Fairfax County Police Watch: April 2015

Those damn pens

John Faust said and did nothing to rope in the county police

Damn dog

John Faust said and did nothing when the cops gunned down two unarmed men

What could go wrong?

John Faust

Did and said nothing when the cops gunned down two unarmed citizens

WANTS YOU TO REELECT HIM

Only in the Washington DC area would local government decide that the best way to solve a government created problem is to bring in more government.

That’s exactly what Sharon Bulova is doing in creating a toothless tiger-publicity stunt called the Police Commission which Bulova and the Board of Supervisors slapped together after the John Geer killing became yet another international black eye for Fairfax County. (Yep…the Geer killing made the news in Europe, Asia and Australia)

Sadly, the investigation into the killing began only after a United States Senator from a different state forced the Board of Supervisors County to investigate the killing…..and they did……they leaped into action by ASKING the cops if they would consider investigating themselves and then, essentially, apologized for asking.

In the real world when you don’t do your job you get fired. In the real world when you kill people, there’s an investigation. In the real world when a man dies, somebody pays hell….but not in Fairfax County where the politicians elected to serve and protect the people instead fear, protect and serve the cops and the cops kill innocent every twenty to twenty five months….and get away with it.

We need to start firing people and should start with the Board of Supervisors because we elect and pay the Supervisors to keep things in check and they haven’t done

that….repeatedly. Instead of governing correctly, when the arrogant occupation force that is the Fairfax County Police kills unarmed citizens, the Supervisors write a massive seven figure check from public and no one is fired and no one goes to jail. And now as the election grows closer and the bodies pile up, we suddenly have a massive police committee we don’t need that is empowered to do nothing.

To justify their needless committee the Supervisors claim they’re using the committee to examine use of force. Creating a panel on use-of-force by the Fairfax County Police isn’t needed largely because, although the problem exists, it just barely exists. The Fairfax County Police killing innocent and unarmed citizens is an anomaly and always will be. The department handles thousands of calls a year and rarely gets involved in gun play and when they do, it’s almost always the bad guys who start shooting first.

Factually, the Fairfax County Police are, comparative to other forces of the same size, a sparkling example of what urban policing should be. (To see a bad example of urban policing look at San Diego, San Jose, Baltimore, Cleveland and Chicago which will pay out HALF- BILLION this year in police brutality suits.

The Fairfax Police department seems to oversee itself well enough and when it doesn’t, it gets in trouble. (See the Polsi killings, the Sean Lanigan frame up, the Geer killing and the guy they shot to death for stealing a fake tree……yeah, that actually happened)

As for transparency, what freedom of information doesn’t get released, the courts will order released. The Geer case has proven that. And again, the Geer case is an abnormal occurrence in the day to day activity of the Fairfax County Police, which, for the most part, does a better than average job of staying in touch with citizenry.

The cop’s near artistic stonewalling is generally done in high profile court cases under the advice of legal counsel because it’s an ugly but legitimate legal tactic used regularly in the justice system and especially helpful when dealing with a department instead of an individual. We can’t take that ploy from the cops because I want the right to stonewall in court. I don’t want that taken away from me. We can’t have one set of laws for the cops and one for the rest of us. ……although, if you think about it, it’s sorta what we have now anyway isn’t it?

But overall, the cops don’t get away with much. It’s a fact in some part due to the power of the press. Most of the local media has done an admirable job reporting the recent abuses by the Fairfax County Police.

On that subject, there are also several members of the media on the Bulova’s idiotic committee ….well, one of them is an television news representative which is sort of like a news organization but with attention-deficit issues,….but anyway, is it ethical for members of the media to be part of a board like this?

If it isn’t ethical it’s certainly uncomfortable and a little dangerious too. Nobody wants the press having coffee and donuts with the cops on a committee formed to keep anything bad from happening to the cops…the only ones who benefit from stuff like that are the cops. Look, America doesn’t expect a damn thing out of the press except this; when the reporters show up, the politicians and bureaucrats should get nervous. As long as that happens, the free press is doing its job and right now, that doesn’t look like what’s happening here in Fairfax County.

There are 12 cops and/or retired cops on this useless committee. In fact, half of the committee, fifteen members, are presently employed by the Fairfax County government or retired from the Fairfax County government ……do really you think they’re going bite the hand that feeds them or change anything at all?

And look where this thing is going…..….I mean putting Hairy Raorererer-er-er on the committee? Wasn’t he one of the primary architects of the insular arrogance that has brought the Fairfax County Police to the wrong kind of international attention?

Come on people…..a vampire IS NOT going to solve a robbery at the blood bank.

Look, we DO have solvable problems within the Fairfax County Police Department but we DON’T have systematic problems within the Fairfax County Police Department. Corruption within the ranks is virtually none existent and always has been. Brutality against citizens, entrapment and theft…… although they no doubt happen…..are rare.

So why do we need….God help us…yet another powerless window dressing committee?

In a way it doesn’t really matter. This committee, whose true purpose is to save Sharon Bulova’s career, will rubber a stamp a lot of things, take photos, eat a lot of donuts at our expense and eventually disappear. A few months later a cop will gun down another unarmed citizen, the Board of Supervisors will cut another massive check to the family, we’ll make international news again and then the citizens will demand Police oversight. And while police oversight is a grand idea, factually it doesn’t work. Check the national stats. There are about 200 civilian oversight committees around the US. Most are a joke and many others have been disbanded because they are ineffective and highly politicized like this monster incubating in Fairfax County.

Police oversight simply hasn’t worked nor does helicopter-intrusive committee work either.

You know what does work?

Body cameras work.

They are the kryptonite of punk cops everywhere.

Put cameras on them and be done with it.

We need to do this….we need to force every hood on the force to wear a camera. It’s a simple choice that boils down to this; keep on dolling out multi-million dollar checks to the dead guys family or spend a hell of a lot less the money on body cameras.

The concept of body cameras is simple. Stop the cops from saying or doing something stupid BEFORE they do it.

Forming a committee to talk about what stupid things the cops did AFTER they did it is just dumb, well it’s government worker-think ,which I suppose is basically the same thing.

Body cameras will put a quick end to the arrogance killing by the Fairfax County cops and it will put even a quicker end to the common perception that the FCP is staffed by a bunch of lazy punks with an attitude problem.

As I said before, the other way to solve this issue is to fire the people who hire the cops, the “I wasn’t aware there was a police problem” members of the board of supervisors….like Sharon Bulova. The fact is that had the Board of Supervisors acted on the issue of the cops shooting unarmed citizens several years ago, this wouldn’t be a problem today.

Fire the people who hire the cops and watch how quickly things change.

Bring in competent leaders FROM OUTSIDE THE DC AREA to run the department.

We predicted several years ago that under chief what’s-his-face…the bald guy who loves wearing that ridicules hat, that nothing would change but we were wrong.

Things did change.

They got worse.

Bring in a new police chief and new public safety director from outside the Fairfax County government Lifers club.

Bring in a police chief from the outside who is honest and relentless in seeking true attitude change. Create an office of internal affairs whose goal is not to protect the police department at all costs…that’s what we have now…..but one that will protect both the police department from unreasonable complaints and protect the citizens from unreasonable policing practices.

When a complaint is filed against a cop the complaint should not be removed from the cops file after 60 days as it is now. Rather the complaint should stay there for the length of the cop’s employment with the county.

Do we really need the expense of a Royal Fairfax County Police Navy for the Potomac? How about the Royal Fairfax County Police Air Force? Which is better for the county…..more roads, less traffic, smaller class room sizes and more teachers or the cops having a fleet of helicopters and boats to toy around with?

Disempower. Do the cops really have to go around scanning thousands license plates? Cut back the cop’s remarkably generous budget of $217 million dollars. If we’re going to pay the cops that kind of money at least require them to get an AA degree in criminal Justice.

