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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.
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