The D.C. Police Union wants President Trump to pardon two Metropolitan Police officers who the union said were wrongly tried and convicted in a 2020 pursuit that ended with a deadly crash.
The union said it is in talks with the White House about forgiving the convictions of Officer Terrence Sutton and Lt. Andrew Zabavsky over the pursuit of scooter driver Karon Hylton-Brown that turned fatal when the motorist crashed into a car at the mouth of an alley.
Sutton, 40, was sentenced to more than five years in prison last fall after being found guilty of second-degree murder in 2022. The same jury found Zabavsky guilty of conspiracy and obstruction of justice charges, and he was given a four-year sentence for the crimes.
Both officers are currently out of prison as their appeal works its way through the court system. But the union wants Mr. Trump, a Republican, to put an end to these “two glaring miscarriages of justice.”
“These officers — men of integrity and dedication — were targeted by corrupt prosecutors who weaponized the legal system against them,” the D.C. Police Union said in a statement Tuesday.
Mr. Trump appeared keen on the idea Monday when he seemed to reference pardoning two police officers in the District.
“We are looking at two police officers, actually, Washington police officers, that went after an illegal and things happened and they ended up putting them in jail,” Mr. Trump said from the Oval Office as he signed executive orders. “They got five-year jail sentences. You know the case, and we’re looking at that in order to give them … we gotta give them a break.”
The D.C. Police Union, which began its statement saying it disagreed with pardons for U.S. Capitol rioters who assaulted police officers, said it hoped Mr. Trump would “extend the same measure of justice” to Sutton and Zabavsky.
In October 2020, court records said Sutton was patrolling in the Brightwood neighborhood in Northwest when he saw Hylton-Brown driving a moped on a sidewalk without a helmet.
Prosecutors said Hylton-Brown, 20, ignored Sutton’s attempts to make the late-night traffic stop, prompting the MPD officer to follow the motorist for more than 10 blocks at “unreasonable speeds” and even going the wrong way up a one-way street.
Court records said Sutton followed Hylton-Brown into an alley and turned off his emergency lights and sirens before accelerating toward the scooter driver.
Hylton-Brown drove out of the alley and was struck by an uninvolved driver, prosecutors said. He died in a hospital two days later.
D.C. police officers are not allowed to pursue people over traffic violations.
“As Mr. Hylton-Brown lay unconscious in the street in a pool of his own blood, Sutton and Zabavsky, agreed to cover up what Sutton had done to prevent any further investigation of the incident,” prosecutors said when announcing the sentences for the two officers in September.
Prosecutors said neither MPD officer preserved the crash scene and allowed the driver to leave the area after 20 minutes.
Sutton and Zabavsky turned off their body cameras to discuss the incident privately, prosecutors said, and also lied to their commanding officer about their roles in the pursuit and the severity of Hylton-Brown’s injuries.
Court records said Sutton crafted a phony narrative in his police report to say no officers chased Hylton-Brown.
Hylton-Brown’s death set off protests in the District, piggybacking on the national angst against police stemming from George Floyd’s in-custody death earlier in 2020.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.