Transform the cops from an occupation force…….87% of the cops live outside the county, hence the punk attitude….and turn them into a local police force by forcing them to live in Fairfax County. It’s a good idea because when there’s a chance one of these punk cops could run into the civilians they smart-mouthed at the local Safeway, the transformation from thug to police officer will be swift. The excuse that cops can’t afford to live in Fairfax County is a bald faced lie.

Back to Bulova’s pointless committee.

Who are these civilians on the committee? Are they qualified to judge whether a cop followed a department's rules governing use of force? Do civilians have any training to understand what the cop faces? Do they have any real world insights into an Officers split-second decision involving life or death?

The answer is no. Only cops have that ability and there comes a time when we simply have to trust the police to police themselves. So let the cops watch over the cops and allow the judicial system, a free press and the unflinching eye of a body camera watch over everyone else. That will work. That will correct the problem.

What won’t work, what won’t correct the problem, are a group of publicity seeking panjandrums in need of an ego boast and well-meaning citizens poking around in complex area they don’t fully understand. Policing IS NOT a part time gig and while we need to keep an eye on the Fairfax County Police that doesn’t mean we need to create a pointless babysitting committee so Sharon Bulova can keep her job.

Fairfax County Police

“When the ax came into the woods, many of the trees said, “At least the handle is one of us.”

Only in the Washington DC area would local government decide that the best way to solve a government created problem is to bring in more government.

We need to start firing people and should start with the Board of Supervisors because we elect and pay the Supervisors to keep things in check and they haven’t done

Come on people…..a vampire IS NOT going to solve a robbery at the blood bank.

So why do we need….God help us…yet another powerless window dressing committee?

Police oversight simply hasn’t worked nor does helicopter-intrusive committee work either.

You know what does work?

Body cameras work.

They are the kryptonite of punk cops everywhere.

Put cameras on them and be done with it.

The concept of body cameras is simple. Stop the cops from saying or doing something stupid BEFORE they do it.

Forming a committee to talk about what stupid things the cops did AFTER they did it is just dumb, well it’s government worker-think ,which I suppose is basically the same thing.

Fire the people who hire the cops and watch how quickly things change.

Bring in competent leaders FROM OUTSIDE THE DC AREA to run the department.

We predicted several years ago that under chief what’s-his-face…the bald guy who loves wearing that ridicules hat, that nothing would change but we were wrong.

Things did change.

They got worse.

Bring in a new police chief and new public safety director from outside the Fairfax County government Lifers club.

Back to Bulova’s pointless committee.

Don't muss up my beer now

Ernest Hemingway took a urinal from his favorite bar and moved it into his Key West home, arguing that he had “pissed away” so much of his money into the urinal that he owned it.

These guys are an endless ball of laughs

Deputy ‘inadvertently’ shoots suspect with gun, believing he was using Taser

A Tulsa County reserve deputy is on administrative leave after “inadvertently” shooting a suspect with his gun.

Police say Robert (Bob) Bates, 73, thought he pulled out his Taser during an arrest, but instead shot the suspect, who later died at a local hospital.

The shooting happened after an apparent drug and gun selling operation by the Tulsa Violent Crimes task force Thursday. Bates, a member of the task force, was part of a group of deputies trying to arrest Eric Courtney Harris, 44, in the parking lot of a Dollar General store.

Police say Harris, a convicted felon, sold undercover officers a pistol. When confronted by an arrest team, he fled the scene on foot and police say they “observed him reaching for his waistband area …causing concern for the deputies safety.”

After a brief pursuit, police say Harris was forced to the ground, where he continued to resist arrest and “refused to pull his left arm from underneath his body where his hand was near his waistband.”

It was during this portion of the arrest that police say “the reserve deputy was attempting to use less lethal force, believing he was utilizing a Taser, when he inadvertently discharged his service weapon, firing one round which struck Harris.”

Harris died at a local hospital and his cause of death is under investigation. Police say Harris admitted to medics at the scene that he may have been under the influence of Phencyclidine, a street drug commonly known as PCP.

My father used to say "Well that will come back to bite you in ass"

Virginia bans asking job applicants about criminal history

Governor Terry McAuliffe on Friday signed an executive order making Virginia the latest U.S. state to prohibit government employers from asking job applicants about their criminal history.

