Fairfax County polic investigate Fairfax County police and.....wait for it......find the Fairfax County Police innocent!!!!!!
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EXCLUSIVE: Fairfax County police
chief says no bias found in Herndon driver case
David TaubeAugust 18, 2021 at
9:30am
The Fairfax County Police
Department has concluded for a second time that allegations of racial profiling
by one of its officers during a 2019 incident in Herndon were unfounded.
The Fairfax County Board of
Supervisors directed police to revisit the case in question in January after
the county’s Police Civilian Review Panel recommended an additional review in
its first-ever challenge of police findings.
According to a June 1 FCPD memo
obtained by Reston Now, the second review — this time under a new police chief
— found no evidence that a police officer who followed and questioned a Black
driver was motivated by racial bias.
“I have reviewed the supplemental
investigative findings and concur that no new evidence was revealed to support
the allegation of bias-based policing,” Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis
said in the memo.
Davis took over as police chief
on May 3 amid criticism of his past work in Baltimore and Prince George’s
County. In the initial months of his tenure, he has emphasized his willingness
to introduce reforms, including revisions to the department’s vehicle pursuit
policy and the addition of a data director.
For its follow-up investigation
of the Herndon incident, Fairfax County police asked eight employees in the
Reston District Station’s Criminal Investigations Section the following
question:
“Do you have any direct or
indirect knowledge which would indicate [employee name] has engaged or is
engaging in behavior that was or is motivated by bias toward a victim’s race,
religious conviction, ethnic/national origin, disability, and/or sexual
orientation?”
Police said no one indicated
there was any evidence of bias exhibited by the detective.
Davis also suggested options for
reviewing the case were limited, noting that FCPD started collecting data on
officers’ interactions with civilians last October that it wasn’t measuring at
the time of this particular incident.
The change aligns with new state
requirements for police data collection that took effect on July 1.
“Due to recent updates in
Virginia legislation, the Virginia Community Policing Act, the Department has
updated our current record management system to capture additional details
pertaining to the circumstances of community contacts,” the FCPD said in a
statement. “The further details will allow our Department to better understand
the contacts we have within our community.”
In his memo, Davis wrote that the
department has “further enhanced our transparency by creating a Police Data
Sharing Dashboard” that allows people to search information related to
warnings, citations, and arrests.
The civilian review panel began
reviewing the Herndon incident on May 23, 2019, when it got a citizen’s
complaint about an officer who followed him into the parking lot of his
apartment complex and repeatedly questioned whether he lived there.
According to the panel’s report,
which was published on Oct. 23, 2020, the officer said he followed the
individual after becoming suspicious and discovering that his vehicle was
registered under two names.
A recording of the encounter
shows the officer questioning the man about his residency, while the man
sometimes asks whether he is required to respond. At one point, the man asks
for the officer’s badge number.
According to the panel’s report,
the officer asked the man about his residency 11 times, and the man answered at
least nine times that he lived there. After telling the man he was free to go,
the officer stayed in the lot “for several more minutes” before verifying his
identity and residency.
Fairfax County police said in a
statement that they have measures in place to address issues of bias:
FCPD has reaffirmed our
well-established commitment to fair and impartial policing by recently adopting
General Order 2. This policy focuses on human relations and procedural justice.
Procedural justice requires Department members to ensure they are being fair in
process, transparent in actions, providing opportunity for communication and
being impartial in decision making. All well-established pillars of FCPD, but
this policy reaffirms our commitment to these principles with the hopes of
[increasing] police legitimacy.
The department says it conducts
implicit bias training for all employees and supports the county’s One Fairfax
policy in support of the chief’s vision of police being “the leading agency
dedicated to fairness, trust, and respect.”
The FCPD also says supervisors
are required to perform monthly reviews of officers’ body-worn cameras and
in-car videos.
“When there is an allegation of
misconduct, [Internal Affairs Bureau] investigations review the officer’s
arrests and citations based on race and compare them to other officers at the
assigned district station, which covers an 18-month time period,” police said.
In a December 2019 letter to the
complainant, then-Police Chief Edwin Roessler wrote that the officer’s actions
were improper and in violation of departmental regulations.
He also told the civilian review
panel that the officer had no reason to initiate the stop, calling his actions
unacceptable and the result of “poor, cascading assumptions and judgments that
were wrongly based on his training,” according to the panel’s report.
However, when the panel voted 6-3
in March 2020 to request further investigation, Roessler responded that police
would not interview the officer’s coworkers for evidence of racial bias, a
stance that evidently changed after the panel voted 7-2 in September 2020 to
advise the Board of Supervisors that it considered the investigation incomplete.
“It’s not clear to me under our
bylaws that we have any additional move,” Civilian Review Panel Chair Jimmy
Bierman told Reston Now yesterday (Tuesday). “We did what we were allowed under
the bylaws, and we passed it to the Board of Supervisors.”
The panel released a four-year
review on Feb. 26 that included recommendations for an expansion of its
authority in light of recent changes in state law, including:
• Limited
investigatory powers, including the opportunity to interview a complainant and up
to three key witnesses
• Electronic
access to redacted police investigation reports
• The
ability to monitor police investigations for racial bias or profiling without
needing a complaint submitted first
• More
flexibility in how it presents its findings
The county board fulfilled one of
the recommendations in agreeing earlier this month to give the panel a
full-time executive director position.
Again, Fairfax County Police shoot first and get away with it.
