7
Independent
police auditor releases 1st annual report
· By Angela Woolsey/Fairfax County Times
Feb 9, 2018
A Fairfax County police officer’s fatal shooting of a Herndon
man in January 2017 did not violate Virginia law or department policy, the
county’s independent police auditor found in a Jan. 26 report affirming the
results of a Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD) internal investigation.
An officer later identified as Master Police Officer Lance
Guckenberger shot Mohammad Azim Doudzai, 32, on Jan. 16, 2017 to conclude a
standoff where the Herndon resident barricaded himself and a 29-year-old
roommate inside a burning home.
Doudzai died later that day after being transported to Reston
Hospital.
“I agree with the internal findings of the FCPD that there were
no legal or policy violations based on the actions of anyone involved in this
incident,” Independent Police Auditor Richard Schott said in his report. “I
believe the use of force was objectively reasonable, necessary, and most
likely, life-saving.”
Commonwealth’s Attorney Ray Morrogh declined to prosecute
Guckenberger, determining that his actions constituted justifiable homicide in
a report released in May.
Schott also found that the 21-day gap between the shooting and
the release of Guckenberger’s identity was “both reasonable and necessary.”
Fairfax County policy requires that the police chief publicly
release the identity of officers who deploy a fatal use of force against a
civilian within 10 days of the incident, with the caveat that time extensions
can be requested if there is a threat to the officer’s safety.
According to Schott’s report, Fairfax County Police Chief Edwin
Roessler Jr. initially chose not to reveal Guckenberger’s identity in order to
conduct a safety inquiry “based on a legitimate concern” for the officer, who
also obtained a temporary restraining order from a federal judge that
prohibited the FCPD from releasing his name before Feb. 9, 2017.
New information “calling the officer’s safety into question”
then prompted Roessler to again postpone releasing the officer’s name, Schott
says.
According to the FCPD media relations bureau, a risk assessment
regarding Guckenberger was not completed until Feb. 24 and found no credible threats.
Roessler ultimately released the officer’s identity on Mar. 2, 2017.
“I did not create a delay,” Roessler said. “There was a threat
source I needed to mitigate, and we did that. The judge issued an injunction,
and then we had to resolve that, so that’s two hurdles I had to overcome.”
The police chief says that he is prohibited by law from
providing more details on the nature of the potential threat.
While he agrees with the FCPD’s determination that no policy or
law had been violated in Doudzai’s death, Schott recommends that the department
adopt a policy requiring that each patrol shift and all full-time Special
Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team members have “less lethal” options available.
Schott’s report on the Jan. 16 Herndon shooting is the second incident
report to come out of Fairfax County’s Office of the Independent Police
Auditor, which was established by the Board of Supervisors in September 2016.
The first incident report concerned the use of an electronic
control weapon (ECW) on a man in Falls Church and similarly found that the
criminal and administrative investigations into the encounter had been properly
and thoroughly conducted.
The county’s independent police auditor is required to release a
public report in response to every Fairfax County police use-of-force incident
that results in a death or serious injury.
The office is also obligated to publish an annual report, so
Schott published his first-ever annual report online on Jan. 31.
According to the 2017 Annual Report of the Fairfax County
Independent Police Auditor, the office initiated seven case reviews of
incidents that occurred on or after Jan. 1, 2017, including the two that have
already been completed.
Three of the case reviews, all of them dealing with allegations
of excessive uses of force, were initiated in response to a public complaint.
Though the Board of Supervisors dictated that the independent
police auditor publish incident reports within 60 days of a completed internal
affairs bureau investigation, Schott allows that the logistics of setting up
the office have been time-consuming, but he expects to be able to release
incident reports more quickly going forward.
“We’re really trying to hone in on process and procedures that
will help the office,” Schott said. “I think we’ll be able to run more
efficiently and therefore become more productive moving forward.”
According to the annual report, Schott expects to complete the
remaining incident reports from 2017 within the first half of this year, though
he will also be tasked with monitoring any new cases that occur.
In addition to reviewing internal investigations, the auditor
will follow the progress of the FCPD’s impending body-worn camera pilot
program, along with a committee of community advocates, legal staff, and police
leaders, according to Roessler.
The Office of the Independent Police Auditor is also currently
examining factors behind the racial disparities reported in FCPD use-of-force
incidents and anticipates that its findings will be published sometime this
year.
An annual statistical report released in December by the FCPD’s
internal affairs bureau found that 198 black community members were subject to
force in an encounter with Fairfax County police in 2016, the same number of
white people involved in use-of-force incidents even though they comprise a
much smaller percentage of the county’s overall population.
While the Office of the Independent Police Auditor has not yet
finished its first year of existence, Roessler says that he is pleased with the
work that Schott has managed to do so far.
“The auditor has been communicating with us extremely well,”
Roessler said. “We are learning a lot from him through all of this to make our
department better policy-wise and serving in the community, so I fully support
everything he did.”
Schott says that the office has been productive so far,
particularly after the Board of Supervisors approved the addition of an
administrative assistant to the office, but he has not received much of a
response from the community to the published reports.
However, he has attended public forums with members of Fairfax
County’s Police Civilian Review Panel, which was established in December 2016
to review citizen complaints of police misconduct and abuses of power. The
panel was scheduled to conduct its first review on Jan. 4.
“I think there’s still a concern that many members of the
community don’t know that the auditor position is fully staffed and that the
panel is operational now,” Schott said. “I think we both have some community
outreach to do.”