Successful FOIA Request

JVP - DC Metro Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request Exposes MPD participation in Police Training Exchange in Israel

Through a FOIA request submitted in August 2017, JVP - DC Metro exposed MPD plans to participate in a police training program in Israel. Chief Peter Newsham sent MPD Commander Morgan Kane to Israel to participate in the National Counter-Terrorism Seminar, a training program sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Commander Kane trained with various Israeli agencies that carry out policies of military occupation, surveillance, discrimination, restrictions on movement, and repression of social movements. While our FOIA included a request for Commander Kane’s itinerary in Israel, the MPD refused to provide the itinerary. In 2016, a FOIA to the Jacksonville Police Department revealed that the NCTS Program training itinerary included briefings with a representative of Shin Bet, an Israeli Security Agency that, according to Israeli newspapers, engages in the torture of Palestinian detainees.

Through subsequent FOIA requests we learned that MPD has no internal policy to implement their own regulation prohibiting training in facilities that practices invidious discrimination in violation of the D.C. Human Rights Act. We have never received a satisfactory answer as to why the people who live and work in D.C. should have to file a Freedom of Information Act request to learn that the people who supposedly serve and protect the public are training with an occupying army.