Unanswered questions taint DPS firing

Adam Gorod, 3L, Niloufhar Khonsari, 3L, and Lori Leibowitz, 3L
Guest Writers
March 24, 2009

Officer Gabriel Spencer, who has protected our campus for more than eight years, was fired on Mar. 13 without ever being able to see the accusations made against him. Officer Spencer worked the graveyard shift, 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., five nights a week, patrolling the campus so that each of us can sit safely in class preparing to one day be part of the justice system.

No system of justice protected Officer Spencer when, on the last day of our Spring Break, Officer Spencer was told to relinquish his police badge and leave campus immediately. He was fired because of allegations made against him in a statement that he was never given an opportunity to see and therefore could not challenge.

This all began nearly two months ago on the weekend of Jan. 31 when Officer Spencer purchased a rusty, antique antebellum pistol at the Mt. Vernon Antique Center in Alexandria, Virginia. Officer Spencer has long been an avid collector of antiques, scouring flea markets and collectible stores for hidden treasures.

He speaks openly of his great pride in owning, maintaining, and researching his collection. This particular piece, the store owner told him, dated to the early nineteenth century and may have actually been used during the Civil War. He took the antique pistol home with him and spent the rest of the evening and following day trying to restore it. He was fairly certain that it was too damaged to be functional, but that it was still a wonderful relic.

Over the following days, Officer Spencer and his family visited antique stores throughout the region, from Annandale to Georgetown, trying to learn more about the history of this artifact. He learned that the pistol was probably from the time of the Revolutionary War, and he confirmed that it could not be fired because of a visible crack that extended all the way to the stock.

On Wednesday, Feb. 4, Officer Spencer reported to Georgetown for his overnight shift as usual. He parked in the McDonough Hall garage that night because of the bitter cold outside. His antique pistol was locked away in a box in the trunk of his vehicle. He was planning to bring the antique pistol to another collectibles store the following morning immediately following work. Because it was a non-working antique, Officer Spencer believed that having it in his car did not violate Georgetown's weapons policy, which prohibits potentially dangerous items on University premises.

Officer Spencer was given the patrol vehicle as his assignment for that night. Halfway through his shift, Officer Spencer ran into another on-duty officer who asked if she could ride with him in the patrol vehicle because it was too cold to patrol on foot. He told her that would be fine, and they began to walk toward the vehicle.

On the way to the patrol vehicle, Officer Spencer asked her if she wanted to see something "really cool" that was in his vehicle. She agreed, and he opened the box that was in the trunk of his car and showed her his antique pistol. Officer Spencer explained to the other officer all that he knew about its historic importance and then closed the box and secured his trunk.

He and the other officer went to the patrol vehicle and circled the campus several times. She was called to do something else, and Officer Spencer continued patrolling.
About a half hour after the other officer left the patrol vehicle, Officer Spencer noticed that two Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) scout vehicles were parked in front of McDonough Hall. Officer Spencer stopped the patrol vehicle and asked the officers if he could help them.

He was then told that MPD had received a call that an individual on campus was carrying a unregistered firearm. Officer Spencer was surprised because he had heard nothing about this on his radio. He directed the MPD officers to the sergeant on duty and went back to patrolling the campus.

After circling around a few more times, Officer Spencer received a radio transmission from the sergeant on duty telling him to meet her in the lobby of McDonough. The sergeant identified Spencer upon seeing him, exclaiming that the MPD officers were saying that he had a gun in his car.

Officer Spencer explained that it was only an antique pistol and volunteered to show it to them. He led them to his vehicle and then opened his trunk, pulled out the box, and showed it to them, pointing out the crack and the fact that it did not work. One of the MPD officers asked Officer Spencer if he had any ammunition on him. He told them that he did not and invited them to search his vehicle.

The MPD officers looked in the car briefly and then told the sergeant that it was not necessary for MPD to do anything further. Members of the Georgetown Public Safety Department are Special Police Officers and the department could handle this as they saw fit.

The sergeant took the antique pistol with her, and Officer Spencer explained why he had brought it with him. The sergeant told Officer Spencer that she was completely surprised about MPD officers coming.

The officer who was shown the antique pistol had apparently contacted another sergeant who was off-duty at the time instead of talking to the sergeant in charge of the shift. The off-duty sergeant was the one who contacted MPD.

Officer Spencer was then placed on administrative leave. Two weeks later, the director of the public safety department held a meeting with Officer Spencer.

At that meeting, Officer Spencer gave a statement, but he was still not given the opportunity to see what accusations had been levied against him. Without seeing the accusations, he could not present evidence to refute them.

This situation is especially troubling because Officer Spencer filed a report that implicated the accusing officer in wrongdoing less than a year earlier. That incident spurred lingering animosity between the two officers. It could be the case that the other officer decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to seek retribution against Officer Spencer.

Unfortunately, he is unable to know because he was never able to see what she exactly alleged that he said or did on the morning of Feb. 5. The only thing that Officer Spencer was told was that he was accused of possessing gun powder and claiming to have enough of it on hand to blow up McDonough Hall.

Officer Spencer denies having any gun powder or making such a threat. We do not believe that the Law Center community was certainly never informed of such a threat being made.

Officer Spencer has no idea how the accusations against him were investigated or if they were investigated at all. He does not know if the MPD officers who came to the school have been interviewed. He does not know if the sergeant on duty that night was asked to make a statement.

Officer Spencer has just learned that, in addition to terminating him as a result of these accusations, the director of security may requested that Officer Spencer's Special Police Officer license be revoked. This means that, after being in law enforcement since he was eighteen, Officer Spencer will not be able to continue his career as a security officer.

While we sit in our law school classes and learn about the rights of the accused, someone in our own building has lost his livelihood without even seeing the accusations against him. We are told that as lawyers that we should fight for justice, and yet we find this perceived injustice in our own community while we work toward our degrees. The questions surrounding this termination deserve resolution and we welcome a response from those with those answers.