Virginia joins more than a dozen other states in its decision to “ban the box” on job applications that prospective employees are asked to check if they have been convicted of a crime.

An individual’s rap sheet may be considered only if it “bears specific relation to the job for which they are being considered,” such as child care workers, state troopers, court officers and jail guards, said gubernatorial spokesman Brian Coy.

"In a new Virginia economy, people who make mistakes and pay the price should be welcomed back into society and given the opportunity to succeed,” McAuliffe said in a statement.

"This executive order will remove unnecessary obstacles to economic success for Virginians who deserve a second chance," the Democratic governor said.

While the restriction applies to state hiring practices, McAuliffe said he hoped it would encourage private employers to follow suit.

The National Employment Law Project estimates that almost one in three adults in the United States has a criminal record that will show up on a routine criminal background check.

The move was applauded by Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, who aims to improve job re-entry programs for inmates released from jail.

"This is a responsible approach that keeps initial background checks for sensitive jobs in state government while ensuring that a youthful mistake or wrong decision doesn’t close the doors of opportunity for a lifetime," Herring said.

Other states that have banned the box, Coy said, include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico and Rhode Island.

From 1979 to 1993, NYC

From 1979 to 1993, NYC had upwards of 3000 non-working fire hydrants on sidewalks for the sole purpose of increasing parking violation revenue.

A tale of two killings: what happened when Idaho police shot a dog and a pregnant woman in one day

By Paul Lewis/ The Guardian

Fourteen hours and 45 miles apart in rural Idaho, two stories began. A community campaign led to ‘justice for Arfee’ after a pet’s killing outside a coffee shop. But there is no justice yet for the family of Jeanetta Riley

Two fatal police shootings unfolded within 14 hours, both in lakeside towns in the same corner of north-west Idaho.

The first victim was Jeanetta Riley, a troubled 35-year-old pregnant woman, shot dead by police as she brandished a knife outside a hospital in the town of Sandpoint. Her death barely ruffled the tight-knit rural community, which mostly backed the officers, who were cleared of wrongdoing before the case was closed.

The second shooting, in nearby Coeur d’Alene, sparked uproar. There were rallies, protests, sinister threats against the officer responsible, and a viral campaign that spread well beyond the town and drew an apology from the mayor. The killing was ruled unjustified, and the police chief introduced new training for his officers.

The victim of the second shooting: a dog named Arfee.

Two weeks ago, the dog’s owner received a payout of $80,000. Jeanetta Riley’s husband and three daughters have not, so far, received as much as an apology.

Both shootings occurred within a 50-mile radius of remote woodlands and lakes not far from the Canadian border. Each raised complex but different questions over the decision by officers to use their weapons.

The divergent reactions to the police killings of Riley, a mother of three, and Arfee, a Labrador-hound mix, speaks to a disturbing indifference to some human lives lost during encounters with police.

A dramatic spike in awareness of US police killings over the past year has put a spotlight on the use of lethal force by police and brought into sharp focus the actions of officers when confronting unarmed black men, such as Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City.

Yet each month there are dozens of police killings of disturbed individuals like Jeanetta Riley that barely register outside of the local news. A recent US government study concluded there are close to 1,000 people killed by police on average each year. Another piece of research estimated at least half of those shot and killed by police in America have mental health problems.

Animal rights activists say there is also an epidemic of needless police shootings of pet dogs: last year, according to figures compiled by campaigner Kristin Hoffman, 672 dogs were shot by police across the United States.

‘I decided to pull the trigger’

Jeanetta Riley was never going to be the kind of victim to elicit sympathy in a small, conservative town like Sandpoint. A Native American who was addicted to methamphetamine and alcohol, her life seemed in a downward spiral in the months leading up to her death on 8 July 2014.

Riley was tiny – five feet tall and weighing less than 100lb – and while she could be a caring, considerate mother, she was also prone to snap, sometimes violently, when drunk.

