By Editorial Board August 15
FAIRFAX COUNTY’S police force,
which has become notorious for withholding information in cases of
police-involved shootings — even going so far as failing to report incidents
for the FBI’s use in compiling national statistics — has made a gesture toward
openness. The department, with 1,372 officers the state’s biggest local police
agency, has issued a breakdown of every police-involved shooting, and its
aftermath, within its 407-square-mile borders over the past decade — a useful
step in the direction of transparency.
The data are at once familiar and
novel. Cases made notorious in the headlines — Salvatore J. Culosi, the unarmed
optometrist, shot to death in 2006; David A. Masters, the unarmed former Green
Beret, shot to death in 2009; John Geer, the unarmed father of two, shot to
death in his own doorway in 2013 — are reprised. So is the melee in 2006 in
which a gunman wielding an AK-47 assault rifle and other weapons attacked a
police station in Chantilly, fatally wounding a detective and another officer
before he was killed in the crossfire.
In all, starting in 2005, the
department details 37 instances of police-involved shootings, and their toll:
16 civilians killed, and another 16 wounded.
In 13 of those instances, the
civilians on whom the police opened fire were unarmed, although in most cases
they were driving vehicles in a way that the officer or officers at the scene
perceived as dangerous or threatening.
The good news, we suppose, is that
it appears police-involved shootings in the county have been occurring with
somewhat less frequency. After several years of six or seven such incidents
annually, there has been no year with more than three since 2008 — and none so
far this year.
The data and, especially, the
descriptions of individual incidents are a reminder of the hazards of police
work and the enormous pressure under which officers are sometimes forced to
make highly charged, split-second decisions.
They are also a reminder of how
reluctant Fairfax, like many other states and localities, has been to find
fault with officers who open fire in the line of duty.
Out of the 37 shootings examined
in the past decade, only five have been adjudged to constitute a violation of
Fairfax police rules and regulations. In no instance in the past decade, nor in
the several decades before that, have county prosecutors found a police officer
criminally liable for having opened fire.
That long precedent may be upset
in the coming weeks if a special grand juryconvened to review the shooting of
Geer hands up an indictment of Adam D. Torres, the officer who shot Geer as he
stood at the threshold of his home in Springfield two years ago. Mr. Torres was
fired from the police force late last month.
It’s worth noting that the
decision to call a grand jury to examine Mr. Torres’s actions in the Geer case
came about only after months of pressure by a judge, a U.S. senator, local
elected officials and the media. Hopefully the police in Fairfax are starting
to get the message that openness is a critical part of their compact with the
community their serve.
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