Officer Terence Sutton was convicted in 2022 of second-degree murder for a deadly vehicle pursuit of a man on a moped. In sworn affidavits, nine other young Black men accuse Sutton of knocking them off motorbikes and stealing small amounts of cash and weed.

By Mathew Schumer, Washington City Paper, March 5th 2025

Michael Fenwick was watching television at the DC Jail in 2020 when he saw a familiar face on the news. The broadcast was covering the death of Karon Hylton-Brown after a pursuit by Metropolitan Police Department Officer Terence Sutton.

Fenwick and his friends knew Sutton, who used to patrol the area around Kennedy Street NW where they would ride dirt bikes, and who they recognized by the tattoos that cover his arms. He became so infamous in the area that they called him “Tattoo.”

During an encounter in 2018, Fenwick recalls that Sutton pulled him off his bike, threw him on the ground, and searched his pockets for drugs and weapons. When he found neither, Sutton took the cash in Fenwick’s pocket and left, according to an affidavit filed in a civil lawsuit over Hylton-Brown’s death.

Fenwick’s friends and other young Black men who hang out in the Brightwood Park neighborhood have similar stories about their run-ins with Sutton. Nine of them, including Fenwick, signed affidavits filed in the lawsuit alleging that “Tattoo” made a habit of ramming his police car into their dirt bikes and four-wheelers, sending them to the pavement.

“If you were riding a bike, and he drove up, you know you got to get out of there before he got too close,” Fenwick says.

About four years after Fenwick’s encounter with Sutton, the officer and his lieutenant, Andrew Zabavsky, were convicted in 20-year-old Hylton-Brown’s death. A jury found both officers guilty of trying to cover up their actions during the vehicle pursuit that ended when Hylton-Brown drove his moped through an alley and was struck by an oncoming vehicle. Sutton, who was accelerating behind Hylton-Brown moments before the collision, was also convicted of second-degree murder.

Sutton was sentenced to more than five years, and Zabavsky was sentenced to four, but both officers were allowed to remain out of prison while they appealed the jury’s verdict. While the case lingered in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, newly elected convicted felon and President Donald Trump granted both officers unconditional pardons. This week, MPD lifted Sutton and Zabavsky’s indefinite suspension, and they were officially reinstated to full duty.

MPD has refused to say where the officers will be assigned or whether they will receive back pay.

The 2022 verdict was the first time a D.C. cop has been convicted of murder for causing a death while on duty. The unprecedented case signaled a shift in how the United States Attorney’s Office for D.C. could scrutinize police tactics and hold officers accountable.

But the pardons are just some of the indicators of a step backward, a shift toward an old system where police misconduct is less scrutinized and, in fact, approved by law enforcement leaders. MPD Chief Pamela Smith has thanked Trump for pardoning the two officers and said she believes the case should have been handled through MPD’s internal administrative process, where flaws have been thoroughly documented. Indeed, it’s a process that has now resulted in the reinstatement of two officers convicted of a cover-up, one also of murder.

The Trump administration has sent other signals of the changing landscape of police accountability. He erased the short-lived federal police misconduct database, aimed at preventing officers with violent or abusive histories from getting re-hired. Trump also announced that the Justice Department will no longer pursue the kinds of civil rights investigations and consent decrees that have sought to reform departments with entrenched issues.

David Shurtz, the lawyer handling the civil suit over Hylton-Brown’s death, says these changes undermine the mission of the justice system to hold officers accountable. “We just have this bizarre circumstance where we’ve got [Trump] beating his chest saying, ‘I am King Kong, and everyone has to conform to my sycophantic desires,’” he says.

It was June of 2018 when Fenwick encountered Sutton. He says he was sitting on his dirt bike at the corner of 7th and Kennedy streets NW in Brightwood Park when an MPD car pulled up.

Two officers jumped out with their guns drawn, pointed directly at him, Fenwick says. He flashed back to a near-fatal encounter with U.S. Marshals in 2007, which left him with distinctive scars on his neck where the marshals shot him, he tells City Paper in an interview this week.

“When he pulled out the gun, I was just like, ‘Am I about to die?’” Fenwick says, running his fingers over the scars. He recognized the tattoos on the officer’s forearms.

Before he had the chance to react, Fenwick says Sutton pulled him off the bike and threw him to the ground, pinning his chest to the pavement with his knee. Sutton shouted at him, asking if he had any weapons. Fenwick said no, and Sutton searched his pockets, pulling out $230, a cell phone, and a pack of Newport cigarettes.

When the officers found nothing illegal, they ordered Fenwick to stand up and started questioning whether the bike was stolen, asking, “Where are the guns or drugs?” according to Fenwick’s affidavit.

When Sutton realized that Fenwick wasn’t from the Brightwood Park neighborhood (he says he was visiting friends there), the officer told him to leave, and before riding away, Fenwick asked Sutton for his stuff back. The officer returned his cellphone and cigarettes, but kept the cash, Fenwick says. “This was consistent with Sutton’s reputation on the Street,” he says in his affidavit.

At least eight other young Black men have signed affidavits with similar claims dating back as far as 2015. Each of the men describe how Sutton chased them, usually in an unmarked police vehicle, while they rode dirt bikes or four-wheelers in the Kennedy Street area. They allege that Sutton would intentionally ram his vehicle into their bikes, causing them to wipe out, and would then dig through their pockets and keep any cash he found.

