Why don't we call the Board of Supervisors Rohers bitches and get it over with?

Supervisors Delay Decision on More Police Oversight


Leader of citizen's group blasts lack of public involvement


Oakton Patch
By Will Sommer
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March 31, 2011

The Board of Supervisors delayed action on a proposal to increase oversight of the Fairfax County Police Department on Tuesday, instead sending the proposal to the Public Safety Committee.

Under the proposal from County Executive Anthony Griffin, citizens who felt unsatisfied with a police investigation of a complaint about an officer or an officer-involved shooting could petition Griffin for a separate investigation by the county's Internal Audit Office.
Currently, most complaints and officer-involved shootings are only investigated internally by FCPD.
“I don’t believe that we have achieved consensus," Supervisor Gerald Hyland (D-Mount Vernon), the chairman of the Public Safety Committee, said, adding that he expected the board to eventually reach agreement.
Sending the proposal to the Public Safety Commitee would allow for more input from citizens and give the supervisors another chance to hear from FCPD Chief David Rohrer, according to Hyland. The board accepted his proposal unanimously.
The drive to provide other avenues for investigation into FCPD comes in the wake of several controversial shootings by FCPD officers, including the January 2006 shooting death of an unarmed man in Fair Oaks and the November 2009 shooting of an unarmed, bipolar man in Fort Hunt.
Nicholas Beltrante, a Mount Vernon resident and former homicide detective in Washington's Metropolitan Police Department, thought there was something wrong with the FCPD internal investigations of the shootings.
"There have been a number of shooting deaths of Fairfax County citizens which I did not feel were justified," he said.
In April 2010, he formed the Virginia Citizens Association for Police Accountability, which advocates for FCPD incidents to be investigated by a review board that includes county residents with no connection to the government, rather than the Internal Audit Office.
On Wednesday, Beltrante criticized how the Board of Supervisors is handling the investigation process.
“There is no citizen participation in the process,” he said. Beltrante said his group will now send letters to each supervisor asking for a meeting, although he says previous requests for a meeting with Hyland have gone unanswered.