Her family said her troubles began as a young girl. Ray Foster, her first husband and the father of her first child, said Jeanetta once told him that she was forced to drink alcohol from the age of five on a reservation in neighbouring Washington. “They were doing it for fun, to watch the girl kind of clowning around,” he said.

jeanetta riley daughters idaho shooting Jeanetta Riley with her three daughters; Dayna, top, Dolly, left, and Hannah Photograph: Riley family

She had two more daughters, now aged eight and nine, with her second husband, Dana Maddox. In 2008, Riley was jailed for stabbing Maddox in the back.

In the summer of 2012, she married Shane Riley, a 44-year-old carpenter, and took his surname. Two years later the couple, who were injecting meth, gave up their newborn infant for adoption.

A few months later, the couple was homeless, living out of a 1996 Chevrolet parked beside a lake just south of Sandpoint. They were talking about divorce and quarrelling constantly.

Jeanetta and Shane were snapping at each other on the day she died, and doing so in front of her 13-year-old, Hannah, who had joined them camping for her vacation. The trio went fishing, panhandled beside a gas station and ate dinner at a shelter for the homeless.

But by late afternoon, the arguments were intensifying and Jeanetta was talking about harming herself. The couple dropped off Hannah at her stepfather’s house and returned to their camp beside the lake, picking up a bottle of vodka along the way.

After drinking half the bottle, Shane said, Jeanetta began threatening to kill herself. When Shane heard Jeanetta toying with blades, he decided to drive her to Bonner General hospital. He said Jeanetta sounded delirious, ranting about stabbing people and killing herself.

“This isn’t a joke,” Shane told his wife. “It’s not a game.”

Shane parked the van on the road outside the emergency room. Jeanetta took a fillet knife with a three-and-a-half-inch blade from beneath the car seat. Shane ran inside, pleading for help.

Rose Brinkmeier, who was behind the desk, later told police how a man in a white shirt came rushing in and said: “I need to you to call the police. My wife’s outside. She has a knife and she wants to kill people.”

Brinkmeier asked a nurse to hit a panic button, putting the hospital in lockdown, and then dialled 911 to pass the message onto Sandpoint police.

“Boom. They showed up pretty fast,” Shane recalled. Jeanetta was dead within 15 seconds.

Two body cameras and a third attached to a police dashboard leave no ambiguity over what happened when officers Michael Valenzuela, 27, and Garrett Johnson, 23, arrived in one car, and officer Skyler Ziegler, 29, in a second.

It was 9.16pm, the sky a dusky cyan. Jeanetta was in the van, holding the half-empty bottle of vodka and the knife, the passenger door open. Shane was next to the vehicle, trying to calm his wife. When the police arrived, Shane crossed the road, gesturing over his shoulder to point to his wife.

All three officers immediately took their weapons out and moved toward Jeanetta, who was 40ft away. She walked briskly toward them, the knife at her side.

“Walk over here,” Ziegler shouted. “Show me your hands.”

“Fuck you,” Jeanetta shouted. “No.”

Johnson, who had taken out his Glock 22 pistol, was stood slightly to the side.

Valenzuela had both hands clasping an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. He would later tell investigators he picked up the firearm because it happened to have been dislodged from his vehicle’s weapons rack en route to the hospital.

Ziegler, who was beside him, seemed unsure which weapon to use; in the space of seven seconds he returned his handgun to its holster, replaced it with a Taser-style stun gun that cast a red laser dot on Jeanetta’s torso, only to put it away and switch back to his handgun.

Repeatedly, Valenzuela and Ziegler shouted at Jeanetta to drop the knife. She refused: “Bring it on! No!”

Jeanetta was stepping off the curb, into the road and toward the two officers, when it happened. In 0.8 seconds, five bullets were discharged from both firearms. Three hit Jeanetta in the torso; one penetrated her heart.

She was 10ft from Valenzuela, who later told detectives he believed she was “absolutely gonna thrust at me”. “I decided at that point to pull the trigger,” he said. Ziegler recalled how the knife looked “huge in her hands”. He said he saw Valenzuela’s muzzle flash and felt himself “like following through with my trigger”.

