hill developer faces jail
It’s security hell on Capitol Hill

Real estate developer Gerard Dunphy had no idea he was about to encounter security hell when he passed through three Capitol Police traffic checkpoints when he stopped by the Supreme Court building on 2nd Street N.E. on Aug. 19.

What happened was that a respected Capitol Hill resident was arrested, accused of plotting terror, jailed, humiliated and forced to plead to a patently manufactured charge after making a critical remark, all because of apparent police and FBI hysteria over terrorism.

His story is a nightmare of police overreaction that ended only last week with the 70-year-old British-born Dunphy pleading guilty to a misdemeanor in U.S. District Court, undergoing thousands of dollars of legal expenses, fines and “reimbursements” expected to total $13,000, as a result of police action.

An Oxford University graduate, a U.S. citizen and a familiar figure in Hill real estate circles, Dunphy had just delivered his son, Colin, to Union Station, where he intended to board an Amtrak train to Fredericksburg, Va., to begin the semester at William and Mary College the next day.

But Dunphy’s route to the station from his close-in Hill town house took him through three Capitol Police checkpoints, the controversial traffic stops that cost taxpayers about $100,000 per day and that Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) has denounced as “primitive security that has become a joke in the region.” At each one, he was waved through.

Capitol Police public information officers report that since Aug. 1, when the checkpoints were installed (they were briefly lifted, then reinstated Nov. 12) there have been no arrests for suspicious activities and no bombs or bombers found, even though deterrence of a terror attack was the justification for the checkpoints, according to Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer.

But the effect of the traffic checkpoints has been negative on both local police and citizens. Police have become overworked and frustrated; citizens have become resentful and angry.

That day, Dunphy was fed up with the checkpoints and had a point to make, and he decided to make it to the Supreme Court police. Stopping his car at a checkpoint at 2nd and East Capitol streets N.E., he asked officers standing on Second St. why, if there were checkpoints on streets around the Capitol, there no officers or trained dogs doing protective duty at Union Station or at the tunnel that carries the Amtrak rail line south.

“Do you know how the train gets to Richmond?” he asked. “It goes right under 1st Street and comes out by the Democratic Club.” He pointed out to the officers that while squads of police were manning the 14 checkpoints, no one was at the station or guarding the tunnel.

“I know I told them there could be a bomber at the station and there could be a bomb on the train. And that they had no one there.”

Dunphy said he had the impression that the officers had no idea there was a rail tunnel under Capitol Hill.

Dunphy’s casual remark was a catastrophic mistake. According to Supreme Court public information officer Kathleen Arberg, officers called the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. An FBI agent appeared and quickly arrested Dunphy and searched his car with a trained dog. Officers found nothing suspicious. Then he was taken to Union Station, where the FBI ordered the train stopped and had his son taken off.

Colin Dunphy was questioned for three hours at Union Station and released. But the father, after hours of questioning, was taken to the D.C. holding cells at 3rd Street and Indiana Avenue N.W. and held overnight.

He was first charged with “making an attempt to use an explosive device,” though that charge was later dropped. He now stands charged with “willfully and knowingly making a false report to an officer of the U.S. Supreme Court involving weapons of mass destruction.”

Dunphy said officers accused him of urging his son to blow up the train even after interrogating the son. They said the son would be brought into the case against him. He decided to plead guilty to making a false report to avoid the son’s involvement.

“They wear you down,” Dunphy said. “I’ve been at this for four months. I’m paying two lawyers.”

Dunphy said he might be fined, or even jailed, when sentencing occurs. He is also liable for undetermined costs to reimburse Amtrak for stopping the train at Union Station.

Dunphy’s lawyers, Allan Bale and Chris Cook, advised him to plead guilty to the false-report charge to avoid more involvement with the case. They asked him not to speak to reporters about the case before it came to court.

A few weeks after the arrest nightmare, Dunphy read that the D.C. City Council was seeking to restrict shipments of lethal chemicals through a tunnel four blocks from the Capitol. Testimony at the hearing revealed the Department of Homeland Security and local rail and police authorities had not consulted each other about the tunnel or the danger.

The irony, Dunphy remembers, is that he went to the police with his advice voluntarily. “They didn’t stop me,” he said, “I went to speak to them.”