Despite those who believe otherwise, the District has experienced a significant decrease in violent crime in recent years, due partly to what local officials credit as the passage of emergency public safety legislation, and subsequently the Secure D.C. and Peace D.C. omnibus bills.
Such legislation, in turn, has caused the D.C. jail population to reach levels some advocates find unsustainable amid a staffing shortage. That’s why, for Connisea O’Neal, the Trump administration’s takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) has sparked concern about what’s to come for those currently under custody of the D.C. Department of Corrections (DOC).
“I just pray for my Black young brothers,” said O’Neal, a D.C. resident and mother, as she reflected on President Donald J. Trump’s evocation of Section 740 of the Home Rule Act. “That’s what all that is for. It’s not to harm other races. All that is just for the Black race. And I just pray for other parents that y’all just stay involved and keep y’all kids safe. Parents [with] sons or daughters that’s incarcerated, stay involved. Do your best when they call, answer, ask questions and just listen.”
On May 13, 2022, DOC reported the death of O’Neal’s son, Ramone O’Neal. An autopsy conducted by the D.C. Office of the Chief Examiner designated the cause of death as the “combined toxic effects of fentanyl, fluorofentanyl, and xylazinean.”
O’Neal said she suspects foul play, and has since explored avenues for legal action.
“Whatever they’re saying they found in the system, it was put in there,” O’Neal said. “My son had a heart murmur. He’s not going to smoke or drink things that’s going to mess with his heart. He’s been like that ever since he knew he had a heart murmur as a child.”
Ramone O’Neal’s death preceded that of Sean Lee, who jail officials said succumbed under similar circumstances. Those incidents took place months after the U.S. Marshals Service, after a surprise visit to the facility, issued a memo and entered a memorandum of understanding with DOC to address what residents and advocates described as deplorable conditions.
Though O’Neal said she refuses to believe the findings of the autopsy, she questioned how DOC continues to allow the flow of illicit substances and correctional officers’ mistreatment of D.C. Jail residents.
“If what the jail is saying is true, what are y’all doing to prevent somebody from doing that again? Apparently nothing,” O’Neal told The Informer. “I don’t care what the charges are, God decides when you leave this earth. But they decided for my son, and I’m not going to let that go, because I know my child, and he did not want to be dead.”
O’Neal told The Informer that, on the night before he died, her son, who she described as jovial and easygoing, called her with a disposition deviating from the norm. She said ongoing conflicts with correctional officers and a co-defendent weighed deeply on his mind, especially after, according to her, he was stabbed on the way to the showers and correctional officers allowed a physical altercation to transpire between him and the co-defendent.
“He sounded really sad,” O’Neal said about her son. “He kept asking me to call Mayor Bowser. He calling me saying how [the correctional officers] are treating him and the other inmates. I kept saying that Bowser ain’t going to do nothing.”
Upon learning about her son’s death, she and his children’s mother converged on the Central Detention Facility (CDF), where they knocked on the door for several minutes to no avail, O’Neal said.
Later, the mother explained, she made an unsuccessful attempt to view her son’s body at the D.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
“They told us we could come around and view his body, but when we got down there, they would not let us in,” she told The Informer. “They started saying it’s [because of] COVID, but you knew it was COVID when we was on the phone. So what changed from the time on the phone [to when] I came to view his body?”
With all the back and forth, O’Neal said she and her family were not able to view her son’s body until they visited the funeral home.
“Before you could get up on him, you could see all the bruises on his face, his forehead, his lip, his cheek,” O’Neal recounted. “I cried and said “My son don’t have no trauma to his face. Is this trauma?” and [the funeral home employees] said yes.”
Concerns Persist about Pretrial Detention and Staffing Shortages
In the minutes and hours after Trump announced the federal takeover of MPD, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and members of the D.C. Council spoke, and released statements, about the strides they made in significantly quelling crime.
Earlier this summer, on July 1, the D.C. Council approved the Peace D.C. Emergency Omnibus Amendment Act, which, among other things, extended the expansion of pretrial detention eligibility made possible through the passage of the Secure D.C. omnibus bill and, before that, emergency public safety legislation shaped by Bowser and D.C. Councilmember Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2).
