In other words, may the public be damned

Fairfax County: Supervisors Review Use of Force Guidelines

Public Safety Committee meets before June 21 vote: gun carry positions, release of information, body cameras discussed.

By Tim Peterson

The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors is standing by its Chief of Police and his department.

The board’s Public Safety Committee met May 24 to discuss additional questions that lingered or developed following its May 10 meeting to review recommendations for updating and improving the ways Fairfax County Police handle use of force situations and communications.

At that meeting and this latest one, the supervisors reviewed language that will become an action item — along with a matrix of recommendations, estimated costs and implementation statuses from the Ad Hoc Police Practices Review Commission and Police Executive Research Forum — for the board to vote on on June 21.

Deputy County Executive and former Chief of Police David Rohrer said he’s working on converting the text. It should be ready for the board to review, prior to the vote, by June 7.

Supervisor Cathy Hudgins (D-Hunter Mill) began the discussion with a question from a constituent regarding how police are trained to aim guns at or around a person’s center mass.

Lt. Brian Ruck from the Fairfax County Police Department gave a brief demonstration of the “ready gun,” “tac [tactical] ready” and “modified ready” carry positions using a blue fake firearm.

“It’s all about angles, so I can see the offender,” Ruck said, while raising and lowering his arms slightly to differentiate between the specified positions.

Ruck also demonstrated how officers are taught to keep their trigger finger on the frame of the handgun and off the trigger until the moment they intent to fire at their target.

“They need to articulate an immediate threat, a reasonable threat,” he said.

Supervisor Kathy Smith (D-Sully) expressed concern that a pilot for body cameras on police officers might not move forward until next year: “I’d hate to see us wait that long to do deal with this.”

Supervisor Jeff McKay (D-Lee) said one of the concerns with not moving forward yet had been legislation in the Virginia General Assembly on body cameras. “We don’t know what the state’s going to do,” McKay said.

Supervisor Pat Herrity (R-Springfield) expanded that being on the “bleeding edge” versus “cutting edge” of the technology might not be in the county’s best interests.

Supervisor Penny Gross (D-Mason) acknowledged her rare agreement with Herrity in this instance. “We could be bleeding a lot of taxpayer money if we get ahead of the law,” Gross said.

Phillip Niedzielski-Eichner, chairman of the Ad Hoc commission Use of Force subcommittee, brought up the recommendation that every police officer be required to have an Electronic Control Weapon (or taser) on their person while on patrol. Currently it’s only optional, he said.

Chief of Police Edwin Roessler said the department is “moving toward that goal,” and confirmed that every officer certified to use the weapon may carry one at their discretion.

There was little additional conversation on tasers from the supervisors.

Merni Fitzgerald, chair of the Ad Hoc commission communications subcommittee, spoke about the need for a community engagement team as a formal way to make sure there’s “back and forth” exchange with the public and the police department.

Roessler responded that his department has recently applied for a Department of Justice grant that would help fund such a team.

Also during the communications discussion over release of information following an officer-involved incident, Smith said she was concerned about language for the action item. Roessler has said he needs up to 10 days following the incident to conduct a thorough threat assessment for the officer and his or her family.

The way the item reads, Smith said, the supervisors would be able to overturn that action by the chief and force the release of an officer’s name sooner.

“No one’s saying the board would overturn that,” Chairman Sharon Bulova said. But, she said, “the board needs to be given latitude to have a discussion.”

Supervisor John Cook (R-Braddock), chairman of the Public Safety Committee, expanded on Bulova’s comment. “The public needs to know it’s our job to come out of closed session, get in front of a camera and say it was the chief’s decision and we’re backing up the chief,” Cook said. “The chief had a recommendation, we were briefed on it. It’s a public obligation.”

The next meeting of the Public Safety Committee is scheduled for July 19.

So, if you sift through the double talk, nothing has changed

Annual police report highlights community engagement, department reform

By Angela Woolsey/Fairfax County Times

The Fairfax County Police Department has undergone some significant changes over the past couple of years, as evidenced by the FCPD Annual Report for 2015, which the department’s public affairs bureau released on May 3.

After receiving recommendations issued by an ad hoc commission established by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors to review department practices, the FCPD adopted several new policies or initiatives aimed at improving relations with community members while emphasizing the importance of trust and transparency.

