By Del Quentin Wilber, The Washington Post
This is where the D.C. police department preserves its 143-year history: a dusty museum on the sixth floor of its headquarters, filled with piles of old documents and photographs, a Harley-Davidson patrol motorcycle and a colorful antique call box.
The museum can be seen by appointment only, and it is not a very inviting gallery, let alone a tourist magnet. The place has flooded three times since it was reopened in 2001 after a lengthy hiatus. It has a moldy smell, and many exhibits are covered by protective tarps.
But it is not the flooding that haunts the museum’s part-time curator, Sgt. Nick Breul. It’s the trove of records, reports, photographs, badges and other items that have vanished from the department over the years -- including a logbook that describes police work on the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
Some treasures were thrown away, and others were taken by officers as souvenirs. Breul said he is so concerned about the potential for items to disappear or be damaged that he hides one of the museum’s most prized possessions -- the arrest logbook that contains the names of the Watergate burglars -- in a broom closet. He takes it out only when people visit.
For the past decade, mostly on his own time, Breul has labored as the department’s historian. A 17-year member of the department who investigates police-involved shootings, Breul has a bachelor’s degree in history. And with his large eyeglasses and bushy hair, he resembles a history professor as much as a police detective.
“History is something that fascinates me,” said Breul, 41. “This is the police department of the nation’s capital. It has seen protests, inaugurations, assassinations, murders. We have shaped things.”
Breul is overseeing the latest incarnation of a D.C. police museum. For years, the department had a display at its headquarters on Indiana Avenue NW. But during the 1990s, officials shuffled it from room to room to make space for anti-crime units. Police officials eventually shut down that museum in 1998, sending boxes of precious documents and other artifacts to storage spaces across the city.
Some of the boxes, filled with badges, books, old handcuffs, photographs and pens disguised as guns, were kept in a hallway. Many of the items disappeared.
“If I use the word ‘pilfered,’ that would be the right word,” Breul said. “I want them back.”
With the backing of Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey, Breul began rooting through cardboard boxes and file folders several years ago, looking for interesting items to preserve and display. Those efforts turned up much of the material on display in the new museum at the headquarters.
The most interesting discoveries occurred almost by happenstance -- including the Watergate find.
A few years ago, Breul was digging through a locker when he came across arrest logbooks from the early 1970s. One contained the fake names given by the five Watergate burglars when they were captured June 17, 1972.
Breul is looking for the arrest report from the break-in. He has had no success. In 1997, a person claiming to be a former officer tried to sell the document through a Virginia auction house. The anonymous officer said he accidentally grabbed the report when he was processing another arrest the day after the Watergate break-in. It does not appear that the auction led to a sale, and it remains unclear whether the person actually had the report.
Another time, Breul was flipping through a file folder when he spotted a photocopy of a document that represents one of the low points in the department’s history.
The record alleged that D.C. patrolman John F. Parker neglected his duty April 14, 1865, by abandoning his guard post outside a box at Ford’s Theatre. The lapse allowed John Wilkes Booth to enter the box and shoot Lincoln, who died the next day.
Not much is known about Parker’s assigned duties that day, although department lore says the officer abandoned his post to drink at a nearby saloon. Transcripts of his trial and other documents disappeared long ago. Breul has no idea where the original charging document is.
“There has to be an original somewhere,” he said.
Parker was acquitted by the trial board, according to historians. He was fired several years later for another offense.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, police kept meticulous handwritten logbooks about the day’s events. Many commanders and veteran officers have seen logbooks over the years that recorded details about Lincoln’s assassination.
Those books are gone. Breul has questioned colleagues and visited old district station houses in a fruitless search for them. Sometimes he thought he was closing in, he said.
“I would get to these stations, and they would say, ‘Wish you had been here two months ago,’ ” he said, recalling many frustrations.
Gary Hankins, a former police union leader, has photographs of the handwritten Lincoln logbooks on his office wall. He said he got the pictures from a fellow officer who came across the logbooks during renovations of one of the police district stations. Hankins said he does not know where the originals went.
Hankins, a history buff, said that Breul deserves credit but that the department should have done a better job of securing its past.
“We literally take our history for granted,” said Hankins, now a private union consultant.
Ramsey has supported the museum and expressed frustration with its flooding problem. He said he found the best space available. Unfortunately, he said, the city faces such serious crime that he cannot afford to give more resources to the project.
Besides searching for missing materials, Breul spends a good deal of time caring for items on display in the exhibit area.
To safely keep the remaining records, old uniforms and antiques, Breul has approached outside experts for help. Authorities at the Smithsonian Institution, for example, helped him pack a century-old uniform. And they gave him special gloves to prevent oil and dirt from rubbing off on old documents.
On a recent day, Breul donned the gloves and gently slipped an aging piece of paper out of a manila envelope. It contained the application form of patrolman Patrick Kearney, the officer responsible for capturing the assassin of President James A. Garfield in 1881. Kearny joined the force in 1866 and was an Irish immigrant, the form shows.
Breul recalled finding the document while sifting through a closet that contained unrelated records.
“I knew exactly what it was because I knew about Kearney,” Breul said. “It was a great moment, finding that, the application form of a police officer who made such an important arrest.”
Breul has been unable to find anything else that describes the case, including the gun used by assassin Charles J. Guiteau. The weapon should have been stored with others seized by the force but instead was given to a “well-known citizen,” according to a departmental history published in 1893.
“Who that is, I have no idea,” Breul said.
Like a good detective, Breul has created a tip line on his office voice mail for those wishing to provide information about missing bits of history (202-576-6250). He said that preservation -- not prosecution -- is his goal in retrieving what’s gone.