Jeanetta was slumped on the road, face-down, when Ziegler handcuffed her hands behind her back and asked in a panicked voice: “Ma’am, are you still with us?”

‘Justice for Arfee’

News of Jeanetta’s death was a passing item on the local radio news as Craig Jones, a 49-year-old jet-ski instructor, pulled his van into the Java on Sherman coffee shop in downtown Coeur d’Alene.

He had just taken Arfee for his daily swim in the lake, and was headed for breakfast. Jones left his white Ford van in the parking lot, making sure to leave down the window enough to keep the two-year-old dog cool.

It was 11am, 45 miles south of the Sandpoint hospital where Jeanetta had been killed the previous night. Jones didn’t hear the gunshot; he only realised something was wrong when he came out of the coffee shop.

“This girl comes running across the street and says: ‘You didn’t see that? They shot your dog and they took him.’”

It took Jones a few seconds to make sense of the scene. Police had left a business card in his vehicle, with a telephone number scribbled on the back. “There was a blood trail through my van. It wasn’t a kill shot,” he recalled. “He went to the back and bucked around and squirted blood all over my van.”

Jones was devastated. He had raised Arfee since the dog was a puppy. The Lab mix had accompanied him everywhere he went and slept beside him in bed.

“I got one of my friends on Facebook,” he said. “I was like, ‘Get media here, ’cause crazy shit is happening here.’ KREM TV news was there pretty instantly.”

The “Justice for Arfee” campaign was under way within hours. Fuelled by anger over a Coeur d’Alene police press release that described Arfee as a “vicious pit bull”, the outrage intensified when the circumstances of the shooting were made public.

Dave Kelley, the officer who shot the dog, had been responding to reports of a suspicious white van following children in the area.

His partner, officer Jason Weidebush, saw no reason to draw his gun as the pair approached the van. Kelley did, creeping up on the van from behind to maintain the element of surprise on the occupant.

Unable to see through the dark-tinted window, Kelley made his way to the front, the handgun by his side, when he said a barking dog’s head suddenly lunged out of the window.

“I had the split-second thought that this dog is going to bite me,” Kelley said in a statement explaining his decision to fire a bullet through the window.

Arfee’s death instantly struck a chord. Paw-shaped bumper stickers began appearing on cars in northern Idaho, and pet owners hung “Don’t Shoot Me” signs on their dogs’ necks. There were calls for a boycott of the Java coffee shop and repeated demands for Kelley to be fired. There was a protest rally one day, and a vigil in a dog park the next.

Three days after the shooting, the first video purporting to contain a message from the hacking collective Anonymous appeared on YouTube. “Yet another innocent, beloved pet has been shot and killed by a police officer,” a character in the trademark Guy Fawkes mask said, warning of retribution against Coeur d’Alene police. “We are Anonymous. You can expect us.”

There were profanity-laced calls to the police department and threats against Kelley, who was labelled a “murderer”. Fearing for the officer’s safety, Coeur d’Alene police arranged patrols outside his house.

Arfee’s death was turning into a national story, with complaints lodged with the city’s mayor from as far afield as Alabama, Florida and New Hampshire.

A week later, Coeur d’Alene police chief Ron Clark announced he had reassigned Kelley to desk duty and promised an immediate, thorough investigation, vowing to do everything in his power to avoid a repeat of the tragedy. The sentiment was echoed by mayor Steve Widmyer. “We, as a city, are truly sorry,” he said.

By September, less than two months after Arfee’s shooting, a “use of deadly force” review board concluded the shooting was unjustified, a finding echoed by two external reviews. Kelley’s pay was cut, and mandatory training on how to treat dogs was introduced for every Coeur d’Alene police officer.

The program, created by the Justice Department, teaches officers to remain calm and assess their surroundings, reading a dog’s body language to distinguish between a scared and dangerous animal.

“This event has shaken the community’s confidence in our police department,” Coeur d’Alene’s new police chief, Lee White, said at a press conference announcing a slew of internal reforms prompted by Arfee’s death.

That, seemingly, was not enough. The regional Spokesman-Review newspaper ran an editorial warning that Arfee’s death had left “a festering wound of public mistrust”.