Fairfax
County Releases Bodycam Video of Police Shooting
Fairfax
County police released body camera video and dispatch calls from a
police-involved shooting that wounded a woman last month.
The
woman who was shot appeared to be having a mental health crisis as she
threatened residents and police.
A
caregiver at the group home for adults with intellectual disabilities called
911 and told the dispatcher, “She’s making noise, breaking things. She wants to
fight … she wants to kill me.”
Women
retreated to the basement. A third person locked themselves in their room.
Then
the suspect said she was going to kill herself.
K9
officers first responded to the 911 calls. With guns drawn, they entered the
home and found a 30-year-old resident armed with a kitchen knife. The woman
turned her threats toward them, moving in their direction.
An
officer shot the woman in the stomach, and she dropped the knife.
Officers
immediately helped the woman, reassuring her she was going to be alright.
The
woman is recovering from the gunshot wound.
Fairfax
County Police Chief Kevin Davis believes the video shows the veteran
officers had little choice but to act to protect themselves and others in the
home.
“That’s
tough to watch, but they were doing the best they absolutely could under a very
tough circumstance,” he said.
Though,
neither officer had a taser, Davis doubts they would have had time to try less
than lethal force. But it underscores a problem he plans to address: Not every
officer is assigned a taser.
“I
want to go so far as to assign them individually to police officers so that
they are immediately available,” he said.
The
investigation is ongoing. The officer who fired his gun is on restricted duty.
The woman faces charges of assault on a law enforcement officer.
This article tagged under:
could they possibly drag their feet on this any slower?
Fairfax County approves executive
director position for police review panel
David TaubeAugust 3, 2021 at 2:00pm
The
Fairfax County Police Civilian Review Panel, a
citizen-led board intended to help with police accountability, is getting an
executive director.
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approved the change on July 27 at the
urging of the review panel, which is facing increasing caseloads and seeking to
gain investigatory powers.
“We’re thrilled that this new position will
help us maintain our independence,” Civilian Review Panel Chair Jimmy Bierman
said, thanking Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay and Lee District
Supervisor Rodney Lusk, who chairs the board’s public safety committee.
Established in December 2016, the civilian review panel
reviews Fairfax County Police Department investigations into civilian complaints
with allegations that a police officer abused their authority or engaged in
misconduct.
While the panel can make recommendations
regarding law enforcement policies and practices, it was not granted the authority to
conduct its own investigations.
The review panel, which consists of nine
volunteers, documented in February its need for an executive director in
an annual report and a four-year review, a document that Bierman
spent three months of 40-hour weeks to develop.
The executive director will help the panel
document and summarize investigations. Currently, the panel reviews police
investigations in person and writes lengthy, time-consuming reports, which
means its efforts are heavily dependent on its chair’s schedule.
Bierman, an attorney, likens the change to a
congressional committee relying on staff to help draft materials or a federal
judge using legal staff to write bench memos.
“It adds to the professionalism of the panel,”
he said. “We want to be fiercely independent.”
Since its creation, the review panel has also
relied on staff in the office of the independent police auditor, which will now
send one position to the panel for the executive director.
Bierman says the staffing switch will help the
panel maintain a good working relationship with police by ensuring the
independent police auditor’s resources are not overtaxed.
The change to the panel comes after the
Virginia General Assembly adopted a law last year that
officially permitted localities to create police oversight boards with the
power to investigate incidents, make binding disciplinary determinations, and
more.
Bierman says the law shows the Commonwealth is
serious about supporting independent oversight bodies for police.
The new executive director won’t have
independent investigatory powers, but the position could lay the groundwork for
the Board of Supervisors to update the panel’s bylaws to give it more authority, as
allowed by the new state law, according to Bierman.
The person hired for the new position will be
paid $100,000 to $150,000 per year and report directly to the board of
supervisors. Springfield District Supervisor Pat Herrity was the only
supervisor to oppose the measure.
“I voted against this motion because I didn’t
support the original motion to form the Civilian
Review Panel as we had an Independent Police Auditor, which is where most
significant reviews and recommendations for reforms have come from,” Herrity
said in a statement.
On Sept. 28, the board of supervisors’ public
safety committee is slated to hear a presentation about the review panel along
with recommendations on further reforms in line with the panel’s four-year
review.
Among other changes, the report recommended:
·
Authorizing an
executive director to monitor police investigations of racial bias or profiling
from the onset of an investigation, regardless of whether a complaint has been
filed with the panel
·
Allowing the panel to
conduct its own additional investigations, including interviewing the
complainant and three witnesses
·
Permitting the panel
to conduct a review of a completed police investigation of a complaint about
racial bias or profiling without needing a person to request a review
Limited
in its ability to gather independent information, the civilian review panel has
consistently upheld Fairfax County police investigations into abuse of
authority and misconduct complaints.
The one exception so far came in October 2020 when the panel
determined that the FCPD’s internal review did not thoroughly investigate
allegations of racial bias or profiling in a 2019 incident that involved an
officer following and questioning a driver in Herndon.
Then-Police Chief Edwin Roessler determined
the incident involved poor decision-making but wasn’t motivated by racial bias.
The panel disagreed and referred the issue to the board of supervisors,
which directed the department in January to
take additional action regarding the panel’s request.
“This is part of why the four-year review
requested that the panel mandate be changed from simply asking whether [an] investigation
itself was ‘complete, thorough, accurate, objective, and impartial’ to
determine whether the panel [believed] the conclusion of the investigation is
‘correct,'” Bierman said in a statement.