Washington DC cop Kenneth Furr can’t seem to hold his liquor. His drinking has gotten him into a number of jams over the years, but he’s remained on the DC police force through all of them thanks to a department that has apparently looked the other way. No one can say that DC’s finest don’t take care of their own. No matter how irresponsible they are. Only now, because they’ve let Furr skate so many times, the department has blood on its hands…
Furr’s distinguished service record goes back at least fifteen years.
On Christmas Day 1996, Furr and another officer were on duty when they got into a drunken argument with a mother and son. Police brass placed Furr on administrative leave and tried to fire him, but he was reinstated in 1998 after a change in police chiefs.
He managed to keep his nose clean (or so it seems – who knows how many scrapes he got into in the intervening six years that went unreported) until:
He was arrested in 2004 for driving while intoxicated and operating while impaired, according to court records. He pleaded no contest and the charges were dropped after he completed a diversion program.
Never having been charged with a DUI, one has to wonder if a civilian would have been afforded the same treatment. Particularly a civilian who had already been fired for intoxication on the job.
But none of those episodes held a candle to last week’s festivities. As washingtonexaminer.com reports:
According to charging documents, Furr got into an argument with several transgendered people outside the CVS pharmacy at 400 Massachusetts Avenue at about 4:40 a.m. Friday. He pulled a gun on one of the victims, who then reported the incident to an off-duty D.C. police officer working security at the pharmacy, charging documents said.
The CVS officer determined that Furr was an “off-duty officer, and therefore no further action was necessary,” the charging document said.
So because he was a police officer, there was no reason to go to the hassle of charging him with assault. That’s evidently a job perk in our nation’s capitol. And yet again, Furr got a pass for being a cop. From another cop. A cop who apparently thought, ‘what the hell, all he did was draw on a bunch of drag queens.’ A cop who surely would have let any other DC citizen walk after drawing a gun in the famously gun-friendly District.
The WaPo reports that the ‘argument’ occured when Furr propositioned one of the the group.
In interviews, one said Furr approached her as she walked into a CVS in Northwest Washington. “His eyes were bloodshot,” she said. “I could smell the liquor on his breath. He told me he wanted to pay me to have sex with me. He kept trying to get me in his car.”
But the incident didn’t end when the victims left, apparently due to their own jaw-dropping stupidity.
The victims later saw Furr driving his Cadillac and followed him in their car, police said.
Furr got out of his vehicle, pointed the gun at the driver. The sequence of the events that followed is unclear is unclear. Patrol officers nearby said they heard the cars crash and then rapid gunfire. The victims said Furr fired first and then the cars struck.
Police said Furr, a 20-year-veteran, blew a 0.15 on an alcohol breath-test machine after the shooting — nearly twice the legal limit for drivers in D.C.
It won’t take much of a lawyer to make the case that Furr was just a disaster waiting to happen and that the DC police should have known about it and canned him long ago. And while the five in the car aren’t totally blameless here (seriously, how stupid do you have to be to follow a drunk who’d just pointed a heater at you?) it’s a good bet they’re in line for a handsome settlement courtesy of the DC city government.
[h/t to AIer Matt H]