An Officer -- and an Ungentle Man

"That's a decision for a court to make," Essex replied.

"Out here, I am the court," Washington said.

When Essex objected, Washington put him under arrest.

Washington wasn't finished: "He grabbed my arm and he pulled me, he jacked my arm up and pulled me back over to the driver's side front fender," Essex testified.

Moments later, Essex saw Washington force his friend to the ground, arresting Maslousky for hindering, a charge that was later dropped. "I've never felt so impotent in my whole life," Essex told the court. "Officer Washington behaved like no other police officer I had been involved with."

A witness to the accident, Anne Marie Curtis, confirmed Essex's account, saying Washington acted rudely and curtly. Another witness, Maniram Tiwari, testified that Washington "had a chip on his shoulder."

After he was arrested, Maslousky said, Washington drove him to the police station, yelling and threatening all the way. "I started to pray out loud," the mechanic said in court. "I started the Our Father and then moved on to the Hail Mary."

When Maslousky got to "Forgive this man, Father, for he does not know what he is doing," Washington laughed: "And he says, 'Who's that God you're praying to? Let's see your God get you out of jail.' " Then Washington "belched out very loud" and told Maslousky, "You know, Bubba's in jail and Bubba is going to have his way with you." Washington testified that he did not say anything like that.

Washington's lawyer, county attorney Andrew Murray, described his client as a "no-nonsense military-type guy, blunt, short." Murray told jurors: "No one has a constitutional right to a polite and cordial police officer, distasteful as we may find that to be. When Cpl. Washington comes on the scene, he shows strength, assurance, pompousness. But these are characteristics that he employs . . . so that he can make order out of chaos -- these are characteristics that enable him to survive his day-to-day contact with citizens so that he can go home and see his family."

Washington, who served in the Army before joining the county police in 1990, testified that "you have to take charge of the situation if there's chaos and you may not be considered amenable or courteous in your directions."

"I'm not emotional by nature," he told jurors. "I always know what I'm going to do. So I very rarely show an emotion, especially when performing a task."

Maslousky has felt a whole new set of emotions since his encounter with Washington -- most notably, a level of fear he'd never before experienced. "I've lost a lot of faith in the system and the police," he told me Thursday. "I hope these guys recover from this shooting and get to tell their story." The next day, one of Washington's victims died.

E-mail:marcfisher@washpost.com