Washington, DC lets private employers put armed officers on the street with real police powers. These special police officers guard apartment buildings, hospitals, shopping centers, office towers and government property across the city. Once commissioned, they can make arrests on the property they are hired to protect. Yet the public knows very little about who these officers are, how they are trained, or what happens when someone complains about them.
In 2022, the Chicago Justice Project set out to change that. We filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the three offices that share responsibility for special police in DC: the Metropolitan Police Department, the Mayor’s Office, and the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA).
What happened in 2022
The Mayor’s Office never responded. DCRA never responded. MPD sent back a minimal set of records that did little to answer our basic questions about how special police are commissioned and overseen.
Silence is not an answer, and DC law does not treat it as one. Agencies have 15 business days to respond to a FOIA request.
What we filed today
On October 29, 2026, we filed updated requests with all three offices. Because DCRA was split up in 2022, our request now goes to its successor, the Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection (DLCP), and covers DCRA records DLCP now holds. Our MPD request names its Security Officers Management Branch, the unit that handles special police.
Each request seeks records from 2023 through 2025 on:
- Commissions. Every application to commission a special police officer, and the commission each agency issued in return.
- Data systems. The names of any databases that track special police, their data dictionaries and training manuals, and the case level data inside them.
- Complaints. Every complaint about special police conduct, and the investigations that followed.
- Discipline. Records of commissions that were revoked, plus yearly counts of commissions granted, renewed, suspended and revoked.
- Training. The training special police must complete, including the training required to carry a firearm.
- The search itself. Where each agency looked for records, who looked, and anything found but held back.
We asked for data in machine-readable formats like CSV or Excel so it can be analyzed, not just read. We also asked agencies to remove the names of individual applicants and to reduce home addresses to the hundred block. Our goal is accountability for the system, not exposure of individual workers.
Why this matters
When a city hands out police powers, the public has a right to know who receives them and how they are held accountable. Right now, a person stopped or detained by a special police officer in DC has little way to learn whether that officer was properly trained, whether others have complained, or whether anyone is keeping track at all.
Open data is how we answer those questions. If the city cannot even tell us which database holds this information, that is a finding in itself.
What comes next
The clock has started. We will post every response we receive, or note every deadline that passes without one. If these requests are ignored again, we are prepared to sue.
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Read our new requests here:
