No one wants to work for the Fairfax County Police...do you blame them?

  

 

Short nearly 200 officers, Fairfax PD staffing 'at a crisis level' ahead of holiday season

FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. (7News) — Thanksgiving tends to be one of the most dangerous and deadly times on U.S. roads due to increases in impaired drivers and reckless driving.

Going into the holiday season, the Fairfax County Police Department is facing a shortage of police officers – officers who are responsible for enforcing traffic laws and getting drunk drivers off the roads.

Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis said recruiting classes have gotten larger. However, the Fairfax County Police Department is still facing a staffing crisis.

“When you’re down around 200 officers and you’ve disbanded your specialty units, of course, it’s at a crisis level,” Fairfax County Supervisor Pat Herrity told 7News on Tuesday.

Herrity says The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors needs to focus on keeping current officers by paying them more.

“We’ve seen increases in crime, we’ve seen increased traffic accidents and pedestrians fatalities,” said Herrity. “Public safety isn’t something you can ignore. It will catch up to you and it is catching up with us.”

7News was the first to report the staffing emergency at FCPD over the summer.

At that time, FCPD was short 189 officers, Davis told 7News in August.

Vacancies later reached above 200, according to police sources. Now FCPD is short 192 officers, Davis told 7News on Tuesday.

“We’ve still seen a higher rate of resignations than retirements,” Davis told 7News. “We are doing all we can to keep people focused on the value of policing. It’s still the greatest job in the world. We just need to increase the volume of the right candidates who want to do this job for the right reasons.”

Davis hopes new recruitment efforts, including a $15,000 signing bonus for new officers, will help.

“This is a hot market and we are all in competition with each other. The application pool has dwindled over the past couple of years,” Davis said. “We have great support from the Board of Supervisors and the community at large. So we have to consider many things like compensation and financial incentives and other benefits to attract people to the job because a police applicant in 2022 has a varied menu of choices about where to go and young people are paying attention more now than they ever have.”

Fairfax Co. Police Chief Kevin Davis speaks to 7News on how the department is handling a staffing crisis (7News)

“In about a week and a half that 192 will go to 154 when we start our largest police academy class in several years,” added Davis.

“They're still in a crisis level,” said Herrity. “We're still around 200 short. Through September, we had 101 officers leave. We've had a couple of recruit classes, some transfers into a total of about 57. We got one more recruit class coming in. We're going to have some additional resignations. So we're still at a net loss on officers. We still got work to do.”

Herrity praised the $15,000 signing bonus for new officers, but he said it came too late. He blamed the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors for failing to act quickly enough. The Board of Supervisors is led by Chairman Jeffrey McKay.

“I think it was late, but I'm happy it was there,” said Herrity. “I wish we had given them the salary increases. The best thing we can do is retain our current officers. That's going to help a lot with bringing new officers in, but we really need to focus on retaining current officers.”

“There were some ideas put on the table last budget,” Herrity added. “Salary increase that got cut in half and spread across all public safety agencies rather than given to the patrol staff where we really need them - Second Lieutenant below. We could extend Drop. That was also on the table. So there are some creative things that we should and can be doing. And I hope that the board will come around on it.”

Herrity predicts more officers will have to retire by the end of the year.

“Simply, [the ] Drop [program] is officers pick their retirement date three years out, and they can't work past that date,” he said. “So they’re not allowed to work past that three years. We can extend that by a year or two years with literally no cost to the government.”

“And the board said no?” 7News' Nick Minock asked.

“And the board said no,” Herrity replied.

One place some officers have gone to is Amazon.

“Amazon is certainly a challenge not just for Fairfax but for police departments around the country,” Davis said. "We have to be creative We have to be the employer of choice and there is a commitment to do so.”

But Supervisor Herrity expressed doubt that the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors has that commitment.

“We need to get back to public safety being a priority in Fairfax County," said Herrity.

Fairfax County is beginning its budget process soon. 7News will let you know if the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approves pay raises for current officers - or not - to address the staffing crisis.

“We hope we are turning the corner a little bit on recruiting,” said Davis. “We had five Fairfax County police officers who resigned in the last year who came back, so they came back to the job. So that’s exciting. The grass isn’t always greener.”

Good work Farifax County PD.......

  

'Everything is not OK. It's not anywhere near OK' | Major crimes are up in Fairfax County

  

FAIRFAX, Va. (7News) — With five weeks to go until the end of the year, crimes against people and crimes against property are up in Fairfax County, Va.

That’s according to the latest data from the Fairfax County Police Department.

These crimes include arson, burglary, vandalism, robbery, motor vehicle theft, assault, homicides, kidnapping, sex offenses and other major crimes.

“We have for the first time ever, have an Auto Crimes Enforcement squad. All they do is go after car thieves,” said Kevin Davis, the Police Chief of the Fairfax County Police Department.

Davis said this has helped reduce skyrocketing auto thefts --- although he said auto thefts are still up over last year.

“At the end of March, across the county, [auto thefts] were up about 45%,” said Davis. “And this Auto Crimes Enforcement squad has driven that down and we stand at about ten percent increase in auto theft.”

“We are challenged by auto theft,” added Davis. “We are challenged by the theft of catalytic converters. We are challenged by domestic violence, and we are challenged by simple assaults.”

All year, 7News has been tracking and reporting on crime trends in Fairfax County.