“The Fairfax County Police Department has engaged with the community to continually learn and re-engineer our policies and practices,” FCPD Chief Edwin Roessler wrote in the report. “In [calendar year] 2015, the Fairfax community and the men and women of the police department continued to achieve our vision of preventing and fighting crime, increasing a culture of safety by valuing the preservation of the sanctity of life for all, and keeping pace with urbanization.”

According to the report, crime was down slightly in 2015 from the previous year, decreasing from 38,561 to 38,306 crimes, a noticeably smaller drop than what the county saw between 2014 and 2013, when there were 41,704 crimes.

More than 25,000 of the incidents reported in 2015 were crimes against property, a category that includes arson, robbery, vandalism, and financial crimes like fraud, extortion and counterfeiting.

By comparison, there were 7,712 crimes against persons, which are calculated based on the number of victims and include assault, homicide and sexual offenses, and 5,388 crimes against society, which include drug, gambling, prostitution, pornography and weapons law offenses.

There were 13 homicides in Fairfax County in 2015, up from 10 in 2014, with six of those murders occurring in the Mount Vernon district, according to a more detailed FCPD statistical report for 2014 and 2015.

Three of the department’s 2015 homicide cases remain active, according to the annual report.

2015 saw a drop of approximately 25 percent in the number of victims of sex offenses from 2014. The most significant changes came in the Mount Vernon and Mason districts, where the number of victims dropped from 50 to 22 and 45 to 28, respectively, though the Sully district experienced an increase with its victim total rising from 12 to 25.

The number of crimes against property and society both stayed about the same from 2014 to 2015.

2015 also saw a decrease in the number of arrests, which have declined since 2013, despite a slight increase in calls for service.

However, one of the biggest focuses of the 2015 FCPD annual report is not crime, but rather, the department’s efforts to create what it calls a “culture of engagement.”

Concerns about the police department’s relationship with the community it serves cropped up following the 2013 shooting of Springfield resident John Geer by former Fairfax County police officer Adam Torres, who was fired from the department in August 2015 and pleaded guilty to manslaughter on Apr. 18.

Though Torres isn’t scheduled for a sentencing hearing until June 24, the county and police department have already worked to address the fallout from Geer’s shooting, which raised questions about the use of force and transparency regarding the release of information on officer-involved incidents.

The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, led by Chairman Sharon Bulova, created a “communities of trust” committee in January 2015 to “advance collaboration, partnerships, and outreach between public safety agencies and the communities they serve.”

Composed of citizens, the communities of trust committee works with the FCPD, the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office, and the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department, along with state and federal agencies, the Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) system, and community and faith leaders.

The Board of Supervisors also formed an ad hoc commission to review FCPD practices on Mar. 3, 2015, and the commission presented 142 policy recommendations to the board on Oct. 20.

In addition to emphasizing the need for a department culture that values every citizen’s life, the commission recommended improved mental health and crisis intervention team (CIT) training as well as the establishment of a citizens’ review board and an independent audit position to provide oversight.

Though the Board of Supervisors is still in the process of reviewing many of the commission’s recommendations, the FCPD has implemented some of the suggested practices since the commission’s report came out.

Roessler said last year that the department has adopted the national decision-making model of policing, which teaches officers to assess risk, consider their options and develop a response strategy before taking action. The department has also revised its recruit training programs to focus on decision-making skills and mental health and crisis awareness before teaching weapons and marksmanship.

According to the FCPD 2015 annual report, community leader Mattie Palmore, an at-large commissioner on the Fairfax County Commission for Women, was responsible for mentoring recruits on “building trust and investing in the future of the communities” they will serve.

The department addressed the commission’s recommendations regarding mental health awareness and CIT training in part by developing the program Diversion First, which was originally spurred by the February 2015 death of inmate Natasha McKenna in a county jail.

Officially launched on Jan. 1, 2016, Diversion First allows police officers to bring low-risk offenders with mental illness or substance abuse issues to a treatment center instead of incarcerating them.

Roessler announced at a Feb. 11 press conference that the police department had diverted 103 people to the Merrifield Crisis Response Center in the first month of Diversion First.

The 2015 annual report shows that the FCPD launched 43 use-of-force investigations into incidents involving people suspected of having a mental health episode and received 2,838 calls for service involving people experiencing mental health issues that didn’t result in the use of force. It remains to be seen what kind of impact Diversion First will have on those numbers in the future.