Mario White, one of the affiants, writes that he encountered Sutton in the summer of 2015 as he was leaving Kennedy Street NW after hanging out with friends. He noticed a car driving close behind his four-wheeler, and as he tried to speed up, the vehicle accelerated and rammed into the back of White’s ATV, knocking him to the ground. He scraped the length of his left arm on the pavement and dislocated his pinky finger. When White asked to be taken to the hospital, an officer with tattoos on his arms told him not to go, or he would “make me pay for it,” White says in the affidavit. “My impression was he didn’t mean money; that he was threatening me with violence.”

In March of 2017, Daryl Fowler says Sutton, who he recognized by his tattoos, used a black unmarked police car to knock him from his dirt bike, leaving him with bruises and scrapes. Sutton put Fowler in cuffs and took the cash out of his pocket. “When I was knocked off my motorbike, no sirens or lights were activated for warning. … I asked Sutton why he knocked me off my bike,” Fowler says in his affidavit. “He said I fit the description of a suspect.”

Michael Grayton says that in July 2017 “an officer we called Tattoo” knocked him from his dirt bike with an unmarked police vehicle and then searched his pockets. “After he knocked me on the ground, he apprehended me and made me clean out my pockets,” Grayton says in his affidavit. “I had cash and drugs and Sutton took them from me. He did not arrest me.” He says people now call him “Half-Dead” because the collision left him with a black eye and cuts on his face.

“We’re constantly in these situations, where officers try to knock us off our bikes,” Fenwick says. “There’s no need for us to be [harassed] for just trying to enjoy ourselves. We’re out here trying to stay out of trouble, trying to get a release.”

***

At Sutton and Zabavsky’s trial, federal prosecutors said the officers illegally chased Hylton-Brown on Oct. 23, 2020, conspired to cover up their actions, and initially misled their commander about the incident.

Sutton first encountered Hylton-Brown riding a moped near 5th and Kennedy streets NW. After a brief conversation, the officer chased him through residential streets, at times driving the wrong way and accelerating up to 45 miles per hour, according to prosecutors. The pursuit lasted about three minutes and ended with Sutton accelerating behind Hylton-Brown, prosecutors said, as the 20-year-old drove his rented moped toward the end of an alley and onto Kennedy Street. An oncoming vehicle hit him and sent him flying onto the street.

As Hylton-Brown lay bleeding and grasping for breath, Sutton and Zabavsky turned off their body cameras and conspired together, prosecutors said at trial, based on body cam footage from other officers on scene. Sutton allowed the driver of the other vehicle to leave and did not notify MPD’s major crash unit, as he was required to do, according to trial testimony. When Sutton left the crime scene, he drove over pieces of the moped that were left in the street.

Back at the Fourth District station, Sutton and Zabavsky did not tell their commander they had engaged in a pursuit and downplayed the collision as fairly minor. Sutton wrote an initial report saying they were chasing Hylton-Brown because he was riding the moped on the sidewalk and without a helmet. (MPD’s general orders bar officers from engaging in vehicle pursuits for minor crimes, including traffic offenses.) His lawyers later said in court that Sutton suspected Hylton-Brown was about to commit an act of violence because another officer saw him beefing with someone earlier that day; Hylton-Brown’s friends testified that he was looking for his keys.

Officers riding in the vehicle with Sutton that night testified against him at trial. Officer Carlos Tejera said in court that they should have ended the pursuit and gotten a warrant for Hylton-Brown’s arrest instead. Officer Ahmed Al-Shrawi said he believed the chase was “getting ridiculous.” Prosecutors also presented evidence that Sutton had been previously reprimanded for an illegal vehicle pursuit in 2019.

Both officers were convicted in December 2022 but were never taken into custody. Nearly a year after the incident, members of Hylton-Brown’s family filed a lawsuit against the District on behalf of his estate, alleging the fatal police chase was part of a pattern and practice of misconduct at MPD and seeking $100 million in damages.

Shurtz, the lawyer representing Amaala Jones-Bey, the mother of Hylton-Brown’s daughter, has filed similar civil suits accusing MPD officers of knocking dirt bike riders off their bikes during police pursuits.

Shurtz says he was skeptical of the bikers’ claims at first. But over the past few years, he collected hundreds of affidavits from men who describe tactics similar to “Tattoo’s” pursuit of Hylton-Brown. He has alleged in one civil case that these sorts of reckless pursuits have become a pattern and practice for MPD.

“I was adamant when I started this procedure that cops would not do something like that,” Shurtz says. “But once I began [collecting the affidavits], it was like an avalanche.”

D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson has called Sutton and Zabavsky’s pardons “a step backward for police accountability.” But Mayor Muriel Bowser echoes Smith, saying that while she believes Sutton violated department policy, the case should have been handled administratively, not through the criminal courts.

Michael Hannon, Sutton’s lawyer in the criminal trial, says that as a result of Trump’s pardon, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed their criminal case and vacated the judgment of the jury, nullifying their criminal convictions.

“That is a determination that the case should never have been brought,” Hannon says. “Therefore, Officer Sutton is an innocent man and has always been an innocent man.”

According to Hannon, interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin is investigating the origins of Sutton and Zabavsky’s prosecution, which Hannon maintains was carried out arbitrarily and unjustly. As evidence of these efforts, he points to the recent demotion of several USAO employees, including Elizabeth Aloi, one of the prosecutors in Sutton’s case (she also prosecuted Peter Navarro, a former Trump White House aid who defied a congressional subpoena).

Shurtz says the demotions are “calculated, vindictive, and anti-justice.” Fenwick, for his part, feels betrayed by the justice system.

“I feel like they’re going against everything they’re supposed to stand for,” Fenwick says. “A lot of people don’t get to walk away from committing crimes. … If he didn’t have the badge, he would have to pay for it.”