Obituary: Mary Burke Washington, noted economist, rights advocate

Mary Burke Nicholas Washington, an economist who pioneered myriad roles for women and African-Americans in public life, notably heading a civilian panel in 1989 that assailed the New York City police over their clash with demonstrators in Tompkins Square Park, died Nov. 30 in Arlington, Va. She was 88.

Her daughter, Tracy Bledsoe, announced her death.

As Mary Burke Nicholas — the name by which she was known before 1994, when she married Walter E. Washington, the former mayor of Washington, D.C. — she held prominent government posts throughout the 1970s and '80s.

In 1974 she became the first woman to be appointed head economist for one of the 10 regional offices of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, a post she held in New York. She was the first director of the New York state Women's Division, created by Gov. Hugh Carey in 1975 to advocate for women's rights.

In 1987, when Mayor Ed Koch appointed her to the Police Department's 12-member Civilian Complaint Review Board, she became one of the first independent civilians to serve on it in a generation. An independent review board had been disbanded in 1966 after a citywide referendum and replaced with a panel made up entirely of civilian employees of the Police Department.

But in 1987, with rising complaints of police brutality, Koch and Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward installed a new panel, half of whose members were department outsiders. Washington was elected chairwoman and became the first black woman to lead the review board. Her trial by fire began the next summer.

Responding to neighbors' complaints about drug dealing and disorderly behavior in Tompkins Square Park in the East Village, the police began enforcing a 1 a.m. curfew there, setting off organized protest demonstrations and, on the night of Aug. 6, 1988, violent confrontations when hundreds of protesters were expelled from the park.

Washington and her board reviewed 121 complaints and questioned 400 police officers and supervisors who had been on duty that night. None gave evidence to support the allegations of misconduct, but departmental charges were filed against 17 officers.

The board's final report sharply criticized the police, saying they had used force "indiscriminately" and had been primarily responsible for the violence.

The report was attacked from both sides. The New York Civil Liberties Union dismissed it as a whitewash. But Phil Caruso, president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, attacked the board members as apologists for "the insipid conglomeration of human misfits and societal parasites" who had injured police officers that night.

Washington called Caruso's remarks "intemperate," adding that they also suggested "we on the board must be doing something right."

She was born Mary Cornelia Burke in Tuskegee, Ala., on July 6, 1926, to Ruth Freeland and Walter Sturgeon Burke, graduates of Howard University. Her father was a federal administrator who helped establish one of the nation's first Veterans Administration hospitals for black servicemen.

Asked by the New York Times in 1975 whether she considered herself a feminist, she replied: