“The last three mornings in a row MPD has pounded on our door at 5:45 a.m., 6:45 a.m., and 7:10 a.m.”

“Dear PoPville,

The last three mornings in a row MPD has pounded on our door at 5:45 a.m., 6:45 a.m., and 7:10 a.m. They are looking for someone who has an outstanding warrant for a domestic abuse charge. We do not recognize the name and know the last three people that have owned our home. We have owned it since Nov. 2016. Each morning the police say they will remove our address from their records. The person they’re looking for must have given this address by mistake or purposefully. Yesterday I had a long exchange with the commander of 3D but he was ineffective as the police came again this morning looking for the same person. Again, they said they’d cross our address off their list. But when we called the officers’ sergeant she said that we would have to go through the court system to get the address stricken from the record. How is this our responsibility? And, is there anything else we can do?”

Update from MPD:

“OP first contacted me on Thursday morning regarding the 2 incidents in which MPD officers knocked on her door looking for an individual early in the morning. Unfortunately, OP was unable to obtain the names of the officers and indicated that the officers were different on both dates. She was able to give me a description of the officers from Thursday and a review of our Third District personnel that morning revealed no members matching that description. The name of the subject that the officers were looking for was a very generic name, and as such I could not ascertain the warrant or other information. At that time I advised OP that I believed that the officers were from another unit and I would begin making inquiries to identify them and their officials. I also advised her that if they returned for a third time, to get their names, car numbers and request that they have a supervisor respond.

Today (Friday), OP contacted me via email to say that the officers responded for a third time this morning. This time she was able to provide me with the names of the officers and it was determined that they were trying to serve DC Superior Court papers on an individual. With the names of the officers now known, I was able to loop the commander of that unit into our email conversation. It turns out that the individual who had petitioned the court, not the MPD, had provided the OP’s address as the subject’s address in their court filing. The commander of that unit has reached out to his team officials to make sure that the officers do not return to that location again looking for this individual. In addition, he and his team are working with the DC Superior Court to update their records indicating that this individual does not reside at the location. While we are making contact with DC Superior Court, it was relayed to the OP that they could also notify DC Superior Court of the issue, but this was never intended to be in lieu of MPD doing it. Although I was not there when that conversation took place, I believe that is where the confusion came from.

I am certain that this was a frustrating situation for OP, but I can assure you that once we obtained sufficient information to identify the officers and the subject that they were looking for, we began working to make sure that we do not respond to this address again for the same individual.

Stuart Emerman

Commander, Third District

Patrol Services North

Metropolitan Police Department”