Lanier's D.C. Is One Big Unruly Family

Cathy L. Lanier has a special affinity for grandmothers. To the D.C. police chief, they are the backbone of some of the city's toughest neighborhoods. And her job would be much harder without their help.

"What you have here are a lot of women who have banded together to pull in the kids," Lanier told me during a ride through the Washington Highlands neighborhood in Southeast not long ago. "I was at one community meeting, and there were only two men in the room. The rest were women, mostly grandmothers. Safety is their main concern."

Lanier launched the Safe Homes Initiative, her latest and perhaps most controversial crime-prevention program, with such women in mind. She is asking parents and grandparents for permission to search their homes if they know or suspect that a child or other relative has a gun.

"I think of everything I do with the challenges my mother faced raising me in mind -- and I was a bad teenager," Lanier said. "So this Safe Homes program is a way of giving single mothers and grandparents another option when they need help with those tough kids."

The idea is classic Lanier. From the day she became chief in 2006, she has fashioned herself as something of a big sister in a dysfunctional family. Each time a child gets shot, Lanier tries to make it to the hospital. She has spent hours holding hands with grieving mothers. In December, she raided the police property room for bicycles and distributed them to children in a household headed by a struggling grandmother.

If there is no man around to play Santa, big sister will. If grandma can't take the gun from the grandson who lives with her, big sister can.

To her critics, some of Lanier's tactics smack too much of Big Brother. Arthur B. Spitzer, legal director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union, has called the Safe Home program "a very bad idea" and said that it "cheapens civil liberties and privacy for everybody."

Lanier said the program is aimed at helping residents in the city's most violent neighborhoods, most of whom are single mothers, elderly women and children living in poverty.

"I can only think of what it's like to be a grandmother that is scared to death for her son or grandson's safety and she doesn't know how to get the gun away from him," Lanier said. "I think about the virtual prison that the grandmother is living in, worrying that someone is going to get hurt or killed. So we go in and get the gun. But we are also freeing the grandmother."

Nevertheless, concerns persist that Lanier, a former head of the D.C. police homeland security unit, relies too much on tactics that reinforce suspicions about authoritarian tendencies in law enforcement. D.C. police, for instance, already monitor a network of nearly 100 surveillance cameras deployed throughout the city. The department also has an Intelligence Fusion Center that operates from a secret location and has electronic screens called "temperature boards" to display real-time information about crime, national security threats and natural disaster forecasts.

Civil liberties advocates worry that fusion centers -- a military term embraced by civilian homeland security officials -- could be used to monitor people engaged in lawful activities. In 2003, a fusion center in Georgia was discovered photographing a protest by vegetarians at a HoneyBaked Ham store.

Lanier defends the use of such technology to fight crime. "If a surveillance camera is put up in an area where violence is prevalent, that can be the voice of the victim," she said.

For Lanier, the opinions that count most are those of the most-vulnerable. But there are skeptics among those people as well.

"When I talk about the Safe Homes Initiative with community groups, there are some who stare at me with crossed arms, some who are not sure where I'm coming from," Lanier said. "But there are always two or three nodding in agreement."

During our ride together, Lanier was reminded of the social barriers confronting her when the patrol car stopped for a traffic light. A group of teenagers, no doubt some being raised by grandmothers, was standing at a bus stop.

"How are you doing?" the chief called out.

The youngsters looked away without answering.

"They hate talking to me," the chief said, sounding disappointed.

But when she saw another group standing at the next bus stop, she brightened up and got ready to try again.

"I'm going to get them talking to me, sooner or later," she declared.

Just like a big sister.

E-mail:milloyc@washpost.com