Fairfax Co. police see
assaults on officers rise, assaults by officers fall
WASHINGTON — Fairfax County police has made its internal “Use of Force” report public, which reveals an
unexpected uptick in assaults on officers.
Fairfax County police Chief Edwin C. Roessler released the
department’s 2016 internal “Use of Force” report, calling attention to a rise
in assaults on police officers. His decision to publish the data on officer
assaults was prompted by a request, he said.
“My officers asked I publish the data to be absolutely
transparent that we just not report our use of force but the use of force
committed against us at the same time,” he told WTOP.
The report states simple assaults on police officers at
132 in 2016 with 11 aggravated assaults. One officer was nearly killed that
year, resulting in an attempted capital murder charge.
Of the more than 460,000 interactions between officers and
the community, officers used force in 500 of them, which works out to .01
percent of the time.
“We’ve already surpassed, in 2017, the total number of
assaults on police officers that we tracked in 2016,” Roessler said.
He pointed out that if a citizen resists arrest and uses
force on an officer, the incident will count as a use of force on both sides of
the interaction.
“The majority are our officers being assaulted is the
person resisting us through pushing away and physical force, and we have to use
force to make the arrest,” he said.
According to the report, use of force by police officers
fell by 31 instances between 2015 and 2016.