Police officers were dispatched to D.C.’s controversial neighborhood checkpoints this weekend despite not having undergone constitutional training, The Examiner has learned.

Mayor Adrian Fenty and his interim attorney general, Peter Nickles, emphasized a strict training regimen for officers when trying to sell their quarantine program to a wary public last week. But two 5th District police sources told The Examiner that within a day of launching the no-go zones, untrained officers were ordered to the barricades.

When the officers protested, their supervisor admitted that he hadn’t been trained, either. He told them to re-christen the barricades “safety compliance checkpoints” in case anyone asked, three police sources told The Examiner.

The supervisor couldn’t be reached for comment. Police spokeswoman Traci Hughes said that the police department had actually set up a parallel safety checkpoint to make sure everyone was wearing seatbelts, but had not informed the supervisor or his staff.But the sources’ account raises disturbing questions for city leaders and Police Chief Cathy Lanier, who have promised the public  they would guard human rights as they sealed off violent streets in the city.

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Lanier’s fiat establishing the “Neighborhood Safety Zones” declares that “only those members who have successfully completed all NSZ-related training required by the Chief of Police may participate in the implementation of an NSZ.” That training, the order continues, “shall include specific limitations on members’ exercise of discretion in determining whether a vehicle will be permitted to enter the NSZ.”

Nickles said last week that the city’s legal defense of the checkpoints rested on federal court decisions upholding similar “targeted” checkpoints — so long as the officers were properly trained.

Reached for comment Monday, Nickles said he “didn’t have all the facts” on the sources’ version, but said he “stood by” the department’s handling of the quarantines.

“I know there’s three or four people on each checkpoint,” Nickles said. “Some people are more trained than others.”

The checkpoints were launched in the Trinidad neighborhood to mixed reaction. While a handful of residents voiced strong support for the community quarantine, critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, were watching closely.

In separate letters to her officers and 5th District residents, Lanier lamented the criticism of her checkpoint strategy. She blamed a “small group” of naysayers.

“It is unfortunate that some want to criticize the use of this tool when we are simply trying to reduce the opportunity for violent offenders to enter a neighborhood for the sole purpose of taking someone’s life,” she wrote.

Many residents, she said, “support our efforts and applaud your professionalism and commitment to their safety,” Lanier wrote.

D.C. Councilman Phil Mendelson, D-At Large, a critic of the zones, has scheduled hearings on the matter later this month.

Scott McCabe contributed

to this report.

bmyers@dcexaminer.com

mneibauer@dcexaminer.com