The FCPD also spent 2015 heavily involved in the county’s efforts to combat a recent increase in the abuse of opioid-based prescription painkillers and heroin, participating in a regional Heroin Operations Team (HOT) along with several other agencies and jurisdictions in the area.

Fairfax County had 65 heroin overdoses and six heroin-related deaths in 2015, compared to 66 overdoses and 17 deaths in 2014, which rose from 41 overdoses and nine deaths in 2013. However, the FCPD annual report notes that these 2015 statistics are incomplete, since 39 cases are still pending with lab results that have yet to come in from Virginia’s state crime lab.

The annual report also covers community engagement efforts conducted by individual police districts as well as crime statistics for specific divisions, including animal control, the criminal investigations bureau, and the traffic division in the operations support bureau.

The report can be found in the “Inside FCPD” section on the FCPD’s website.

U.S. Police Just Killed More People In March Than All Police Shootings In the U.K. Since 1900!

To put how many people U.S. police kill in perspective, it helpful to compare the death toll of Americans, to those killed by law enforcement in other countries. .

 

In the month of March alone, a total of 111 people were killed by police in the United States. Compare that to the grand total of the entire United Kingdom, since 1900: only 52 people have been killed by police in the past 115 years.

Granted, the U.K. is much smaller than the United States, but that is still an astronomically lower death rate for civilians in the U.K. than in the U.S.

U.S. cops kill twice as many people ever single month than the U.K. cops have since 1900.

In the U.S., March’s total is 36 more citizens killed than the previous month.

 

The Fairfax County Police need more time to learn to stop killing citizen

Fairfax Co. leaders press for patience on police overhaul

By Max Smith | @amaxsmith

FAIRFAX, Va. — Nearly three years after John Geer was shot and killed by a police officer in his Springfield home, and weeks after that officer pleaded guilty, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors took up recommendations for changes to use of force and transparency.

Community members said Fairfax County police mishandled the release of information regarding the 2013 shooting of John Geer, which created many of the concerns discussed Tuesday, said Tom Wilson of the Police Executive Research Forum.

Wilson’s group and a county commission, formed in the wake of Geer’s death, have made dozens of recommendations to the county that are being worked through by the board over the next year.

Only 7 percent of the recommendations have been completed.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Sharon Bulova understands that votes on use of force policies and transparency next month may not appear to be coming soon enough, but joins other supervisors in backing more deliberate action.

“The public feels that we’re taking too much time,” Bulova said. “However, these are weighty issues, and we don’t want to look back a year or two or more and say we were too hasty and that we made bad decisions. This is important stuff.”

Tuesday’s committee meeting, and expected votes in late June, focus on communication and use of force.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Ray Morrogh said oversight of investigations and release of information that he is allowed to share ethically could help turn things around.

“I feel public confidence is on the wane,” he said.

His office was set to take former Fairfax County police officer Adam Torres to trial for the murder of John Geer, but Torres agreed to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter.

Even though many suggestions to the county remain outstanding, the chair of the ad hoc police commission’s use of force subcommittee, Phil Niedzielski-Eichner, praised Police Chief Ed Roessler for progress in many areas.

Supervisor John Foust said Roessler is making changes that at least will help public perception.

“I see a change, so we can argue about whether it was always this way or not, but I think it was a great police force, I think you’re doing some things that are going to make it better,” Foust said.

The county does not plan to immediately address some other commission recommendations, like police body cameras or changes to freedom of information laws.

Sean Corcoran of the Fairfax Coalition of Police Local 5000 said while the much-trumpeted new training is great, it is not a major shift.

“I don’t want to burst anybody’s bubble, but I see absolutely nothing new here,” he said. “This is fundamentals in communication, these are fundamentals in what we expect of our officers, there’s nothing that I haven’t been hearing for 15 years in this department and beyond that.”

Officers’ representatives questioned recommendations from PERF and the ad hoc commission to release the names of officers involved in deadly incidents within a week, raising concerns about potential threats to officers.

He also questioned the emphasis on proportional use of force.

