about race?
Fifty-two percent of the department is Black. Forty-five percent of officers who reported using force were Black. Disproportionately less, but not by much.
So, though Sutton’s murder conviction made history, that’s one cop and one incident out of the thousands that have taken place. The rare conviction doesn’t stop or even discourage police violence. And when looking at a system as anti-Black as D.C.’s, the answer is even more explicit: we must dismantle and transform how we respond to crisis.