Memorial to Glen P. Fisher
End of Watch: March 10, 1971
Rank: Officer Badge No. 3511
Age: 21 Years of Service: 10 months
Location of Death: 625 K Street, SE
Duty Assignment: Vice Officer, First District, 524053
Circumstance:
Officer Fisher was part of a raiding party executing an arrest warrant at an apartment at 625 K Street, SE. As they were attempting to force open the door to the apartment, the suspect opened the door and began firing at the officers. One officer was shot in the neck and Officer Fisher was fatally shot in the head. The suspect ran to the back of the apartment and then gave up without further incident. Officer Fisher’s wife was waiting for him to come home so she could announce that she was pregnant.
Biography:
Fisher was a native of Washington, DC and raised in Anacostia, where he still resided. He attended Anacostia High School and served 33-months in the Marine Corps. He was appointed to the police force in May, 1970, and was subsequently assigned to the First District Vice Squad. He is survived by his wife and an 18-month-old child. His wife, 19, was expecting another child and had planned to tell her husband she was pregnant when he returned from work that night.
Articles from the Washington Post – transcribed by Dave Richardson, MPD/Ret.
THE SHOOTING DEATH OF OFFICER GLEN P. FISHER AND WOUNDING OF OFFICER WILLIAM FREEMAN, ON MARCH 10, 1971.
WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE DATED MARCH 11, 1971, PAGE A1
SE Policeman Shot, Killed During Raid
One metropolitan policeman was fatally shot and another wounded last night when a man opened fire while the officers, members of a seven-man raiding party carrying a search warrant, attempted to enter a Southeast Washington apartment, police said.
Officer Glen P. Fisher, 21, of 2814 Erie St. SE., died at D.C. General Hospital of a gunshot wound in the head about three hours after the 8:40 p.m. raid. Officer William Freeman, 24, shot in the neck, was treated at the hospital.
Harold Lee Boggins, 23, of 625 K St. SE, was arrested in his apartment and was being held in the central cellblock on charges of homicide, assault with intent to kill a policeman and violation of the Harrison Narcotics Act, sale of heroin. Boggins is scheduled to have a hearing before a U.S. magistrate this morning.
Police refused to say if narcotics were seized during the raid.
Last night’s raid was made after officers obtained a U.S. magistrates search warrant yesterday for narcotics on the basis of evidence presented by Freeman, who, along with Fisher, was a plainclothes undercover officer.
Lt. Bernard Crook, a police department spokesman, said last night that the evidence Freeman presented was the result of a two-month investigation.
Six plainclothes officers, including Fisher and Freeman, and a uniformed sergeant armed with a shotgun took part in the raid, Crook said. He gave this account of the incident:
The members of the raiding party knocked on the door of the first-floor apartment, called out their identity as policemen and the fact that they had a search warrant. There was no answer, but the policemen heard a noise inside.
Freeman began beating the metal door with a sledgehammer. Suddenly, the door was pulled open from inside and the suspect began firing. His first shot from a revolver hit Freeman in the neck, and Freeman fell to the floor.
Fisher was hit in the head in a flurry of shots that followed. Officer Robert E. Neely, another of the plainclothesmen, fired one shot from his service revolver, and it lodged in the door. No other policeman fired.
After the gunfire, the suspect fled to the rear of the two-bedroom apartment where he was arrested without a struggle.
Also in the apartment at the time of the raid were a woman unidentified, and her two children, a boy, 7, and a girl (unreadable). Police said they were not related to Boggins. They were not injured during the incident.
Fisher was a native of Anacostia, where he resided. He attended Anacostia High School and served 33 months in the Marine Corps.
He was appointed to the police force in May, 1970, and was subsequently assigned to the First District Vice Squad. He is survived by his wife and an 18-month-old child.
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WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE DATED MARCH 12, 1971, PAGE A3
Suspect in Slaying Of Officer Held
The suspected slayer of a Washington policeman was charged with first-degree murder yesterday and ordered held without bond in U.S. Magistrate’s Court.
The slain policeman Glen P. Fisher, 21, of 2814 Erie St. SE., was shot in the head during a Wednesday night narcotics raid on a Southeast apartment by the first district vice squad, police said. Another policeman, William D. Freeman, 24, was shot in the neck.
