Officer, City Sued Over Alleged Spitting at Nightclub

Bouncer Says That Defendant Was Drunk and Her Colleagues Balked at Making Arrest

A federal lawsuit filed yesterday alleges that an off-duty D.C. police officer spat on a nightclub bouncer in a drunken rage and that once police were called to the scene, her fellow officers tried to protect her and not arrest her.

The civil suit, filed by the bouncer, says the officer, Talika Moore, was allowed to leave the scene Nov. 10 and was arrested only after a police supervisor learned that there was a videotape of the incident. Moore, 27, was charged with assault and faces a status hearing Monday in D.C. Superior Court.

According to the suit, filed in U.S. District Court, Moore was not allowed into the Avenue club, in the 600 block of New York Avenue NW, because she appeared drunk and belligerent. Moore, who was with a friend, confronted the bouncer, Phillip T. Stewart, pulled out her badge and announced that she was going inside, the suit says.

"I am the [expletive] police. . . . I'm getting into this [expletive]. . . . You not going to stop me," Moore said, according to the suit, filed against the D.C. government and Moore as an individual and an officer. The suit also contends that Moore identified herself as an officer in the 7th Police District and said she had been an officer for six years.

When Stewart still refused to let her in, Moore spat on him, the suit says.

She also began rifling through her purse, Stewart said in an interview, and he feared that she was going to pull out a gun.

Stewart flagged down a D.C. police patrol car, but the officer told him that "he was not going to make out a complaint against another officer," according to the suit. The suit identifies the officer only by his car number.

A witness who was standing outside the club then called 911, Stewart said.

A police sergeant arrived at the scene and told Moore to leave in her friend's car, according to the suit. Other officers and supervisors began showing up outside the club, and when Stewart told one of them, another sergeant, that he had a videotape of the incident, Moore was called back to the scene, according to the suit. She had been gone for about 20 minutes, Stewart said.

Moore confronted Stewart again, angry that police had been called, and when an officer told her to back off, she did not, the suit says. That was when Moore was arrested and charged with simple assault, a misdemeanor, for spitting on Stewart, according to the suit.

The suit seeks $1 million in compensatory and punitive damages.

"I'm hopeful the U.S. attorney will prosecute this case with the same vigor that they do ordinary citizens when their assaults are caught on videotape," said Stewart's attorney, Jim Bell, about the criminal case.

Channing Phillips, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, said, "We treat all cases equally."

Assistant Police Chief Peter Newsham, who heads the internal affairs bureau, said regulations prevent the administrative investigation from starting until the U.S. attorney's office has finished the criminal case. But he said his office will immediately investigate the allegations that other officers were trying to cover for Moore that night.

"We will look into those actions by other members of the department," Newsham said.

Police spokeswoman Traci Hughes said the D.C. attorney general's office would review the civil suit.