DC Cover Up: 1 of Trump's Fed Cops Shot at a Black Man During a Traffic Stop. Although DHS Claimed he Tried to Run Over the Cop, A Police Report doesn't Mention Gunfire or any Attempt to Ram Officers

From [HERE] A federal agent shot at an unarmed Black man during a traffic stop earlier this month while working alongside D.C. police officers, according to three of the man’s lawyers, who accused city police of misconduct because the gunfire isn’t mentioned in the incident report

D.C. police officer told a judge he was instructed by a superior not to document the shooting in a court record, a transcript of court proceedings shows, and the judge dismissed charges against the driver over a lack of evidence.

On Oct. 17, D.C. police were driving a marked cruiser through Northeast Washington when they spotted a Dodge SUV with dark tinted windows and missing a front tag, according to court records. They were patrolling in collaboration with officers from five federal agencies, including the FBI and Customs and Border Protection, as part of the “Make DC Safe Again initiative,” court records show.

The officers caught up with the Dodge and, according to court records, believed the driver was trying to flee. At some point, a Homeland Security Investigations agent shot into the car at Phillip Brown, 33, D.C. police confirmed in a statement to The Washington Post.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Tuesday that the special agent fired at Brown “in fear for his life” after Brown drove at officers “in a deliberate attempt to run them down.” But D.C. police officer Jason Sterling told a judge that none of the law enforcement officers were standing in front of Brown’s car. Brown bumped into a civilian vehicle stopped in front of him and his criminal attorney, Quo Mieko Judkins, pointed out to the judge that the bullets entered the car from the side, not the front.

Sterling testified officers believed Brown planned to flee because the Dodge engine revved.

Civil rights attorneys Bernadette Armand and E. Paige White say the case symbolizes the potentially fatal consequences of the local police department’s collaboration with federal agents.

“Miraculously, every shot missed Brown,” they said in a statement Monday. They declined to make Brown available for comment but provided images of his car showing what appear to be two bullet holes in the driver’s side window and two in the passenger seat. He had been headed to the store to get milk for his three young children at the time of the shooting, Judkins said.

Sterling testified in D.C. Superior Court that he was told by a department leader not to mention the shooting in the court documents, a transcript of the Oct. 21 hearing shows.

When asked during cross-examination why there was no mention of gunfire in the police report, Sterling said at first he wasn’t sure he was even going to be the officer authoring the report and he “inquired in the office” about whether to mention it. One of the “unit team leads” advised him not to, he said. He didn’t mention the gunshots to the prosecutor either, he added. He said that wasn’t at the direction of someone else — it appears he was tired.

“I had one eye open, one eye closed when I got the phone call” from a lawyer in the prosecutor’s office, he testified.

The Post reviewed the public incident report from the traffic stop and confirmed that it does not contain anything describing any gunshots. On Tuesday morning, a D.C. police spokesperson provided a separate public incident report that does not mention the traffic stop, Brown or a reason for shooting but says an “HSI member discharged their service pistol at a subject of force.” That report is dated the day after the shooting. There is no mention of the shooting in the police affidavit filed in court.

When asked Monday by The Post about the shooting, police spokesperson Tom Lynch said that the investigation into whether Brown had committed a crime is separate from the investigation into the shooting. D.C. police investigate all police-involved shootings in the District and are investigating the shooting committed by the Homeland Security Investigations officer, Lynch said, but records related to that probe aren’t public. He declined to comment on Sterling’s testimony. [MORE]