Fisher, who was married and had an 18-month-old son, joined the force last May, police said. Mrs. Fisher, 19, who is expecting another child and had planned to tell her husband she was pregnant when he returned from work Wednesday night, will receive a $50,000 cash grant, police said.
This grant was established by Congress and signed by President Nixon last October for families of metropolitan policemen who are killed in the line of duty.
Police gave this account of the Wednesday night raid:
Fisher, Freeman and five other policemen, carrying a U.S. Magistrate’s search warrant, went to an apartment at 625 K St. SE about 8:40 p.m.
Sgt. Michael Dudley, the only policeman in uniform, knocked on the door and identified the group as police. The other policemen stood behind him.
The suspect, Harold Lee Boggins, 23, of the Southeast address, opened the door and then slammed it shut, police said. Although they were carrying a sledgehammer, police said that before they could use it, a man reopened the door and fired five shots.
Sgt. Dudley, who was carrying a shotgun, was temporarily blinded and suffered facial powder burns.
Fisher, who was standing behind Sgt. Dudley was hit in the left side of the head. He died at D.C. General Hospital three hours later. Freeman suffered a flesh wound.
Boggins, a custodian at the General Services Administration, was captured without a struggle. Police said they found a shotgun and narcotics in the apartment.
Besides first-degree murder, the suspect is charged with assault with intent to kill and violation of the Harrison Narcotics Act.
Police Chief Jerry V. Wilson said the police were not attempting a “no-knock” entry.
Fisher was the nephew of Officer Robert E. Fisher, the partner of David H. Rose, the policeman who was accidentally shot and killed by a Montgomery County Policeman last month.
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WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE DATED JUNE 8, 1972, PAGE A33
Man Is Freed In Slaying Of Policeman
A U.S. District Court jury yesterday acquitted Harold L. Boggins of murder charges in the fatal shooting last year of Washington policeman Glen P. Fisher.
The jury found Boggins guilty of six counts of assault with intent to kill while armed—counts that carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Boggins, 24, also was convicted of two narcotics charges.
The verdict came late yesterday at the end of a trial that lasted more than two weeks.
Fisher, 21, was fatally shot March 10, 1971, while he and six other metropolitan policemen, armed with a search warrant, attempted to enter Boggins’ apartment at 625 K ST. SE in a narcotics raid.
At the trial, prosecutor William H. Collins Jr called members of the raiding party to the witness stand to testify that they first knocked on the door, then loudly identified themselves as policemen and then finally began hitting the door with a sledgehammer. They said that suddenly, the door was opened and Boggins began firing.
Defense attorney Dovey Roundtree argued that Boggins did not hear the policemen knock or identify themselves, and that he began shooting in an effort to protect his family from invaders.
One of the seven policemen, Sgt. Michael Dudley, was in uniform, the other six were in plainclothes. Collins argued that Dudley was in such a position that Boggins would have to see the uniformed officer, while Mrs. Roundtree argued that Boggins did not observe the uniformed policeman.
Mrs. Roundtree also argued to the jury that it was possible Fisher was killed by another policeman in the raiding party, Officer Charles White.
Presented at the trial were FBI ballistics tests performed on White’s weapon after the shooting incident. They showed that it had been fired three times since the last time it had been cleaned. White himself testified that he had never shot the gun on the night Fisher was shot, and that in fact he had never fired the weapon at all in the few weeks he had carried it before the raid on Boggins apartment.
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WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE DATED SEPTEMBER 1, 1972, PAGE C2
Raid Figure Is Sentenced
A federal judge yesterday sentenced Harold L. Boggins to 45 to 90 years in jail for assault and narcotics charges in connection with a narcotics raid by police on his Southeast apartment in March 1971.
At Boggins trial earlier this year, the prosecution had contended that Boggins fatally shot a Washington policeman, Glen P. Fisher, during the 1971 raid.
A federal jury acquitted Boggins of murder charges, but at the same time found him guilty of six counts of assault with intent to kill while armed and of two narcotics charges.
Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge William B. Jones sentenced to two 15-to-45 year sentences for the assault convictions and to a 15-year sentence for the narcotics charges. Those sentences are to run consecutively, so that the total sentence is from 45 to 90 years.