Former GW Police Department officers said the yearlong rollout of the controversial plan to arm some police officers was riddled with safety violations that went undisclosed to the community.
Former officers ranked at the sergeant level or above said the department initially failed to register the guns that the force’s top two officers carried and lacked rigorous firearm training to prepare officers to respond to major emergencies like an active shooter. Interviews with six former officers, human resources reports and emails reveal that the volume of departmental safety concerns related to the arming rollout triggered mass officer departures in the last year, with the force’s current reduced personnel aggravating the former officers’ existing campus safety concerns.
The allegations contrast with the gun safety policies and commitments that GWPD Chief James Tate and officials outlined for the department alongside the Board of Trustees’ decision to arm about 20 supervisory GWPD officers in April 2023 in response to growing national gun violence and shootings on college campuses, a contentious decision met with opposing protests and letters.
Officials said arming officers would enhance public safety on campus by allowing GWPD to more immediately and effectively respond to developing emergencies in GW’s “densely populated setting.”
“I feel bad for the GW community, because you’ve been lied to,” said Ryan Monteiro, a former sergeant since January 2022 who left in May. “The arming program was a disaster. It was an absolute disaster.”
Officials completed the final phase of the plan’s rollout earlier this month, saying 22 officers would carry handguns once GWPD fills vacancies. But in the face of department turnover, about six or seven officers are currently armed, Monteiro said.
The Hatchet directed more than a dozen questions about firearm training, alleged firearms policy violations and department turnover to Tate or Vice President for Safety and Operations Baxter Goodly, who oversees GWPD.
Goodly said the University doesn’t comment on specific personnel matters but said officials take allegations of workplace concerns seriously and that armed supervisors meet “extensive training, certification and safety requirements.” He said all weapons issued to GWPD officers are properly registered.
“Effective training for all GWPD personnel is evaluated continually to ensure continuous improvement and to maintain best practices,” Goodly said in an email. “The safety and security of all students, faculty, and staff remains GW’s top priority.”
Arming training
Officials in June 2023 outlined training requirements for armed officers, which included a police academy course with two weeks of firearms training, a 56-hour firearms training course and the use of a virtual training simulator, a $50,000 piece of equipment. When announcing the arming implementation plan in August 2023, officials described the training for armed officers as “robust.”
But former supervisors said the requirements were basic and didn’t adequately prepare officers to use handguns or respond to armed emergencies, especially if other local law enforcement agencies, like the U.S. Secret Service and Metropolitan Police Department, take longer to respond and lack access to campus buildings.
GWPD reported 7,130 calls for service in 2023, a decline from 8,178 calls for service in 2022. Foggy Bottom is one of the safest areas in D.C., per District crime data.
The former officers said the 56-hour firearms course is minimal and meant for security guards who have never operated a firearm, not armed police officers. Others said GWPD leaders used the virtual training simulator as a replacement for in-person scenario-based training, which would involve the department practicing its response to an active shooter as a team in a more realistic setting.
Former Captain of Operations Gabe Mullinax, who left the department in April, said scenario-based training should be “nonstop” and involve armed and unarmed officers working together as they would in a real incident.
“The presentation to the outside community, outside of GWPD, is drastically different than what’s inside GWPD,” Mullinax said of the training.
Former Lieutenant Sean Brown, who left in May, said his firearm training involved four days in the classroom and one day on the range but that the department should instead spend a week on the range conducting drills.
He said he had experience carrying a firearm from previous jobs in law enforcement when officials first began training officers for arming in 2023, but about five or six officers at the time had never carried a firearm and the training didn’t equip them to do so.
“It just wasn’t as robust and comprehensive as it was made to seem,” Brown said.
Former Lieutenant Christina Hunsicker, who worked at the department for 11 years and left in August, said officers had insufficient training for de-escalation and responding to an active shooter, leaving officers unprepared. Hunsicker said GWPD should have collaborated more with the Secret Service and MPD when training to respond to an active shooter, since local police would arrive on campus to support GWPD in an emergency.
“There was so many things that I felt like we weren’t prepared for,” Hunsicker said.
