The police report omits the shooting of a DC driver by a federal agent. The person’s lawyers are suspected of concealing the matter

A federal agent opened fire on an unarmed black man during a recent traffic stop while patrolling the nation’s capital for the president donald trumpLaw enforcement surge. But the police report on the encounter does not mention the shooting, an omission that the man’s lawyers point to as evidence of a cover-up attempt.

Metropolitan Police Department Homeland Security Investigations is investigating the shooting by the agent, who was accompanying police officers and other federal agents when they stopped a car driven by Philip M. Brown on October 17.

Brown, 33, of Hyattsville, marylandWas not injured in the shooting. He was jailed for three days on charges of fleeing law enforcement, but a judge has already dismissed the case.

Brown’s attorneys claim the police department tried to cover up the shooting by leaving it out of police reports and refusing to provide video from police body cameras. According to civil rights lawyers Bernadette Armand and E. Paige White, at a court hearing for Brown’s criminal case, a police officer testified that he was instructed not to include the shooting in the police report. He said the police also failed to disclose the shooting to the prosecutor appointed in the case.

According to Brown’s attorneys, the judge who dismissed the case against Brown ruled that there was not enough evidence that he was on the run. The bullets hit Brown’s driver’s side window and front passenger seat at chest level, lawyers said.

“We’re lucky our client is alive. He could have been dead,” White said.

The officer’s police report states that Brown revved the engine of his sport utility vehicle and began driving toward the law-enforcement officers before he rear-ended the other vehicle. A Department of Homeland Security The spokesperson says the agent who fired his gun feared for his own life and that of others when he fired “defensive bullets” at the vehicle.

“This incident is not isolated and reflects a growing and dangerous trend of vehicles being used as weapons against DHS law enforcement,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement. “Our officers are facing a 1000% increase in attacks including vehicle collisions, terrorist attacks and even bounties for their murders. The violence must end.”

Armand said it was “outrageous” for DHS to claim that the shooting was justified when the police report makes no mention of the shooting.

“Surely they’re going to say it was justified. What are they going to say? ‘We shot an unarmed black man in his car for nothing on a routine traffic stop?’ They are not going to say that. They’re going to say whatever they need to justify their actions, Armand said.

A police report that does not mention the shooting was filed in DC Superior Court for Brown’s criminal case. Metropolitan Police Department spokesman Tom Lynch provided The Associated Press a copy of a separate report from the Internal Affairs Division’s parallel investigation into the shooting.

“We are the agency that investigates officer-involved shootings and we have been continuing to investigate since October 17,” Lynch said. He declined to comment on the officer’s testimony about the shooting being omitted from the report on Brown’s arrest.

In August, Republican Trump issued an executive order declaring a crime emergency WashingtonFor nearly three months, the White House has deployed hundreds of federal agents and more than 2,000 National Guard members to help police patrol city neighborhoods.

According to the police report, agents from the FBI, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, Diplomatic Security Service and the U.S. Marshals Service were also patrolling along with the two MPD officers and the HSI agent who fired at Brown. They stopped Brown because his sport utility vehicle had heavily tinted windows and no front plate, the report said.

Brown’s lawyers say his traffic stop reflects the risky nature of patrolling by federal agents who are not adequately trained for police work.

“It’s not right to have agents and officers on the streets shooting unarmed people and then hiding the fact,” Armand said. “There’s no trust there. There’s no accountability there. And there’s no credibility there.”

A federal magistrate judge in DC Superior Court ordered Brown’s release on October 21. His lawyers said he was traumatized by his arrest and prison experiences. They are considering a possible lawsuit over his arrest.