In August, when 7News told Board of Supervisor’s Chair Jeff McKay that several categories of crime are going up, McKay responded by saying Fairfax County is the safest jurisdiction of its size in the country.

It’s a message that’s been echoed by Fairfax County’s top prosecutor Steve Descano.

“At the end of the day, we are experiencing what most jurisdictions are experiencing except we are weathering it much better,” Descano told 7News. “That allows us to keep our communities safe and crime is down over the last few years in general.”

Descano is counting all crimes, including Group B offenses which include drunkenness. But the number of Group A crimes is increasing.

Supervisor Pat Herrity is calling out local leaders like Chairman McKay for painting a rosy picture of crime trends in Fairfax County while the Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD) is short around 200 officers.

“Everything is not OK. It’s not anywhere near OK,” said Herrity. “You can’t be down 200 officers, disbanding all your specialty units, units that took our department from a good department to a great department and be OK. The police shortage impacts everybody day to day. Whether that be increase crime, increase speeding, and people ignoring traffic laws. It puts us at risk. We’ve seen that in everything from our mall managers not reporting crime, now to the increased traffic fatalities that we’ve had. It’s something that when you lose control of, it’s hard to get back. We need to get back to public safety being a priority in Fairfax County.”

As of Nov. 22, Fairfax County saw 20 homicides in 2022 which is the same number of homicides in 2021. In 2020, there were 15 homicides and in 2019 there were 14 homicides, according to FCPD data.

“Murders 2022 vs. 2021, we are at 20. You might recall we finished 2021 with 20 murders,” said Davis. “A third of those murders were committed by adult children killing their parents inside their homes. This year is a little bit different. But, domestic violence in terms of homicides is still the theme. Nine of our 20 murders are domestic-related murders. So, we are still seeing domestic violence stress and anxiety, isolation all those things play a role in the family dynamic and violence that has erupted because of that.”

 

Young people, stop and think about it after you read this....do you really wan to spend 20 years with idiots like this?

 8 sex assault cases unable to be investigated due to destroyed evidence: Fairfax County Police

FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. (FOX 5 DC) - Eight sex assault cases where evidence was marked as having been destroyed can no longer be investigated, Fairfax County Police say.

The department says they have reviewed 93 cases assigned to Detective Cynthia Lundberg from 1994 to 1997 that were identified following a Freedom of Information Act request filed by a victim of 1995 sexual assault.

The Washington Post was the first to reveal the destruction of evidence in Gretchen Van Winkle’s case.

Two separate investigators looked at the FOIA request with particular emphasis on the 46 sex assault cases where evidence was labeled as having been destroyed.

Detectives had no concerns with the destruction of evidence in 38 of these cases, as evidence was destroyed in accordance with FCPD policy. Examples of evidence destroyed per department protocol include cases closed by arrest and fully adjudicated, cases where the victim did not want to further the investigation and cases closed as a police service.

Detectives found eight sex assault cases listed within the FOIA where evidence was marked as having been destroyed and questions remain. Additional investigation into these cases would be warranted but is now impossible without the necessary evidence.

The victims in these cases are all living survivors of sexual assault, and FCPD says they deeply regret that they will not likely be able to obtain the justice they deserve due to the destruction of evidence.

FCPD says victims with questions about an existing case are encouraged to call. They will be provided with a case update and supportive services.

"The improper destruction of evidence makes it extremely difficult to hold offenders of crimes accountable," said Major Ed O’Carroll, Bureau Chief, Major Crimes Bureau, Cyber and Forensics. "The victims in these cases deserved better, and the Fairfax County Police Department deeply regrets the actions of the past. Steps are now in place to prevent such errors from ever repeating."

The department says its policies and practices are now explicit in the way evidence is preserved in all sexual assault investigations. These policies include:

- All physical evidence recovery kits (PERKs), regardless of whether they are submitted for testing or excluded from testing because of a legislatively mandated exception, are required to be stored for a minimum of 10 years, or 10 years past the victim’s 18th birthday, whichever is longer. 

- If at any time, the victim objects to the destruction of a PERK, or rape kit, the kit shall be kept for a minimum of 10 years from the date of the request.

- Officers/Detectives shall notify survivors of their PERK ID number and PIN for access to the PERK Tracking System, unless there is sufficient and articulable reason to believe that doing so would unnecessarily interfere with the investigation. 

- All officers/detectives shall provide victims with a PERK ID number and PIN, and are required to notify a victim at least 60 days prior to the destruction of a PERK of their intent to destroy the kit.

- Regardless of the results of any forensic testing, no FCPD employee may unilaterally request the destruction of any PERK kit or other crime scene evidence relating to a sexual assault that has been identified by MCB Command, in conjunction with the Director of Victim Services, to be deemed relevant to prosecution. 

- FCPD employees who seek the destruction of these items shall request a meeting with both the Commander of the Violent Crimes Division as well as the Director of the Victim Services Division for final review and joint concurrence.

- The status of property or evidence shall not be changed without the written consent of the officer/detective responsible for the item(s) along with secondary approval of their first-line supervisor. 

In July 2016, Virginia law was put into effect stating that a law enforcement agency that receives a PERK collected from a victim who has reported the offense shall submit the PERK to DFS for analysis within 60 days of receipt, except in certain circumstances.

In June 2019, Virginia also launched a website to track the location of PERKs to ensure survivors of sexual assault know what’s happening to their cases. Survivors of sexual assault are given an ID number to see where their kit is. No personal information that could identify the survivor is logged in the website.