When announcing arming in April 2023, Tate said MPD officers would not formally conduct GWPD’s training on de-escalation, use of force and firearm usage but would assist the department by providing its policies on firearm use.
Monteiro said Tate hired a group of “highly trained” officers with decades of experience in 2022, including in the Secret Service, U.S. Park Police and Prince William County Police. When announcing arming, Tate said all officers carrying firearms have “distinguished and honorable” past careers as police officers, with many previously carrying firearms for “many years with no issues.”
Monteiro said the department no longer has experienced officers because the supervisors with past law enforcement experience left over the past year because of a work culture that lacked comprehensive training and transparency under Tate’s leadership.
“He used our credentials,” Monteiro said. “He lied to the GW community by saying that the training was comprehensive and robust. We went through one security guard firearms class, which is not comprehensive and robust.”
Goodly said all armed supervisors must complete monthly de-escalation training, implicit bias training each semester with summer updates and three mental health response trainings. Goodly said armed supervisors also must have completed “firearms qualification” and attended a field training program — which he said is designed to prepare new officers to “perform full duties.”
He said before GWPD supervisors can be armed, they must also pass a “new” background investigation and new supervisors must undergo a six-week pre-arming period to ensure new hires are “well-versed” with GW’s campus and community.
“GWPD is in compliance with applicable regulations relating to the carrying and storage of arms,” Goodly said in an email.
Gun registration
Three former supervisors and an HR report filed in September 2023 obtained by The Hatchet states that Tate and Mullinax carried firearms unregistered in D.C. on campus from Aug. 30, 2023 to Sept. 27, 2023, after the pair became armed in GWPD’s first arming phase.
Carrying an unregistered gun is a misdemeanor in the District. MPD is responsible for registering firearms in D.C., and the process includes filling out an application, meeting firearm safety training requirements and passing a background check.
Goodly declined to say whether Tate and Mullinax initially carried unregistered guns.
Mullinax said he was unaware his gun was allegedly unregistered while he carried it on campus. He said when he found out in September 2023 while working to register additional guns the department purchased, he stopped carrying his gun until Tate registered it.
“That’s the way the arming process has gone,” Mullinax said. “It’s been mistake after mistake, and then the mistakes get corrected, and then it’s publicized or pushed out like we have made no mistakes and it’s going flawlessly.”
In the HR report, Mullinax claimed that in 2021, before he joined the department, Tate requested that a GWPD supervisor purchase two guns in Virginia that ultimately became the firearms he and Tate began carrying in August 2023. Two former officers used the firearms for training purposes and stored them off campus in their personal residences from 2021 to 2023, the report states.
Mullinax wrote in the report that he believed the guns were stored off campus because officials hadn’t yet approved arming some GWPD officers. Supervisors brought the guns on campus in 2023 when officials directed the arming, the report states.
Mullinax wrote that in September 2023, he contacted D.C. Security Associates, a group that assists District residents in navigating owning a firearm, about “one of the many problems” registering 23 new guns that the department would later use. Mullinax wrote that a group representative told him he could only find D.C. registrations for the department’s 23 new guns, not the two firearms GWPD owned since 2021.
Mullinax wrote that no one told him the guns were unregistered in D.C. and said Tate should have registered the guns while waiting for approval to arm the department. He wrote that he flagged the incident to Tate in two conversations in September 2023, asking about the two guns’ registration, and that Tate said they were “good to go.”
A second conversation with D.C. Security Associates that month confirmed that the two guns weren’t registered in D.C., despite the department owning them since 2021, Mullinax’s report states.
Mullinax said on Sept. 27, 2023, he contacted GW’s HR office and spoke with the Office of the General Counsel about the unregistered guns. He said Tate then “immediately” told him to gather “all information” needed to register the firearms in D.C. and instructed him to remove his unregistered weapon from GW’s armory.
Mullinax said Tate told him that day that he would “call in some favors” to get the guns registered as soon as possible.
“He said nothing about why they weren’t registered nor claimed he had told me to do it,” Mullinax wrote in the report. “I even said, ‘I thought you said these were registered, Chief.’ He had no response.”