‘She got what she deserved’

Back in Sandpoint, Jeanetta Riley’s death had faded from public view as quickly as Arfee’s death had become a national story. She was one of the roughly 500 mentally unstable people shot dead by police each year; few ever remember the names of the victims.

The US supreme court last week heard arguments in the case of Teresa Sheehan, a mentally ill 56-year-old woman who was shot by San Francisco police in 2008 and survived. She, too, had threatened officers with a knife, but her attorneys contend police escalated an already-volatile situation when they forced their way into her room with guns drawn.

In November, two months after Arfee’s death was ruled unjustifiable, the officers who killed Jeanetta were cleared of wrongdoing by a local prosecutor who reviewed the investigation conducted by the Bonner County sheriff’s office.

But not everyone agreed. Peter Reedy, an FBI-trained hostage negotiator and former sergeant, argues officers were wrong to rush into a tense stand-off with their guns drawn and ended up aggravating a situation they should have diffused.

“First of all, do nothing,” he said after reviewing the footage. “Keep your distance, try to talk to her, don’t even take your gun out of your holster, try to calm things down and work out what you’re up against.”

A retired expert witness who lives in northern Idaho, Reedy has testified in dozens of cases. “If they had not responded to the call they way she did, I truly believe she would be alive right now,” he said.

Another critic of police was Dan Mimmack, a Sandpoint businessman who had never met Jeanetta but felt her death raised disturbing questions about the treatment of people with mental health issues. The Sandpoint police department provides officers with Crisis Intervention Training (CIT), which teaches police how to handle individuals with mental illness. Yet neither Valenzuela nor Ziegler had been on the course.

Mimmack said he organised the vigil to push back against others in town who felt “she got what she deserved” and call for improved training for Sandpoint officers.

Those demands went unheeded. Unlike in Coeur d’Alene, there have been no changes to policing practices in Sandpoint, although three more officers, including Valenzuela, did receive CIT training last month. And in contrast to Jones, who received an $80,000 payout for Arfee’s death without having to even lodge a lawsuit in court, there has been no payout to Jeanetta’s surviving relatives.

Scott Campbell, the city attorney for Sandpoint, said their insurers were considering legal notices of claims from both Shane and Jeanetta’s second husband, Dana Maddox. He declined to speculate on the prospect of compensation, but insisted it was unfair to judge the officers with the benefit of hindsight.

Valenzuela and Ziegler made a split-second decision, confronted by a dangerous person, with limited information about why the hospital had been placed in lockdown. Campbell also disputed the characterisation of Jeanetta as mentally disturbed, saying there were no psychiatric reports to verify that.

“What you had was a drug addict high on meth and alcohol,” he said, speculating that Jeanetta may have been seeking out a fatal encounter with police – or trying to commit “suicide by cop”.

Shane Riley appeared to lend weight to that theory when he was interviewed later that night by detectives. “I did not think she would go at the cops like that,” he told them. “It was like she was walking into her own grave.”

Shane’s attorney, Drew Dalton, said his client no longer believes his wife was actively trying to kill herself in the encounter with police. But even if Jeanetta had wanted the police to kill at that moment, he added, “doesn’t mean they had to oblige”.

A death at Spirit Lake

Three weeks ago, there was another woman wielding a fillet knife in a confrontation with police, in another lakeside town in northern Idaho.

The 55-year-old woman appeared to have swallowed several pills and drunk alcohol when officers arrived at her home in Spirit Lake, which is just off the road that links Sandpoint to Coeur d’Alene.

Local police chief Keith Hutcheson told the press that the woman was yelling “kill me, kill me” and lunging at officers with her knife – and that she later confessed she had been trying to provoke them into shooting her dead.

Instead, they subdued her with a stun gun. “A family member told us that she recently lost a daughter due to overdose and she’s had a history of depression,” Hutcheson said. “But, of course, we didn’t know that until afterward.”

For information and support in the US, visit the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or call 1-800-273-8255. For more information, contact the Samaritans.

Fairfax County Police Watch

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Some things never change