DC releases body cam footage of police drag race crash

Washington, D.C., this week released footage from an incident in which local police officers were allegedly drag racing in a residential neighborhood before crashing two police cruisers.

Four Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers were reportedly involved in the crash that occurred last month and caused damage to a D.C. residence.

The footage was revealed to the public during a press conference Monday in which then-acting police Chief Robert Contee said that one of the officers involved in the incident was fired, according to Fox 5 News.

“The other individuals that are involved are part of the internal affairs investigation that will be going over to the Office of the Attorney General for their judicial review to make a determination on what the next steps will be, if there will be any charges that come out of this investigation,” Contee said.

The released video, taken from the perspective of an officer who was a passenger in one of the cruisers, shows a silent first two minutes before the crash, when airbags deploy. The audio then kicks in and the officer on the passenger side opens the door and exits the car.

“Are you OK?” an unidentified person in the video asks the officer.

“Shit,” he responds. “Yeah, I’m good.”

The video then cuts off as the officer walks away from the vehicle and appears to dust himself off.

“Obviously those types of things are unacceptable. They’re embarrassing,” Contee said of the incident during Monday’s press conference. “It’s not something that we tolerate. It’s certainly something that I would not tolerate as the chief of the Metropolitan Police Department.”

The crash happened the city’s Kenilworth neighborhood and resulted in the four officers being sent to area hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries. The cruisers reportedly reached at least 60 mph in the residential area, where the speed limit is 25 mph, Fox 5 reported.