April 5: Say No to Door-to-Door Police Searches
ACLU, DC ACORN, and coalition partners launch a day to educate the community with a training session and community canvassing providing key information in English and Spanish. On Saturday, April 5, there will be training from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. at The St. James Episcopal Church, 222 8th Street, NE, between the Red Line’s Union Station and Blue/Orange’s Eastern Market Metro stops. Neighborhood canvassing will take place from 1:30-5:30 p.m.
MPD says officers will go to Eckington, Columbia Heights, Washington Highlands, and possibly other neighborhoods to ask residents’ permission to search their homes. They will ask residents to sign a consent form, which answers some questions but not others. But even though the form says that someone could be charged with a crime as the result of the search, too many people may not understand what is written or take the time to read the form carefully.
Our job is to ensure that residents really understand the consequences of agreeing to a search and that they have an absolute right to refuse, without retaliation of any kind. At our training session, we’ll give you what you need to talk to residents about their rights. After that we’ll go into the neighborhoods and help people decide for themselves whether to have their homes searched.
For more information contact Johnny Barnes, Executive Director of the ACLU- NCA (National Capital Area) at 457-0800 ext. 120, or Johnny.Barnes@aclu-nca.org.
Before coming to the meeting, please contact your five councilmembers (ward, at-large and chairman). Since they all ask for your vote, give them your views by phone or personal visit. Ask each of them to either join us on April 5 or otherwise speak out against MPD’s home searches.
Following the meeting, we shall divide into three groups and begin the canvassing. Please plan to canvass as long as you can. Just some of the sponsoring organizations: ACLU National Capital Area, Metro Washington AFL-CIO, National Black Police Association, AYUDA, TENAC, Stand Up for Democracy, DC ACORN, Coalition for Housing Justice, and Dorchester House Tenants Association, with other organizations and individuals joining daily.
Remind the police and the people themselves that the US Constitution protects our homes here in DC, too: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”