The council didn’t pass Peace D.C. without questions about the effectiveness of pretrial detention expansion and discussion about the conditions that residents face at D.C. Jail while waiting for their day in court.
A May report released by the Office of the D.C. Auditor (ODCA), in partnership with the Council for Court Excellence (CCE), included findings showing the rate of in-custody deaths at DOC’s CDF and Central Treatment Facility at more than 3.5 times the national average.
The report, which includes data compiled between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024, also noted the occurrence of overdose-related deaths at 10 times more than that reported in U.S. jails overall.
Of relevance to DOC staffing was what ODCA and CCE noted as a “heavy reliance” on staff overtime in the midst of staff vacancies. They also found that DOC’s staff training budget shrank significantly while the agency didn’t implement a plan to increase attendance and gauge what trained attendees had learned.
DOC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about staffing.
Tracy Velazquez, policy director for CCE, told The Informer that staffing at DOC has been an issue since the pandemic. She went on to note that, during the audit period, staff vacancies increased as the jail resident population increased, which exacerbated conflicts between both parties.
“The facility is not well staffed [and] that’s leading to some of the problems we’re seeing there,” Velazquez said. “We hear that a lot of use of force involves pepper spray. One in four uses of force were during some fight or assault between residents. Three in four didn’t involve a fight, so it was more about staff managing resident behavior. The understaffing is contributing to this.”
In total, ODCA and CCE noted more than 400 instances of staff member use of force in their report. Official documents referenced in the report show that residents and their families pursued legal action for jail deaths, discrimination by staff, and inadequate health care. According to the report, D.C. Jail residents experienced these conditions while awaiting trial for a length of time triple that of residents experience in other detention facilities.
“We’re seeing the number of people going in and people staying in is leading to the rise in the jail population,” Velazquez said, while making note of other factors beyond the D.C. government’s control. “We [also] know the average case processing length has grown because of court vacancies, which is the result of the U.S. Senate not confirming our judges.”
Velazquez stressed that D.C. Jail residents, regardless of their charge, end up getting the short end of the stick during a prolonged stay in a facility that’s not amenable to their wellbeing.
“In terms of thinking about choosing to hold someone pretrial, it’s important to recognize that a number of these individuals won’t be convicted,” Velazquez told The Informer, “and lengthening case processing times exposes individuals to these conditions, and separation from families.”
Taya Johnson Tells Her Story
In June, as the D.C. Council mulled whether to extend the expansion of pretrial detention, a jury acquitted Taya Johnson of charges related to a violent encounter she and her children had with an Empower driver earlier this year.
Johnson, 26, spent five months behind bars as she rejected the offer of a lesser charge, demanded the review of the footage from the evening in question, and almost crumbled under the stress of being away from her children.
“I was basically wondering [if] my kids [are] going to be good,” Johnson told The Informer. “I cried the whole time. I stopped crying every night, but I was still crying.”
As Johnson recounted, she didn’t get to see her children until they visited the Central Treatment Facility during a family day event in March. She told The Informer that the days and nights leading up to that moment proved frustrating, as her family had little means of replacing the lost income or addressing the mental and emotional toll that her absence took on her two toddlers.
“It was very frustrating because they’re still young, so even when I talk to them, it’s like they don’t understand,” Johnson said. “They were smart enough to know that Mom is not here. Due to everything that happened that day, they were shaken up. My mom said they didn’t sleep for three days.”
Since returning home, Johnson has secured another job and continues to catch up with family. However, she admits that the memories of D.C. Jail stay deep within the recesses of her mind. For Johnson, such a place isn’t suitable for any human being.
“It needs to be shut down immediately,” Johnson told The Informer. “The conditions, the correctional officers, the management, everything is just horrible — 50 females using one shower, the toilets being stopped up, [and] no hot water for a whole week.”
Johnson went on to note that the lack of hot water jeopardized her ability to look presentable at trial.
“That’s why I couldn’t get my hair done,” she said. “You had to put in a request a couple of weeks ahead. It’s just very unorganized and trifling.”