Fairfax County Ad Hoc Police Commission

[Dagga Boy]

My head hurts from reading that PDF. The studies the studies...

There's depolicing coming to Fairfax County.

And.......in most cases, once "de-policed", you will likely never recover.

[LSP552]

And.......in most cases, once "de-policed", you will likely never recover.

They will get the policing, or lack of, that they deserve.

[Erick Gelhaus]

Many years ago (24+?), the good idea fairy landed on the shoulder of one of our captains' shoulder. On the friday before a L-O-N-G holiday weekend issued a policy memo (force of a real policy for 60 days) stating that we'd write a memo every time we drew our handguns. Hands down, the BEST supervisor I ever worked for handled it correctly. He had us write the memo every time - alarm call, building search, hinky car stop, shoots fired call, etc. When the captain returned to work on tuesday, his door was blocked by a stack of memos. The policy memo was rescinded by friday.

Said captain had the RARE distinction of being knocked out, as a deputy during a SWAT call-out, by a team sergeant for flagrant stupidity.

I'm good, really good, with Chuck's recommendation of documentation when muzzle covers meat. I'm absolutely against documentation of a Scott Reitz' low ready.

[Hambo]

The whole de-policing movement reminds me of this line from an old play/movie: "It's dangerous to challenge a system unless you're completely at peace with the thought that you're not going to miss it when it collapses."

[Chuck Haggard]

Cody,

It was readily apparent that the policy, as written, was intended to be used as a "got ya" tool and a means to appease certain folks in the community. Use of force guidelines are well established by the courts. More restrictive policies are generally implemented to protect the Department from perceived liability but law enforcement actions can be so broad that it's impossible to write all of the possible scenarios, options, actions and reactions like a recipe.

Many agencies have decided that chasing vehicles is bad, leads to potential liability, and is therefore prohibited. Guess what? I'm aware of chases and vehicle stops with a kidnapping victim in the back seat. Would it really be better to serve the diver with a citation later in the week instead of stopping? You also have agencies that prohibit shooting from or at a moving vehicle. Guess what? I'm aware of circumstances where it was needed and done successfully. There is a big difference between prohibited and discouraged.

Overly restrictive policies instead of quality training will never serve the public good. Quality training combined with accountability is in everyone's best interest.

My old Chief instituted the "thou shalt not fire at or from a moving vehicle" policy as well after we had what was a good shooting on a driver trying to run over an officer. He just didn't like the shooting, and the family didn't understand why their douchebag had to be shot.

Fast forward several years and I am at a briefing as the PD commander to the motorcade for FLOTUS. The Secret Service did not have a CAT for that trip so my people were it. We are getting the briefing about expectations, one of which is that any vehicles trying to ram their way into the motorcade needed to be lit up.

Ummm, yeah Chief, about that, no, your policy forbids it. He went on about how we had exceptional circumstances in this case. Nope, the policy is clear, there are no time-outs for exceptional circumstances. Very poorly thought out, and poorly written, but VERY clear.

[Dagga Boy]

Someday....in a magical world, someone will get police administrators to figure out if you train folks not to do things works far better than writing a policy. One of the big things I did in training was to emphasize not shooting at cars to stop them, as it is usually useless. If a car needed to be stopped that bad, the way to stop it was shooting the driver.....and be able to justify that based on our normal deadly force policy and not just trying to stop a car. Once we focused on that......folks stopped shooting at moving cars. We had drivers justifiably shot in cars, but the whole shooting at cars thing stopped with training rather than writing a restrictive policy.

[voodoo_man]

Cody,

It was readily apparent that the policy, as written, was intended to be used as a "got ya" tool and a means to appease certain folks in the community. Use of force guidelines are well established by the courts. More restrictive policies are generally implemented to protect the Department from perceived liability but law enforcement actions can be so broad that it's impossible to write all of the possible scenarios, options, actions and reactions like a recipe.

Many agencies have decided that chasing vehicles is bad, leads to potential liability, and is therefore prohibited. Guess what? I'm aware of chases and vehicle stops with a kidnapping victim in the back seat. Would it really be better to serve the diver with a citation later in the week instead of stopping? You also have agencies that prohibit shooting from or at a moving vehicle. Guess what? I'm aware of circumstances where it was needed and done successfully. There is a big difference between prohibited and discouraged.

Overly restrictive policies instead of quality training will never serve the public good. Quality training combined with accountability is in everyone's best interest.

I've done all of these things and/or have been witness to them and I/those officers are still here.

More training, more accountability, not more restrictive policies.