By Max Smith | @amaxsmithJuly 19, 2016 5:15 am
Fairfax County police have not
identified a suspect or motive in the death of Tarreece Sampson (WTOP/Dave
Dildine)
WASHINGTON — As Fairfax County
leaders prepare to take up new civilian oversight for police in the wake of the
2013 shooting of John Geer in the doorway of his Springfield home, the police
department has released information about more recent use of force incidents
and the racial disparities in whom that force is used against.
Of 539 use of force incidents
investigated by at least one supervisor in 2015, a new report released late
Monday shows 57 proceeded to administrative investigations. In one of those
cases, a use of force violation was found, and the report shows that an oral
reprimand was issued.
Police say the use of force in
2015 was predominantly against males, with just 89 of the 539 incidents
involving females. The report says 282 of the incidents (52 percent) involved
subjects police identified as white, 222 subjects identified as black (41
percent), 18 identified as Hispanic (4 percent) and 17 identified as Asian (3
percent).
Only 8 percent of Fairfax
County’s 1.1 million residents are estimated to be black, 16 percent are
estimated to be Hispanic and 63 percent are estimated to be white.
Reflecting the demographics of
the department as a whole, the officers involved in use of force incidents were
largely white men, representing 740 of the 985 officers involved in incidents.
Of sworn Fairfax County police officers, 83 percent are white, 7 percent are
black and 5 percent identify as Hispanic.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Board
of Supervisors’ Public Safety Committee will take up recommendations for
increased civilian oversight of the police department issued by a commission
formed after a police officer shot and killed Geer and information in the case
was slow to emerge.
The committee, which all board
members typically attend, has a draft document before it that would create a
new, independent police officer who would report to the Board of Supervisors in
cases of police use of force that lead to serious injury or death, and a new
civilian review panel that would respond to community concerns about “alleged
incidents of abuse of authority.” The draft document would not endorse the
recommendation for an ongoing police commission like the one formed in the wake
of Geer’s death.
That draft is far from final,
though, as several supervisors expressed concerns about some of the
recommendations last week.
Supervisor John Cook, who chairs
the Public Safety Committee, said the Tuesday meeting should focus on what the
civilian oversight panel would be responsible for, and how members would be
appointed.
In addition to members of the
commission that made the recommendations, representatives from the National
Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement are expected to be
included in the meeting to offer advice.
Supervisor Pat Herrity was among
those raising financial concerns about the cost of parallel oversight between
the auditor and review commission.
“I’m trying to figure a way to
get the transparency we’re looking for and the review we’re looking for without
creating two new bureaucracies instead of one,” Herrity said at the board’s
meeting last week.
In the separate police department
report released Monday, the agency said the largest number of disciplinary
actions last year were tied to operation of police vehicles. Only six officers
resigned or were fired in connection with disciplinary actions: one for custody
of property, one over ethics and integrity, one for insubordination and three
over standard of conduct.
The most use of force reports
came out of the Mount Vernon (87) and Mason districts (85), followed by the
McLean District (64) and Criminal Investigations Bureau (61).
Separate from use of force
incidents, the report also includes information on the recorded demographic
breakdowns of “field contacts,” in which officers interact with people in the
community in matters such as complaints, suspicious people or vehicles, or
warning tickets.
In those instances, the
department said, about two-thirds of the interactions were with males while
one-third were with females. Two-thirds of the interactions were with people
officers identified as white, 25 percent with people officers identified as
black, 5 percent with people officers identified as Asian and 2 percent with
people officers identified as Hispanic.
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