Where Sharon "Show me the money" on this? Where's the board of supervisors on this?
By Tom Jackman July
28
A request by the father
of David A. Masters, the unarmed motorist shot and killed by a Fairfax County
police officer in 2009, to see the investigative files and learn why the
shooting happened has been denied by Fairfax police Chief Edwin C. Roessler.
Roessler said that since there is no statute of limitations on murder or
manslaughter, he will not release the information and cited the clause in the
Virginia Freedom of Information Act that Fairfax police use to deny FOIA
requests for crime reports in virtually every case, according to areport issued
last week by a committee studying Fairfax police communications.
But there is no statute
of limitations on any felony in Virginia, giving Fairfax police justification
to deny all felony crime report requests forever. And Roessler’s denial letter,
received Monday by Masters’ father, retired Army colonel Barrie Masters of
Sanford, Fla., gives no indication that the Fairfax police ever intend to
change their policy of refusing access to police reports in officer-involved
shootings, instead discussing “review by an independent auditor” and “a higher
level of accountability for all.”
Masters, 52, was shot as
he drove away from Officer David S. Ziants on Route 1 in the Alexandria area of
Fairfax on Nov. 13, 2009. Ziants was not charged with a crime because he
believed, mistakenly, that Masters was reaching for a gun, was driving a stolen
vehicle and had run over another officer, Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney
Raymond F. Morrogh said in January 2010. But Ziants was fired for violating the
department’s use of deadly force policy.
But unlike the police
shootings of Salvatore Culosi Jr. in 2006 and John B. Geer in 2013, there was
no civil suit to force Fairfax police to release information about the Masters
case. Masters had named his ex-wife and stepdaughter as the executors of his
estate, but under Virginia law they were not entitled to recover any damages
since they were not his legal family, though they were his daily companions and
closest friends. Masters’ brother-in-law attempted to file a suit anyway in
2011, but it went nowhere.
Meanwhile, Masters’
father watched from a distance, his anger slowly burning. Then in May of this
year, Roessler suddenly released an in-car video camera tape of Ziants hustling
up to Masters’ vehicle and then firing shots just out of camera range, while
another officer screams at him to stop shooting. This outraged Barrie Masters,
who earlier this month sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the police
seeking everything related to the case.
In the letter below,
Roessler denied access to everything. “In an effort to provide transparency to
you on the internal administrative investigation,” Roessler wrote, “the Police
Department terminated Officer Ziants’ employment on March 24, 2011.” This was
publicly reported by The Post in June 2011, though a police spokeswoman then
said Ziants had been fired on May 6, 2011.
Roessler goes on to
discuss that his department has been working with the Ad Hoc Police Practices
Review Commission “to hopefully develop a process of increasing transparency in
many areas including those of officer-involved shooting cases.” The chief
explains that he hopes to create a review process so that the investigations
are thorough and that once a case is completely resolved, it could be reviewed
by an independent auditor. He does not mention ever making any investigative
documents publicly available.
Roessler’s letter, dated
Friday, was written a day after he was asked by The Post about releasing police
reports and said, “I’m considering a
change. There’s got to be more dialogue about how we respond to this. This is a
national dialogue, and the profession needs to change. I need to help this
department change. This is the community’s voice and I need to actively listen
and implement where I can.”
Barrie Masters responded
in an e-mail to Roessler Monday night that his use of the FOIA exemption for
“criminal investigative files” is something “You and your associates have
hidden behind this assertion for almost 6 years now, and of course, you well
know that the current law does not say the information requested is exempt from
release only that it can be released at the discretion of the custodian. Your own Police Practices Review Commission,
Communications Subcommittee, (which I fully support) has recommended you end
the blanket approach to suppressing information under the excuse of your own
interpretation of 2.2-3706 (2) and move toward the timely release of all
criminal investigative information..It is time that Fairfax County Government
and Fairfax County Law Enforcement join the rest of the Nation in advocating
transparency.”
Here is Roessler’s letter
denying Masters’ FOIA request:
Tom Jackman is a native
of Northern Virginia and has been covering the region for The Post since 1998.
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