Release provided by Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton

Washington, DC – Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), at a press conference today, announced that the largest group of federal agency police force officers, the Federal Protection Service (FPS), will now assist the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) by patrolling DC neighborhoods, pursuant to the Police Coordination Act of 1997. Appearing with Norton, who authored the Act, were MPD Chief Charles Ramsey, Acting US Attorney for the District Kenneth Wainstein, Assistant Commissioner for Public Building Services Paul Chistolini, and Federal Protection Service Director Andre Jordan.

More than 150 uniformed federal police officers, who are stationed at approximately 60 federal agencies across the District, will patrol areas of the city in neighborhoods near their agencies, process suspects, share radio frequencies, and donate equipment and supplies. The Federal Protection Service joins four other federal police forces already working in DC. neighborhoods: Amtrak Police, National Zoological Police, the FBI Police, and the US Defense Protection Service. Taken together, the Police Coordination Act has added more than 400 federal uniformed police officers to assist the MPD in crime prevention and control in D.C. neighborhoods.

The extensive additional police presence in District neighborhoods is apparent from the location of federal buildings and facilities of various kinds in all four quadrants of the city. Almost every federal building in the District is covered by the FPS, whose coverage now extends into DC neighborhoods through the Police Coordination Act. Examples include the State Department, HUD Building, National Building Museum, Waterside Mall, the Washington Navy Yard, and the Anacostia Professional Building on MLK Avenue, where some federal agencies, including Norton’s district office and the office of the Social Security Administration, are located.

Norton said, "The District historically has been saturated with federal and local police and has been just as saturated with crime. I wrote the DC Police Coordination Act in an attempt to capture this police power for DC residents, federal employees and tourists alike."

Norton got the bill passed in 1997 after her success with a similar bill, Public Law 102-397, in 1992, that now allows the Capitol Police to patrol significant parts of the Capitol Hill community. Separately, the National Park Service Police has long worked with the MPD on crime control in the District. However, under the Police Coordination Act, the US attorney coordinates and negotiates the new relationship between the MPD and the remaining federal agencies.

The Congresswoman first decided to write bills that expand the patrol areas of federal officers as crime escalated in the District in the early 1990s. She discovered that well-trained police officers in federal agencies often were confined to agency premises and kept from enforcing the DC law on or near their facilities. Some officers operated more like highly paid security guards than peace officers and performed few mainstream police duties. Federal police officers sometimes called 911, taking hard-pressed DC police officers out of our neighborhoods. Even when traffic accidents occurred near agencies, District police often were called to redirect traffic. Federal officers were more than willing to do the job in our neighborhoods near their own agencies, but lacked explicit authority before the passage of the Act.

The Police Coordination Act introduces greater rationality and cost efficiency into what was the almost totally uncoordinated and inefficient use of multiple police resources in Washington, DC. The law "gets more mileage out of the federal buck," according to Norton.

The Congresswoman said, "We are close to reaching my goal to assure that this city, which has more police per capita than any city in the United States, makes full use of all the available police resources to the maximum benefit for everyone in this city, including federal employees and visitors and, especially, DC residents."

Read the complete cooperative agreement between General Services Administration, National Capital Region (Federal Protective Service) and DC Metropolitan Police.