Civil rights advocates had been pushing the Fairfax County Police Department for years to establish clear rules limiting when officers can pursue individuals on foot.
However, the department’s implementation of a formal foot pursuit policy last month inspired consternation, rather than celebration, from community organizations that had advocated for the reform, including the Fairfax County chapter of the NAACP.
The policy, which took effect on April 9, is “deeply flawed” and fails to address the safety and equity concerns that prompted its creation in the first place, the Fairfax County NAACP argued in a statement released last Thursday (May 1).
The civil rights organization alleges that the FCPD “unilaterally” released the policy without notifying community members on an Equity Action Team (EAT) convened to provide advice or incorporating their recommendations.
“The foot pursuit policy, released while discussions were still ongoing, fails on nearly every front to establish clear limits on when foot pursuits are justified,” the Fairfax NAACP said. “… The organization further stated that, most disturbingly, the policy ignores repeated community demands to prioritize alternatives to pursuits and clearly restrict high-risk chases — practices that have disproportionately harmed Black and Latino residents.”
The FCPD announced on April 4 that it has instituted a new foot pursuit policy, titled General Order 614, and launched a public dashboard with data on incidents involving foot pursuits that it began collecting in early 2023.
As part of a study of the department’s use of force, University of Texas Austin researchers recommended in 2021 that the FCPD consider adopting a policy dictating when officers should engage in foot pursuits, which appear to increase the risk of injury to both police and the person being pursued.
Officers should be trained to only chase a suspect if they have “reasonable suspicion of a crime to support a detention” beyond the person’s decision to flee and if there’s a “reasonable belief that the suspect poses an immediate threat to officers or public safety,” the study said, pointing to guidelines from the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP).
Pressure on the FCPD to adopt a foot pursuit policy intensified after an officer shot and killed Timothy Johnson on Feb. 22, 2023. Then-Sgt. Wesley Shifflett and another officer had chased Johnson in response to a report that he had shoplifted sunglasses from Nordstrom at Tysons Corner Center.
Shifflett was fired later that year and convicted of recklessly handling a firearm by a jury last October, but Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin commuted his three-year prison sentence just a few days after it was handed down by a Fairfax County judge.
Under its new policy, the FCPD says officers should consider the potential risks to themselves, the fleeing person and other community members before engaging in a foot pursuit, roughly echoing the recommendations from the University of Texas study:
Prior to engaging in a foot pursuit, officers should consider (1) whether reasonable articulable suspicion or probable cause exists to detain or arrest the fleeing person and/or (2) whether there is reasonable belief that the fleeing person(s) poses an immediate threat to public safety, other officers, or themselves and/or meets the basis for emergency custody as prescribed in the Code of Virginia.
Officers should disengage from any foot pursuit where reasonably foreseen or personally known safety risks to themselves or the general public outweigh the need for immediate apprehension.
However, the policy doesn’t establish specific criteria for when foot pursuits can be initiated, instead giving officers discretion based on their perception of whether it’s “reasonable” to believe someone should be detained or poses a threat.
Advocates recommended policy revisions
According to the Fairfax County NAACP, the One Fairfax Community Roundtable Equity Action Team formed at Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis’s request had reviewed an initial draft of the policy and recommended, among other changes:
(A) foot pursuits be restricted for Class 3 or 4 misdemeanors, non-arrestable offenses, and when based solely on an individual’s choice to flee; (B) that FCPD require that the need for immediate apprehension outweigh the risks of pursuit to officers, the fleeing individual, and the community in order to initiate a foot pursuit; and (C) that FCPD favor communication, containment, surveillance, coordination, and later apprehension over foot pursuits.
Per minutes from the April 1 meeting of the roundtable, which monitors the impact of county policies on people of color and low-income residents, the leader of the Foot Pursuit Policy EAT, Prince Howard, reported that the team recently provided “a second round” of recommended revisions to the FCPD.
