Incident FCPD-Racism-Complaint

Incident Description

"The Complaint centered on a call for service related to an interaction between a Black female Amazon delivery driver and a White male resident of an apartment building.

The Complainants, both the delivery driver and her mother, alleged that officers of the Fairfax County Police Department (“FCPD”) did not respond properly to a 9-1-1 call that the mother made after receiving a phone call from her frightened daughter about a man and a gun. The daughter alleged in that phone call and to responding officers that the male resident walked behind her carrying a gun at his side minutes after a short, terse conversation regarding a parking spot. The responding FCPD officers neither arrested nor charged the resident with a crime following interviews of the driver and resident, respectively.

The Complainants’ primary contention was that responding officers, both White males, demonstrated racial bias in how they handled the matter because the outcome would have been different if the races of the individuals involved were reversed. The Internal Affairs Bureau (“IAB”) of the FCPD investigated the Complaint and ultimately agreed that a supervisor of the responding officers had mistakenly provided inaccurate and incomplete information to the mother of the delivery driver the day after the incident, in violation of FCPD policies, and the IAB took corrective action with respect to the supervisor. The IAB, however, did not find the responding officers (or the supervisor) to have engaged in bias-based policing constituting serious misconduct."

-"Report of Panel Findings for Complaint No. CRP-22-06" by Fairfax County Police Civilian Review Panel)