DC Officers Under Criminal Investigation For Punching Gun Suspect

WASHINGTON, DC — Three D.C. police officers are under criminal investigation for an incident on Sunday where one of the officers was punching a suspect in the face while the other two officers were attempting to hold the man.

The officers reported witnessing a drug transaction on U Street in Southeast D.C. and then stopped a man involved in the transaction and recovered a gun, the Metropolitan Police Department said in a news release Monday.

Members of the public posted a video on social media showing a white police officer punching the Black suspect in the face multiple times while the other two police officers were attempting to hold him.

The actions of the three Metropolitan Police Department officers are "inconsistent with the training and the values of the department," D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee III said in a statement Monday.

The case involving the three police officers has been referred to the U.S. attorney's office in D.C. to determine whether the officers should be prosecuted. After the U.S. attorney's office completes its investigation, the MPD's Internal Affairs Division will conduct its own investigation, Contee said at a news conference Monday.

The three MPD members have been placed on non-contact status where they will have no interactions with the public as the incident gets investigated, Contee said.

In the video, members of the public who were witnessing the incident could be heard getting upset as the police officer continued to punch the suspect. "Obviously, they were upset by that," he said. "I was upset when I saw the video."

Contee emphasized that the D.C. police are attempting to get illegal guns off the streets of the city. But the way the police officers handled dealing with the suspect on Sunday was not consistent with the department's training, policies and procedures and was "certainly not consistent with the values of this agency or my own personal values," the police chief said.