D.C. police recently stopped a man while responding to a call about a burglary alarm in Northwest Washington. Jody Westby, a neighborhood resident who intervenes, says the stop was inappropriate. (Video courtesy of Jody Westby)

D.C. police recently stopped a man while responding to a call about a burglary alarm in Northwest Washington. Jody Westby, a neighborhood resident who intervenes, says the stop was inappropriate. (Video courtesy of Jody Westby)

The District police officers were responding to a burglar alarm in an upscale neighborhood in Northwest Washington when they spotted Dennis Stucky leaning against a brick wall in Foxhall Crescent, dressed in work clothes and a ball cap and holding two bags.

Although the alarm was sounding in an adjacent subdivision — three-quarters of a mile away by car — one of the officers ordered the 64-year-old man to sit on the curb while she put on disposable gloves and prepared to search him.

Jody Westby, a resident and lawyer, rushed to Stucky’s defense, angrily telling the officers that Stucky had been a neighborhood fix-it man for 30 years and that they were not at the right house. The officers reluctantly freed Stucky, who lives in Southeast and said he feels he was stopped “because I’m black.” Westby’s housekeeper recorded much of the encounter on video.

Last week’s encounter reflects the challenges of policing and the perceptions of some residents in the District and beyond that they are singled out as suspicious because of their race, the neighborhoods they choose to visit or their appearance. Police policies and practices on stops will be addressed Wednesday at a community forum at Howard University. The forum, the first of a two-part hearing by the D.C. Council’s public safety oversight committee, is scheduled for 6 p.m. in the school’s business auditorium, 2400 Sixth St. NW.

The Foxhall Crescent stop was preceded by an alarm about 1 p.m. Oct. 1. The neighborhood is mostly white; the two officers who responded are black. The officers had no description of a possible suspect, and the alarm was canceled shortly after the initial 911 call from a private security company reporting that the owner had keyed in the wrong code to his garage. It was unclear whether the officers had that information when they stopped Stucky.

D.C. police, who watched the recording provided by The Washington Post, would not discuss the incident in detail.

The department’s chief spokeswoman, Gwendolyn Crump, said that without knowing what happened before the recording started, it would be difficult to assess the encounter. She did say the department believes that there was “no misconduct” by the officers and that officials believed it would be unfair to highlight the video in the context of the discussion over citizen stops.

Delroy Burton, head of the D.C. police union, would not discuss the officers’ actions because the video starts after the stop was made. He did note that he believed Westby interfered with the officers when she walked between Stucky and the female officer and by escorting Stucky away with the consent of one officer but over the protests of the other. “The woman in the striped dress, while accusing the officers of racism, has made some assumptions of her own,” Burton said.

Burton said the video shows “how tentative officers are because of all the negative media attention” over police stops and citizens taking videos of them at work.

Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), chairman of the public safety committee, said he thought the stop of Stucky could have been handled differently to make it more of a conversation than a confrontation. Noting that police will soon wear body cameras, he said, “I hope those cameras make these types of encounters more professional.”

The stop captured on video appears fairly routine, and the debate over whether it was legitimate for police to detain and question Stucky — and how officers handled the stop — is central to a larger discussion taking place across the country.

Wells backed the successful effort to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana, in some part spurred by the belief that blacks were unfairly targeted, and D.C. police have begun a pilot program in which officers wear body cameras to record day-to-day interactions with the public.

The video taken by Westby’s housekeeper picks up with the female officer putting on blue gloves and questioning Stucky as he sat on the curb. Westby talks to the officer and then turns her attention to a male officer in a patrol car. Westby asks him which address the call came from and then walks between Stucky and the female officer to the patrol car window.

Learning that the officers had been called to the 4600 block of Foxhall Crescent, Westby informs them that they were in the 4500 block. Although seemingly close, the streets are not linked. The subdivisions are circular in pattern, and to reach the 4600 block from where the officers were parked requires making three turns on four streets. On foot, the route between the homes is more direct.

On the recording, much of what the female officer says is inaudible, but she points to Stucky’s bags, and Westby said the officer noted that as probable cause for the stop.

Westby, who also is a cyber­security consultant, said the male officer in the car told her that Stucky was free to go. The video shows the lawyer walking over to Stucky and helping him up. “Come on, Dennis. He says you can go,” she says. The female officer puts out her hand and says “Stop,” while moving close to them. Westby ignores her.

“I’m an attorney, and this is wrong,” Westby tells the officers. After getting the officers’ business cards, Westby shouts, “Just because he’s black doesn’t mean he’s here to rob a house. He works for us. He’s been in this neighborhood for 30 years. Now go find 4600 Foxhall.”

Stucky said his lunch was in the bags and said he had been stopped and questioned many times in that neighborhood.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said.