Matt BlitzMay 7, 2021 at 2:10pm
(Updated 5:00 p.m.) Kevin Davis’s
first challenge as Fairfax County’s new police chief is to earn the public’s
trust, and if the community input session held last night (Thursday) was any
indication, it will be a formidable task.
In a virtual discussion that
lasted more than two hours, caller after caller expressed dismay at what they
believe was insufficient transparency and community engagement from the Fairfax
County Board of Supervisors during the hiring process, leading many to question
that if the county made the right decision in appointing Davis.
“The Board’s closed-door
deliberations and no community involvement in the vetting process left us in
the dark. This, coupled with press revelations after the selection, rendered
the process fatally flawed,” Diane Burkley Alejandro, lead advocate for the immigrant
rights organization ACLU Power People Fairfax, said during the session.
Late last month, NBC4 reported
that Davis had faced — and lost — civil lawsuits in the 1990s related to the
use of force and unconstitutional detainment while on the job in Prince
George’s County.
Callers also brought up concerns
about Davis’ authorization of secret aerial surveillance while he was
Baltimore’s police commissioner as well as comments he made in a 2020 Baltimore
Sun op-ed about defunding the police.
The Board of Supervisors
acknowledged that the community has expressed concerns about Davis’s record in
a broad statement earlier this week, but county leaders have not wavered from
their position that he was the best choice to lead the Fairfax County Police
Department and implement the reforms that the board has been seeking.
“Your hiring of Mr. Davis in
today’s environment is just plain tone deaf,” Hunter Mill District resident
Diana Smith said yesterday, directing her ire to the board. “…It sends a really
negative message. I think this was a really flawed decision based on a really
flawed process, which led to a flawed selection of a candidate.”
A number of callers backed
Fairfax County NAACP’s call last week for a new police chief search, a stance
that has won support from other community groups throughout the week.
“I and other community
organizations expressed not only the lack of community engagement but the type
of community engagement. It’s fine to check a box and say ‘we did a survey, we
had community meetings’ but was that enough and were we really heard?” Amanda
Andere, a member of the Chairman’s Equity Task Force, said. “We need to start
over. We need a process rooted in equity that starts and ends with community
input.”
For Davis’s part, he acknowledged
the criticisms in his opening remarks and said that he made mistakes over the
years but plans to continue to work to gain the community’s trust.
“I have certainly changed, grown,
and have learned many lessons throughout the course of my career,” Davis said
in response to one caller. “Every year along my journey, I’ve learned more and
have become more attuned to community expectations and sensitivities…Was it
always a perfect journey? No.”
Throughout the night, Davis
reiterated that he was proud of his career, the progress he’s made in terms of
building trust with communities of color, and his belief that he has been “one
of the most progressive reform leaders in our country.”
“I’ll follow my own mother’s
advice…by being the best chief of police I can possibly be,” Davis said.
Even though callers frequently
directed questions to them, Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay and Lee
District Supervisor Rodney Lusk, who chairs the Public Safety Committee, rarely
responded to the callers and largely limited comments to their opening and
closing remarks.
Some questioned if the board had
to sign non-disclosure agreements regarding the process of selecting a new
police chief. Neither responded to those inquiries.
A county official confirmed to
Reston Now that board members signed NDAs but said this is not an uncommon
practice when the board interviews job applicants to preserve their anonymity.
Neither McKay nor Lusk seemed to
entertain the idea of redoing the search for a new police chief either.
“We are aware that there’ve been
some instances that have come to light that have caused concern in our
community. I want to reiterate that we have heard those and we understand
those,” McKay said in his opening remarks. “We know that [Davis] brings with
him extensive experience in police reform, and we know that he will move
Fairfax County to the next level.”
In his closing remarks, Lusk, who
is Black and has spoken about his own painful experiences with police,
explained his thought process when it came to selecting Davis as police chief.
“I know there’s a lot of emotion
around this and, believe me, I have had a lot of emotion around this too,” Lusk
said. “…Can we give Chief Davis an opportunity to enact the reforms we need? If
he’s not able to do that, the Board has to make a decision. He knows where he
is in this situation.”
Davis also addressed media for
the first time this morning (Friday) in a press conference where he again
highlighted his past achievements and answered questions about past incidents
and lawsuits.
“I was twenty four years old in
1993. Would a 52-year-old Kevin Davis handled that incident differently now? No
doubt about it,” he said in reference to the 1993 encounter that left a young
Maryland law student bloody in front of his family’s home.
Referencing the 1999 incident
where he was accused of false imprisonment and roughing up a teenager,
resulting in a $90,000 settelment for the victim, he reiterated what he told
the Baltimore Sun in 2015.
“I was a young narcotics
detective and we were given an assignment from a high-ranking official,” Davis
said. “We did not have full visibility on that assignment and should have asked
more questions. We should have been more skeptical. We should have been more
cynical, but we weren’t…More than any other experience in my career, that has
shaped me.”
When asked if he disclosed these
incidents to the Board of Supervisors during the hiring process, he said only
that the process was “comprehensive and exhaustive.”
He also spoke about his plans to
institute reforms in a police department that has had a history of using force
against people of color, while also addressing morale within the department.
“Morale is an issue in the
Fairfax County Police Department,” Davis said. “We have to work on attrition.
We have to work on recruiting.”
Fairfax County Board of
Supervisors Fairfax County Police Jeff McKay Rodney Lusk
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