Gun storage
Mullinax wrote in a separate HR report filed on Dec. 19, 2023, that Tate “routinely” stored his firearm in GW’s armory while it was still loaded, which the report says is a violation of the department’s armory and safety policies that require officers to store their firearm empty with the magazine separated.
The report states that six days before the report’s filing, Hunsicker noticed Tate left his weapon in the armory with a fully loaded magazine with a live round in the chamber.
Hunsicker placed the weapon in the slide locked to the rear position and a live bullet ejected from the gun’s chamber without firing, the HR report states.
“Hunsicker could have easily been injured or killed if the Lieutenant weren’t comfortable continually assessing and handling a firearm properly,” the December 2023 report states.
Mullinax said the incident prompted him to review armory security footage to ensure Hunsicker’s retelling was accurate. After reviewing a week’s worth of footage, he said he found that Tate “continuously” stored his weapon loaded before leaving work for the day and “never” checked that his weapon was operational before his shifts.
Officials who are issued firearms are required to check them out from GW’s armory at the beginning of their shift and check them back in at the end, and officers may not take their firearm home, according to the University’s arming implementation plan.
Department turnover
Former supervisors said GWPD faces a staggering amount of officers leaving the department and hiring struggles because of the alleged lack of training, internal arguments over arming implementation and a stressful work environment in the department.
Since April, three of the department’s top six officers have left GWPD, as Mullinax left in April, and Brown and Hunsicker left in May and August, respectively. Former Lieutenant Christopher Coleman, who worked for the department for 14 years, left GW in May 2023.
Tate in April attributed department vacancies to a national trend of fewer applicants with less qualifications following Minneapolis police’s murder of George Floyd.
Supervisory officers in the department’s top three positions are displayed on GWPD’s website, while sergeants, the fourth-highest rank, are omitted. Monteiro, the former sergeant who left in May, said there was a “mass exodus” of sergeants around the time he left, with six leaving in about two months.
Former supervisors attributed departures to the department’s poor work environment, saying that the numerous vacancies pose community safety risks as the department rarely has a sufficient number of officers on shift to respond to incidents. Brown and Mullinax said limited training lowers morale, one of the biggest contributors to turnover.
Mullinax said if GWPD hired officers to fill all its current vacancies and those people stayed in the department long-term, it would likely take the department between 18 months and two years to arm 22 officers because of how long it takes to hire and train officers. He said the vacancies hinder the department because there are constantly officers learning new roles and adjusting to new leadership styles.
“It has the potential of being catastrophic,” Mullinax said of the turnover. “I mean, it’s just a revolving door.”
Hunsicker said the department’s work environment was “toxic” under the department’s former leader Darrell Darnell, who served from April 2018 to March 2019, but the toxicity diminished for “a brief period” with Tate’s leadership when he took over in January 2020.
Many were hopeful that Tate’s hiring would break away from a history of tumult within the department, punctuated by GWPD changing its leader four times in the two years before 2020.
Throughout his time as chief, Tate made strides to increase the department’s transparency by overseeing a series of departmental reforms, like body-worn cameras and implicit bias and de-escalation training, and adding Coffee with the Chief, a monthly opportunity for students to meet with him to discuss campus safety.
“We are public servants,” Tate said at meeting in 2020 where he presented GWPD reforms. “We are not warriors. And what I mean by that is, for some, if they were ever in this mindset that it’s us against them, that has to go. That’s not what we’re about. We’re here to serve our public, we’re here to keep everyone safe and most importantly, we’re here to make sure we are a resource for our students, staff and faculty.”
Tate also formed the Campus Safety Advisory Committee and implemented an independent review committee to provide oversight during arming.
“GW is committed to a work environment where employees are treated with professionalism and in compliance with GW’s policies,” Goodly said in an email.
Hunsicker said in the past year, the department’s work environment worsened as Tate and captains began to have vocal arguments about arming policies and training. The frustrations trickled down to GWPD’s officers and harmed the force’s culture by heightening internal tensions, Hunsicker said.
“That department could be an amazingly good department,” Hunsicker said. “If the right folks are in there, they could really do well, and a lot of these folks that have left could have really helped to build that department.”