“This is not some sort of choreographed fight scene from a Hollywood movie. If somebody makes that choice that they’re going to take that route and the officer or the officers have to use force, it needs to be definitive, it needs to be overwhelming, and they need to take care of it and get it done as soon as possible and resolve the situation as quickly as possible, because the longer we delay these things, that’s when injuries occur,” Corcoran said.

While there is public pressure to move forward with recommendations, both from members of the commission and others in the public who attended Tuesday’s committee meeting, Supervisor Pat Herrity is concerned that six police department command staff are spending the majority of their time working to address the recommendations.

“I think we need to move this stuff forward, but I don’t want to have this become the obsession when we’re dealing with heroin issues, human trafficking issues, crimes against the elderly issues, [etc.],” Herrity said.

Roessler says the department is doing new training and other changes so far within the approved budget.

“Don’t shoot until you have a clear AND SAFE target” is not taught or understood by the Fairfax County Police

Fairfax police hunt for robber after gun fight that leaves 1 hurt

By Dan Morse and Fredrick Kunkle May 21

A gun battle erupted between a jewelry store robber and a police officer at a Fairfax County shopping center Saturday afternoon — an exchange that wounded a bystander and sent people running for cover.

One nearby merchant said there were so many shots that it sounded like rain on a tin roof.

“A lot really fast,” said Jackie Caroe, a manager at Max Muscle, a nutrition supplements store in the Brookfield Plaza shopping center in the Springfield area.

Fairfax authorities on Saturday evening were searching for a man who they say traded fire with the officer, then climbed into a getaway car, drove off, crashed, carjacked another car, crashed again and ran away.

“The suspect exited the jewelry store and immediately opened fire upon our police officer,” said Fairfax Police Chief Edwin Roessler. “And the officer got engaged in a gun battle.”

Roessler said a bystander, who was in a car, was hit by a round that “appears to be from” the robber’s weapon. The victim was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, officials said. The officer was not injured. It wasn’t clear whether the robber was hit.

At 12:22 p.m. Saturday, police received a call for an “unknown situation” inside the Dubai Jewelry store at the Brookfield Plaza shopping center, just south of the Interstate 95 interchange with the Capital Beltway. An officer who responded set up in a “cover and concealment” position outside the store, Roessler said.

The officer then saw a man exit the store armed with a handgun.

“The officer immediately challenged the suspect,” Roessler said. “The suspect then immediately opened fire.”

“As the officer continued with the gun battle, the suspect fled into a getaway car that was stationed nearby,” Roessler said. The gunman appeared to be acting alone, police said.

Inside the Max Muscle shop, Caroe wasn’t at first sure what she was hearing. Then she heard sirens, saw police and learned what had happened.

“I mean, it’s kind of scary,” she said.

Another person who heard the gunfire, Daysi Mazariegos, was working in her tax-preparing business. Mazariegos said she heard three shots, then a burst of eight or more. They sounded to her like a nail gun, as if from construction workers. That’s what she said to her husband, who was also in the office.

“No, those are shots,” he told her.

She looked outside and saw police officers and bystanders running along a wall.

After he drove off, the robber crashed in the area of Spring Village Drive. He stole another car, police said. No one was injured in the carjacking, police said. The robber then drove to the 7600 block of Hooes Road.

“The suspect crashed again,” the chief said, “and then fled on foot.”

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Patrol officers, police dogs and at least one helicopter were used in the search.

Police described the man as 20 to 30 years old, wearing all brown clothing. They cautioned that he may have changed clothes.

During part of the search, residents in the Hooes Road area were told to shelter in place.

Brookfield Plaza and the area around the jewelry store were sealed off while officers collected evidence.

Officials didn’t immediately know how many rounds were fired outside the jewelry store. “There were many shots fired,” Roessler said.

Fairfax County Police add to their greatest hits list

Fairfax police seek witnesses to a struggle before a ‘severely autistic’ man’s death

By Fenit Nirappil

Fairfax County detectives are looking for witnesses to a struggle in Falls Church between officers and a severely autistic man who died after the encounter.

Officers who were seeking a missing person found Paul Gianelos on a commercial strip on Annandale Road shortly after 1 p.m on April 20. Police said the 45-year-old man became combative for unknown reasons when they tried to escort him to a cruiser, and in an ensuing struggle, Gianelos ended up on the ground and in handcuffs.