However, those changes weren’t included in the published policy, which instead closely resembles the department’s original draft, according to the Fairfax County NAACP.
“As of now, FCPD has not provided any explanation to the NAACP or the EAT regarding their choice to unilaterally release the policy without responding to the EAT’s priority recommendations — despite the fact that Chief Davis requested creation of the EAT to review the draft policy,” the NAACP chapter wrote in comments provided to FFXnow on Saturday (May 3).
In a statement shared with FFXnow, Marcella Levine, an EAT member and representative of the immigrant advocacy group ACLU People Power Fairfax, said the team had developed its recommendations based on model policies from the IACP and other organizations, along with policies adopted by other police departments.
“Rather than explaining its disagreements with the policies from elsewhere upon which we relied, FCPD primarily rejected the EAT’s recommended policies as ill-informed,” Levine said.
According to Levine, the EAT then provided a narrower set of recommendations based on the FCPD’s objections. A deputy police chief said at a discussion on March 24 that the proposals were “reasonable,” though they would require “a change in policing culture,” a response that led the team to believe there would be further discussion.
“Collaboration must be a two-way process,” Levine said. “Rather than accommodate our concerns or engage in further discussions, FCPD summarily published its General Order 614 on April 4, 2025. It appears that there was no genuine two-way process of collaboration.”
Data dashboard offers limited transparency, advocates say
In addition to taking issue with the substance and timing of the foot pursuit policy, the advocacy groups say the FCPD’s public data dashboard falls short of the advertised transparency, alleging that police leaders have disputed the existence of any racial disparities in the use of foot pursuits while also refusing to share data that might allow further third-party analyses.
According to the dashboard, Fairfax County police officers have been involved in 729 foot pursuits since data collection began on March 10, 2023. Nearly 41% of “suspects”, or 334 individuals, were Black, and 53.7%, or 438 people, were white.
But that racial breakdown doesn’t distinguish between Hispanic and non-Hispanic individuals, the Fairfax County NAACP noted. Almost half of the people pursued by FCPD officers (380 people or 46.6%) have been Hispanic.
According to the NAACP, the FCPD gave data to the Equity Action Team in December showing that only 9.5% of pursuits involve non-Hispanic white individuals — a statistic not evident from the dashboard.
The organization says more details about the circumstances of foot pursuits are also needed, including where different incidents occurred, the interactions that led to a foot pursuit and the seriousness of any resulting injuries.
The dashboard currently includes general numbers for how many officers and “suspects” were injured and whether the charges involved are misdemeanors or felonies. The data can also be broken down by police district station.
“Although FCPD does make reforms (often after public pressure), a longstanding issue under Chief Davis is a refusal to expand data collection and/or release incident-level data that would enable the public to more deeply understand the root cause of disparities and promote data-informed policies to address them,” the NAACP said to FFXnow.
Both the NAACP and ACLU People Power questioned the FCPD’s commitment to accountability and community engagement based on their experience working with the department on the foot pursuit policy.
“Whatever the data shows, the public and policy makers have a right to know,” Levine said. ‘The public’s equity interests would be far better served by FCPD dropping its reflexive resistance to any evaluation of data potentially pointing to disparate treatment of people of color in Fairfax County.”
In a statement sent to FFXnow after this story published, the FCPD expressed confidence in the foot pursuit policy and public data dashboard released in April:
We are very proud to be one of only a few law enforcement agencies in the country to implement a formal foot pursuit policy, ensuring clear guidelines for our officers and reflecting national best practices. After our department’s work, in collaboration with internal and external stakeholder groups, we launched our new, industry-leading Foot Pursuit Policy & public-facing Foot Pursuit Dashboard this April – demonstrating the FCPD’s continued leadership in transparency and accountability.
Our Foot Pursuit policy reflects our officers’ outstanding work, the necessity of apprehending criminal suspects and individuals in need of immediate mental health resources, and our ultimate goal of both officer and public safety.
