Paul A. Quander, who for four years was Washington’s deputy mayor for public safety and justice, with responsibility for the police and fire departments, and for six months was acting chief of staff for then-Mayor Vincent C. Gray, died March 23 at his home in the District. He was 61.
The cause was cancer, said Beverly Hill, a family spokeswoman and Mr. Quander’s former chief of staff.
Mr. Quander was a D.C. and federal prosecutor for much of his career and also held top-level administrative positions in the D.C. Department of Corrections. As deputy mayor, he was point man for a volley of criticism aimed at the fire department and the slow response of its ambulance service.
In 2001, Mr. Quander was a lead prosecutor in a widely publicized murder and racketeering trial of the notorious Southeast Washington drug gang leader, Tommy Edelin. Marc Fisher, a columnist for The Washington Post, wrote of the prosecutor’s courtroom style: “Quander, working without notes, was angry, unrelenting, but also precise and clear, and always morally outraged.”
At one point, Mr. Quander displayed photographs of Edelin in a full-length mink coat adorned with diamonds and jewelry. Edelin, Mr. Quander said, was a millionaire by the age of 18, drove a white Mercedes-Benz and used teenagers to peddle crack cocaine.
Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice Paul A. Quander, center, in 2014. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post) “These guys are rolling up and down our highways, in broad daylight, shooting at each other, for that,” Mr. Quander said, pointing at a table in the courtroom, “dope, cocaine, crack, and for the riches it may bring to those who value that more than human life.”
Edelin was convicted of four murders, racketeering and other charges and sentenced to seven consecutive life terms, plus 140 years, without parole.
Paul Alonzo Quander was born in Washington on Nov. 10, 1954. He graduated from Calvin Coolidge High School in 1973, Virginia State University in Petersburg in 1977 and Howard University law school in 1980.
He was with the Office of the D.C. Corporation Counsel from 1982 to 1989, followed by five years as deputy director of the city’s corrections department. In this period, he initiated a policy of annual random drug tests for department employees.
From 1994 to 2002, Mr. Quander was an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Later, he was the director of the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency for the District of Columbia, a federal agency that oversees probationers and parolees.
When Mr. Quander joined Gray’s new administration in January 2011, he inherited a fire department long prone to controversy.
In 2013, a D.C. police officer was seriously injured in a hit-and-run accident and had to wait more than 15 minutes for an ambulance, which ultimately arrived from Prince George’s County, because the District did not have enough available.
In 2014, 77-year-old Medric “Cecil” Mills Jr. collapsed across the street from a D.C. fire station and died in his daughter’s arms. A city police officer had to flag down a passing ambulance after pleas went unanswered and no one in the fire house responded, even after someone went to that station and said, “There’s a man across the street that needs help.”
Mr. Quander blamed the firefighters on duty, not the leadership of Fire Chief Kenneth B. Ellerbe. He recommended disciplinary action, but the lieutenant in charge of the fire station was allowed to retire without penalty.
In February 2014, Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), then chairman of the City Council’s public safety committee, called for the dismissal of Mr. Quander and Ellerbe. At the time, Wells was also challenging Gray in the Democratic mayoral primary; both lost to Council member Muriel E. Bowser.
Ellerbe retired in July 2014, and Mr. Quander finished his term.
Survivors include his wife of 35 years, Charlene Boone Quander of the District; and two daughters, Candace Quander of Washington and Katherine Forde of Temple Hills, Md.