Medics came to examine an abrasion on Gianelos’s head and determined he was “suffering a medical emergency,” police have said in a news release. He died later at a hospital, and autopsy results are pending.]

Authorities want to talk to passengers of a 3A Metro bus on Annandale Road heading to East Falls Church that passed by the struggle, in addition to anyone else driving or walking nearby.

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Gianelos was handcuffed on the 3100 block about a mile and a half north of Roundtree Park, where he had wandered off from a lunch organized by a group that helps people with disabilities.

Anyone with information can call Detective Cara Griffith at 703-246-7526.

The incident is under investigation by the Office of the Commonwealth’s Attorney for Fairfax County and the county police department’s Major Crimes and Internal Affairs divisions.

Gianelos had no history of violence and could not speak, his brother Jim Gianelos previously told The Washington Post.

Fairfax police release names of officers involved in struggle with autistic man who died

By Justin Jouvenal April 27

Fairfax County police released the names of the officers who were involved in a struggle with a severely autistic man who died following the encounter in Falls Church last week.

Police said Wednesday that Master Police Officer Michael Meszaros, a 25-year veteran, was the first to make contact with 45-year-old Paul Gianelos after he wandered away from his caretakers at Roundtree Park and they alerted authorities on April 20.

Meszaros and Pfc. Hyun Chang, a six-year veteran, found Gianelos over a mile away on a commercial strip and tried to escort the Annandale man back to a police cruiser, police said.

“It was at this time there was a struggle and the two officers and Mr. Gianelos found themselves on the ground,” police said in a news release.

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Fairfax County police did not detail what happened during the struggle or explain how Gianelos and the officers ended up on the ground. Officer Jessica Kenna and her training instructor, Pfc. Courtney Young, a 15-year veteran, then arrived on the scene and helped put Gianelos in handcuffs, police said.

The officers called for a paramedic team to assess an abrasion on Gianelos’s forehead. After the medics arrived, Gianelos suffered a medical emergency and the medics began performing CPR on Gianelos, the release said. He was later pronounced dead at the hospital.

Police said the investigation into the case is ongoing.

Fairfax County cop collects kiddie porn

  

Ex-Fairfax police officer pleads guilty to possessing child pornography

By Tom Jackman May 23 at 2:09 PM

Former Fairfax County police officer William “Bud” Walker pleaded guilty Monday to 10 counts of possessing child pornography. (Fairfax County Police Department)

A former Fairfax County police officer pleaded guilty Monday to 10 counts of possessing child pornography, and he was handcuffed in the courtroom and taken to the Fairfax jail without bond as soon as his hearing ended.

William M. “Bud” Walker, 50, was a Fairfax officer for 15 years, with his last six years spent as a spokesman in the police public information unit, handling daily inquiries from the news media and the public about the department’s activities and cases. Prior to that, he was a school resource officer at South County High School. In April 2015, police received a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) about suspected child pornography photos uploaded to a Tumblr account. Detectives eventually traced the account to Walker, assistant Fairfax commonwealth’s attorney Jessica Greis-Edwardson said Monday.

The prosecutor said Walker agreed to speak with Fairfax detectives and acknowledged managing the Tumblr account, which had been shut down once for an inappropriate photo. The police searched Walker’s home computer and submitted 20 images to NCMEC, which maintains a database of child porn victims, and the organization said two of the photo subjects were known victims, Greis-Edwardson said. She described the 10 photos that constituted the 10 counts as all being of naked teenage boys, some alone and some engaged in sex acts. Walker was not accused of creating any of the images himself.

Walker was arrested and jailed on April 15, 2015, and released on $15,000 bond two days later, court records show. He was indicted on the 10 possession counts in September. He did not speak in court Monday other than to plead guilty and answer questions from Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Daniel E. Ortiz. Each count carries a sentencing range of one to five years in prison, and there was no agreement reached with prosecutors as to the sentence. Ortiz set Walker’s sentencing for Aug. 12.

Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Raymond F. Morrogh said after the hearing, “I thought the Fairfax County Police Department did a great job in putting the case together and bringing Mr. Walker to justice.” Walker becomes the second Fairfax police officer convicted of a felony this year. Last month, former officer Adam D. Torres pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the 2013 shooting death of John B. Geer. He also is held in the Fairfax jail without bond awaiting sentencing next month, in which prosecutors have agreed to a 12-month jail sentence.