DC's deputy mayor for public safety resigns after being charged with assault

His name is Christopher Geldart and until yesterday he was Washington DC’s deputy mayor for public safety. Geldart’s resignation came after a meeting with Mayor Muriel Bowser in which they both agreed that his personal problems had become a distraction.

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“I’m saddened to say that I have accepted the resignation of Deputy Mayor Chris Geldart, but I am proud of the work that we have done together over the last eight years, and I am immensely grateful to Chris for his service to the city,” Bowser said.

“We both agree that the focus should be on the big issues affecting D.C.,” she said.

“I no longer wanted to be a distraction to the vitally important work of the public safety agencies of the District government,” Geldart said in a statement to News4.

There were two related problems that led to this, both of them embarrassing. First, Geldart was charged with assault over an incident in a parking lot which happened on Oct. 1 outside his gym. Geldart allegedly opened his door into someone else’s car and that led to an argument. Here’s video of the incident. Geldart is the big man on the right. The woman who eventually runs up between them is apparently Geldart’s wife.

The smaller guy in that clip is Dustin Woodard, a trainer at the gym. Two days after the incident, he went to the police and filed a complaint.

Arlington County Police told ABC News last week that officers initially responded to a report of an assault on Oct. 3, two days after Geldart and an unnamed man had a run-in, which police said happened after Geldart’s vehicle door struck the man’s vehicle outside the gym.

The Oct. 1 incident quickly escalated and the deputy mayor “allegedly grabbed the victim by the throat,” police said.

The other man then swore out a criminal complaint through the magistrate on Oct. 3, police said. Geldart subsequently turned himself in and was released with a summons to appear before a judge.

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Did Geldart put his hands on Woodard’s throat? It looks like he might have done so very briefly. In any case, Woodard says Geldart was definitely trying to bully him. “He was screaming, trying to tower over us, yelling, cussing,” Woodard said. He says Geldart doesn’t deserve to be in a job focused on public safety.

That’s the first problem. This looks bad and Geldart is being charged. The other, related problem has to do with Geldart’s residence. By DC law, people who work in city government are required to live in the city. But when Geldart responded to the charges he gave the police his other address.

Like most high-ranking D.C. government officials, he’s required to live in the District, but when he was charged with assault after an argument in a parking in Arlington Oct. 1, police listed his address as a home in Falls Church, Virginia.

The Falls Church house is, in fact, where Geldart and his wife and their children live. However, Geldart also rents a 12th-floor apartment in a building in Southeast D.C., where he’s registered to vote and pays income taxes.

So he lives with his family in Falls Church but has residency and votes in DC? That sounds pretty sketchy. Again, Mayor Bowser agreed it was a distraction. Frankly, I wonder how he got away with it for this long. Surely the Mayor and everyone who worked with him knew he didn’t live in the city. So this guy was living on borrowed time.

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Here’s a local news report with some additional comments from Woodard suggesting this isn’t the first problem Geldart has had at Gold’s Gym. Stay to the end for the reporter’s face off with Mayor Bowser which is nearly as ugly as the one in the parking lot.

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