Isn't the Washington Post Board just adorable?

They actually believe Fairfax County is going to enact police reform.......I mean, you just kind of want to hug em you know?

Want Police reform Washington Post?

Police reform begins at home,so to speak.  Stop treating cops differently than the way you treat cop victims........if a victim is named a suspected police abuse action then the cop should be named as well.  Do that and watch how quickly the cops fall into line.

A group called Justice for John Geer pickets on Jan. 8, 2015, in Fairfax.

(Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

By Editorial Board

EVEN NOW, nearly three years after the fact, Fairfax County officials seem slow to absorb the lessons from the coverup, foot-dragging, reflexive secrecy and mulish unaccountability occasioned by the unwarranted death of John Geer, the father of two who was shot and killed in his own doorway by a county police officer in Springfield.

Even now, after that public disgrace, the county’s elected leaders are hemming and hawing over establishing an all-civilian oversight panel that could render a clear-eyed judgment on allegations of abuse in Fairfax’s 1,400-officer police department, Virginia’s biggest local law enforcement agency.

Even now, after withering criticism of Fairfax’s inertia by a U.S. senator, a judge, citizens groups and the media, county politicians appear loath to confront police brass and rank-and-file representatives, who remain intent on subverting the oversight panel’s independence by stacking it with current and/or former police officers.

And even now, no sense of urgency impels the formation of such an oversight body, which, though it was recommended by a police reform commission last fall, seems unlikely to exist and exercise actual oversight before sometime next year — with luck.

That reform commission was formed after the shame of the Geer episode assumed such dimensions that the county’s Board of Supervisors could no longer look the other way. When it finally delivered its report, in October, after six months of deliberations, it pulled no punches and minced no words.

Among its voluminous recommendations, in addition to establishing real independent oversight of the police, was an overhaul of the department’s use-of-force policies and the setting up of an auditor, under the Board of Supervisors, who would review the integrity of internal police investigations.

The heart of the commission’s recommendations is the establishment of an oversight panel — independent, staffed by civilians and accountable only to the public. Such bodies, with varying compositions, exist in cities and other localities around the country, including New York, Philadelphia and the District. In Fairfax, officials resisted for years, insisting the elected supervisors themselves could exercise effective oversight.

The fallacy of that stance was laid bare by the Geer case, in which the Board of Supervisors appeared paralyzed, befuddled and tongue-tied as police went mum and prosecutors and the board’s own lawyers played dodge-the-blame games for the better part of two years.

Now that there is consensus on an oversight panel, some supervisors are insisting it include current or former police officers or county officials, in accord with the department’s wishes. But what is the point of an oversight panel if the oversight it exercises is tainted from the get-go by the specter of bias? Do the county’s elected representatives really think anyone will regard the oversight panel as meaningfully independent if the police themselves — or their allies or advocates — are doing the overseeing?

The takeaway from the Geer case, in which the officer who pulled the trigger now faces murder charges, could hardly be clearer. Despite many dedicated and fine officers, public trust in the department is broken in Fairfax. The county must rectify that, and not by half-steps.