Maurice J. Cullinane, D.C. police chief during hostage crisis, dies at 90

Maurice J. Cullinane, who served as chief of the Washington, D.C., police in the mid-1970s and helped negotiate an end to a deadly hostage siege by radicalized members of the Hanafi Muslim sect, died March 2 at a hospital in Bethesda, Md. He was 90.

The cause was complications from a stroke, said his daughter Patricia Carr.

Mr. Cullinane, a native Washingtonian known as “Cully,” followed his father, two great-uncles and other relatives onto the D.C. force in 1955 following Navy service in the Korean War. In December 1974, Mayor Walter E. Washington tapped the soft-spoken Mr. Cullinane to lead the department, then twothirds White but serving a city that was 70 percent African American.

During his tenure, which lasted until January 1978, Mr. Cullinane was credited with providing steady leadership as the District of Columbia rebuilt from the devastation of the 1968 riots following the assassination of civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Mr. Cullinane was a lieutenant during the upheaval and carried out orders to make sure officers did not open fire or brutally confront those involved in the mayhem.

Two years later, he suffered a debilitating injury during a demonstration against the Vietnam War when he said he was hit with a brick on his left knee, contributing to his early retirement.

As chief, Mr. Cullinane led the department through one of the city’s most traumatic episodes when, in March 1977, about a dozen members of a fanatical Muslim sect armed with shotguns and swords simultaneously stormed the B’nai B’rith building, the Islamic mosque and the city’s administrative building.

The “Hanafi Muslims” took 124 hostages, fatally shot a radio reporter and wounded then-D.C. Council Member Marion Barry and a protective service officer who died days later after a heart attack.