By Antonio Olivo and Justin
Jouvenal July 19
Fairfax County’s Board of
Supervisors on Tuesday signaled support for providing more civilian scrutiny of
police officers’ use of force, a day after a report revealed that African
Americans in the county are disproportionately affected in such cases.
Proposals to create a civilian
review panel for police abuse investigations and to hire an independent auditor
in cases involving death or serious injury stem from recommendations made by a
police advisory commission created in response to controversy over the 2013
fatal shooting of an unarmed white man.
However, tensions nationwide over
how African Americans are treated by the police spilled into a Tuesday meeting
about the proposals, on which county supervisors will probably vote in the
fall.
“Black lives matter!” an activist shouted,
while others held signs that referred to the report released this week that
showed more than 40 percent of use-of-force cases in the county last year
involved African Americans, who account for about 8 percent of Fairfax’s
population of 1.1 million residents.
Supervisor John C. Cook
(R-Braddock) chaired the meeting, which started with a moment of silence to
honor police officers killed this month in Dallas and Baton Rouge. At one
point, he threatened to have the activists kicked out.
“We won’t stand for that,” Cook
told the activists.
County officials were already
rattled by the controversy surrounding the death of John Geer, a Springfield
man shot by a county police officer at the doorway of his home three years ago.
A Fairfax County officer pleaded guilty to manslaughter in April.
The ongoing protests over police
shootings around the country underscored their support for more oversight,
several county officials said.
A proposal to create a civilian
review panel would give that appointed body authority to refer complaints of
abuse by officers to county police and to review those investigations for
thoroughness. The panel could also request a follow-up investigation if the
first one appeared problematic.
Meanwhile, a proposal to hire an
independent auditor would allow that person to monitor police department
investigations into cases that caused death or serious injury, and to report on
cases where there were questions about whether police acted appropriately.
Supervisor Linda Q. Smyth
(D-Providence) said the new oversight would help assure residents that
officials are serious about reviewing instances where officers use force or are
accused of misconduct.
“It’s just to be sure that we
have done as much as we can to be as fair as possible,” Smyth said.
Fairfax County’s police chief,
Edwin C. Roessler Jr., who attended the meeting, said such external review is
“greatly needed in the law enforcement profession.”
“We need to restore the
confidence and public trust from our community members to be effective as a
community,” he said.
Some county police officers,
however, criticized the ideas.
Joseph Woloszyn, president of the
Police Benevolent Association of Virginia, said the Board of Supervisors
already had oversight of the department, so there was no need to add an auditor
or a civilian review panel.
He questioned whether civilian
review panel members would have the policing expertise to properly review
complaints and whether their decisions might be subject to political pressures
because they would be appointees.
“Depending on the qualifications
for picking the auditor or civilian review panel, that could make policing more
politicized in the county,” Woloszyn said. “Look at panels like this in
Chicago, Baltimore and Atlanta. It hasn’t worked out so well.”
The ideas for increased oversight
are among 202 reforms proposed in response to the Geer shooting that county officials
estimate would cost $35 million to implement.
Many of the changes — including
requiring police cadets to undergo training in de-escalating hostile situations
before learning to fire their weapons — are already underway.
Last month, the board debated
heavily over whether to release the name of an officer involved in an incident
causing death or serious injury within 10 days. The board finally endorsed the
policy.
A decision to require county
police officers to wear body cameras was put off until the fall of 2017 to give
county officials time to research concerns over privacy related to those
devices.
Tuesday’s discussion came a day
after Fairfax County police released their first comprehensive assessment of
the use of force by county officers, another move for increased transparency
that stems from the Geer controversy.
The accounting concluded that 985
officers had been involved in using force on 539 occasions in 2015.
Physical contact, stun guns and
vehicle intercepts were the most common types of force deployed. An officer
discharged a firearm in one case.
The data revealed that in 98
percent of use-of-force cases, civilians were unarmed. Police officials found a
violation of department policy in just one of the cases reviewed in 2015.
The report also found that
African American civilians were disproportionately involved in use-of-force
cases and field stops. More than 40 percent of use-of-force cases and 25
percent of field stops involved black residents.
Shirley Ginwright, the president
of the Fairfax County NAACP, said she was surprised by the number of
use-of-force incidents in the county last year and the proportion that involved
African Americans.
“It is a concern when a
disproportionate number of these cases involve minorities,” Ginwright said. “We
are working to see how we can correct things like these in high-crime areas.”
Roessler said the percentage of
African Americans involved in use-of-force cases does not indicate that black
residents are being targeted by police.
“We as a department are going
where the crime is,” he said. “Obviously, I will not tolerate any profiling or
discrimination. These calls are all generated through engagement with the
community.”
With pressure mounting to better
handle police incidents in Fairfax, some supervisors were nonetheless worried
about the cost of doing so.
“I want to understand what the
rush is to get this done,” said Supervisor Pat Herrity (R-Springfield,) who
expressed concern about the cost of hiring an auditor and the possibility of
creating more work for police department officials who would have to respond to
requests from the civilian review panel.
“We’re not rushing to address a
problem. We’re rushing to address the issue of accountability and transparency,
and we want to do it right,” he said.
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