Police Inspector Who Made Racial Remark Back at Job

D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey has reinstated the commander who made a racially insensitive remark at a community meeting in Georgetown.

Inspector Andy Solberg was returned yesterday to acting commander of the 2nd District, which includes Georgetown, Woodley Park, Cleveland Park and other neighborhoods in Northwest Washington. For the past two weeks, he was assigned to the school security division while authorities looked into the matter.

"After a review of what happened, it didn't rise to a level where I felt he could no longer run that command," Ramsey said. "So he was put back."

Solberg, a 19-year member of the force, has apologized for comments he made July 10 at the meeting. That night, he urged residents to report suspicious activity and said: "This is not a racial thing to say that black people are unusual in Georgetown. This is a fact of life."

Ramsey said he took "corrective action" against Solberg before reinstating him. Solberg said he received a written reprimand.

"It's the highest level of punishment I could have gotten short of being suspended," Solberg said. "It's not at all a slap on the wrist."

Ramsey also instructed Solberg to create a lesson plan for the police academy based on the Oscar-winning 2005 movie "Crash," in which issues of class, race, crime and police conduct collide in Los Angeles. Solberg said Ramsey gave him the task because Solberg is a former D.C. public schools teacher.

The community meeting came after the killing of British citizen Alan Senitt, 27, whose throat was slashed during a robbery in Georgetown. Police quickly arrested four people. Senitt was white, and the four suspects are black.

Ramsey temporarily reassigned Solberg a day after the remarks, and the commander's comments became a prime topic on e-mail group lists across the city. Some were critical, and some were not.

Many people asked, some angrily, for Solberg to be reinstated. Ramsey said his decision was independent of public opinion.

"People were clamoring, but that really didn't result in his going back," Ramsey said.

Yesterday, Solberg said he was aware of "how much pain and confusion I caused" with the comments.

"I want to be very, very clear I got a lot of nice phone calls and e-mails and letters," he said. "I'm sure there were equally as many that were not supportive of Andy Solberg or the commanding officer of the 2nd District."

He said he hopes the incident will help open a dialogue: "I hope it can be something of a springboard for more interaction and a stronger community."

Solberg became acting commander of the 2nd District in April, moving there from an assignment as inspector in the 1st District. Residents in areas where he has worked praised him for his responsiveness to neighborhood concerns and for his connections to the community. Some noted that he sends his children to Shepherd Elementary School, a predominantly black D.C. public school. Others mentioned that he coaches two soccer teams, one for his second-grader and one for a child in fifth grade.

"Shepherd Park is one of the most diverse and beautiful multicultural communities I've seen," Solberg said.

But things have not always gone smoothly for him over the years. Solberg was involved in two cases that triggered internal investigations and lawsuits.

The first stemmed from a July 1989 incident in which he and two other officers were accused of throwing a drug suspect into the trunk of a police car and driving him around for 20 minutes.

In that case, a civilian complaint review board found that Solberg used excessive force. The charges were upheld by then-Chief Isaac Fulwood Jr. But Solberg won an arbitration ruling, which threw out the charges. Later, at a civil trial, Solberg was found to have no liability, he said.

The second case involved an Arlington County police officer who was stopped by police while driving through the District in July 1999.

D.C. police said they had just received a report that a man in a car was waving a gun. The Arlington officer, they said, was driving a car that resembled a description of the vehicle. Despite his protests that he was innocent, the officer was held for nearly two hours.

Solberg, who was the supervisor that evening, was issued a written reprimand, which was rescinded on appeal. The Arlington officer brought a civil case against the police, which was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount of money.

Staff writers Henri E. Cauvin and Eric M. Weiss contributed to this report.