By Brian Trompeter
Fairfax County police are doing a more effective job of forwarding use-of-force complaints for review, but the department should make some further policy tweaks, says Independent Police Auditor Richard Schott.
The Office of Independent Police Auditor last year reviewed or monitored 41 active cases, said Schott, who presented his office’s 2023 annual report June 4 meeting to the Board of Supervisors’ Safety and Security Committee.
The auditor’s office conducted automatic reviews of 10 officer-involved shootings of people in 2022 and 2023, one officer-involved shooting of a domesticated animal, one serious injury caused by a police-canine bite, and two in-custody deaths resulting from medical emergencies that occurred while in police custody, not from use of force by officers.
Schott’s office also reviewed 27 public complaints – 20 of which went to the police department and seven directly to the auditor’s office.
After noticing a steep decline in use-of-force complaint notifications forwarded by the police department in 2023, Schott’s office last April consulted with the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau and decided to review retroactively 39 cases involving use-of-force complaints against Fairfax County police between 2018 and 2022.
These included 11 takedowns; eight uses of force to cuff suspects; seven instances each of brandishing firearms, slamming heads or faces and striking people; six assault complaints; six instances of pushing people; three cases each of dragging and grabbing/holding; two uses of oleoresin capsicum (pepper spray); and one each of a police canine bite and use of a RIPP Hobble restraint device.
Schott will address those complaints in this order: incidents involving pointing of firearms at people, non-serious injuries resulting from use of force and use of excessive force.
Since discovering the backlog of complaint cases, county police have begun taking additional steps to ensure such cases are not overlooked in the future, Schott said.
Internal Affairs Bureau staff now proactively send the Office of Independent Police Auditor monthly reports on all use-of-force complaints, which Schott and his staff track along with their own case loads.
Since establishment of the police auditor’s office in 2017, there have been 15 officer-involved shootings involving county police. Schott has conducted and completed reviews of 10 of those incidents, publishing four such reports last year.
None of the 2023 reports featured policy recommendations, in part because the police department already had revised its policies following those incidents, after seeking Schott’s input.
As of the end of 2023, he still was monitoring and reviewing ongoing investigations into six of the cases. Three of those shootings occurred in 2022 and three last year.
In four of five 2023 reviews involving use-of-force complaints, Schott determined the police department’s investigations were “complete, thorough, accurate, objective and impartial.” In the fifth case, body-worn-camera footage documented that the officer had not used force during the complainant’s arrest, he said.
Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay (D) complimented Schott on his “concise” work and said county officials must prevent technical challenges from creating future backlogs of use-of-force complaints.
“From a public-transparency standpoint, that is really important,” McKay said.
Supervisor Rodney Lusk (D-Franconia), who chairs the Safety and Security Committee, reaffirmed the board’s commitment to what he terms policing reform.
Supervisors are “committed to doing everything we can to address the outstanding issues we have before us,” he said.
