NOBODY trusts these hoods .If
you’re a young person considering working with the Fairfax County Police
Department, stop and think about that. EVEN THEIR EMPLOYER DOESN’T TRUST THEM.
Do you really want to spend twenty years of your life around people like this?
You can do better.
The Fairfax County Board of
Supervisors approved a body camera program for police officers.
By Emily Leayman, Patch Staff
MOUNT VERNON, VA — The Fairfax
County Board of Supervisors approved a permanent body camera program for police
officers on Tuesday. The program is set to begin in May 2020 and will be
implemented in phases over three years.
The approval follows a 2018 pilot
program involving the Reston, Mason and Mount Vernon police district stations.
These will be the first three stations implementing the permanent program. All
district stations and other key operational staff will receive body cameras.
According to the implementation
plan, 416 body cameras will be issued in fiscal year 2020, followed by 338 in
2021 and 456 in 2022. Positions will be added to the Fairfax County Police
Department, Office of the Commonwealth's Attorney and Department of Information
Technology.
Once the program is fully phased
in, it will give officers 1,210 body cameras and require $6.65 million in
baseline funding. One-time funding was included in the fiscal year 2020 budget,
and baseline funding will come in the 2021 budget and future years as needed.
The $4.3 million in funding for this year was available from the Reserve for
Ad-Hoc Police Practices Review Commission.
Fairfax County Police
Feedback on body cameras came
from an American University research team's survey during the pilot program,
which ran from March 3, 2018 to Sept. 1, 2018. The researchers surveyed 603
residents who had an interaction with an officer during the pilot program as
well as two squads of officers before and after the program. Results saw
overwhelming support for body cameras from residents. Opinions among officers
were mixed; one squad's perception of body cameras became more negative after
the program, while the other's became slightly more positive.