Almost seven years after his death, federal officials have determined that the two U.S. Park Police officers who pursued and shot McLean resident Bijan Ghaisar complied with department policies.
The report released yesterday (Tuesday) concludes officers Alejandro Amaya and Lucas Vinyard were reasonable in their belief that Ghaisar “presented a clear and immediate threat to public safety” when he fled after being rear-ended by a rideshare driver on the George Washington Memorial Parkway in Alexandria on Nov. 17, 2017.
The officers’ decision to draw their guns and fire at Ghaisar after they brought his vehicle to a stop at the Alexandria Avenue and Fort Hunt Road intersection in Fort Hunt was also reasonable, according to the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of the Interior (DOI), which oversees the Park Police.
“The preponderance of the evidence showed the officers reasonably believed that Ghaisar posed an imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm to [Amaya] based on the facts and circumstances confronting them at the time, which is the standard permitting the use of deadly force under the USPP’s use of force policy,” the report said.
The Park Police policies in place at the time of the shooting generally give officers “broad — though not unbounded — discretion” in how they carry out their duties, including when conducting vehicle pursuits, traffic stops and using their firearms, the inspector general noted.
Amaya did violate the agency’s firearms policy when he hit the driver’s window on Ghaisar’s SUV during an attempted stop, the inspector general says. Use of a gun as an “impact weapon” is banned except “to protect an officer or another person from death or serious injury when no other reasonable means of protection is available.”
According to the report, Amaya and Vinyard fired a total of 10 shots within 25 seconds. Five of the shots hit Ghaisar — four in the head and one in the wrist — and he died at a hospital on Nov. 27, 2017 from the gunshot wounds to the head.
An accountant and Langley High School graduate, Ghaisar planned to have dinner with his father on the night of the shooting, the Washington Post reported.
In interviews with the inspector general’s office, Amaya and Vinyard said they believed Ghaisar might have been impaired by drugs or a medical condition based on his driving, but they never shared their suspicions with anyone else involved in the pursuit, according to the report.
A toxicology screening conducted after Ghaisar’s death tested positive for marijuana but not any other substances, the report says. Police found marijuana and a glass pipe in his SUV, and at least one FCPD officer who responded after the shooting reported “a strong smell of marijuana.”
Report follows extended investigation, legal battles
The report’s release comes more than two years after Senators Mark Warner (D-Virginia) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) requested that Inspector General Mark Greenblatt review the FBI and Department of Justice’s handling of a case they argued should be “relatively straightforward.”
For months, most details about the incident were gleaned from in-car video footage shared in January 2018 by the Fairfax County Police Department, which assisted with the pursuit but didn’t have any officers firing shots.
Amaya and Vinyard weren’t identified as the officers who shot at Ghaisar until March 2019, and the information emerged only after Ghaisar’s family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the U.S. government and individual Park Police officers.
The lawsuit was just one part of a prolonged legal battle that included multiple decisions not to press charges against the officers by federal prosecutors and an indictment by a Fairfax County grand jury in October 2020. The manslaughter and reckless discharge of a firearm charges were dismissed by a judge, and Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares dropped an appeal in 2022.
The U.S. agreed in April 2023 to settle the wrongful death lawsuit for $5 million — money that the family said would go to their nonprofit Bijan Ghaisar Foundation to address police brutality and help victims of gun violence.
In comments to the Washington Post, Ghaisar’s mother, Kelly Ghaisar, objected to the inspector general’s conclusions, arguing that the officers shouldn’t have pursued her son. She also questioned the timing of its release so close to the seventh anniversary of the fatal shooting.
According to the Post, lawyers for Amaya and Vinyard welcomed the report’s findings, but it’s unclear what it will mean for their future with the Park Police.
The officers sued the Interior Department in July over an “unreasonable delay” in its determination of whether their employment would be terminated. They had both been on paid administrative leave since the shooting.
The Interior Department declined to comment on the inspector general report, including on its implications for the officers’ employment status.
Elected officials call for policies to improve investigations
In a joint statement, Warner, fellow Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine and Rep. Don Beyer (D-8) called Ghaisar’s death “a great tragedy” that never should’ve occurred, despite the finding that it didn’t violate Park Police policies.
“U.S. Park Police policy at the time of Bijan’s killing was outdated and inconsistent with the goal of safeguarding lives,” they said. “This report … underscores that these officers’ actions would not have been acceptable under the DOI guidelines that govern vehicular pursuits today.”
The Park Police updated its vehicular pursuit policy on June 8, 2018 to restrict pursuits to individuals wanted for or suspected of a felony “involving violence or the threat of violence to another person,” and to individuals who’ve committed a felony and are known to be in possession of a gun.
As confirmed in the inspector general report, Ghaisar was unarmed when he was shot and killed.
“As we approach the seven-year anniversary of Bijan’s death, we will continue to urge DOI to put policies in place to ensure that investigations around use of force incidents are handled with greater urgency and transparency,” the senators and Beyer said.
Ghaiser’s family dedicated a library to him inside the Iranian American Community Center in Tysons on Sept. 4, which would’ve been his 32nd birthday.
