Fairfax County put together a couple of community workgroups to establish recommended police policy reforms, and the police chief presented these reforms to elected officials Tuesday afternoon.
Out of about 65 recommendations, there were only nine the department didn't already have in place.
A lot of the discussions stemmed from concerns about police shootings and officers chasing people, like the fatal shooting of Timothy Johnson outside of Tysons Corner Center.
Chief Kevin Davis said the department is working to develop a formal policy to guide when officers are allowed to chase people on foot. Currently, officers chase people on foot about six times per week.
There's also discussion about reforming when officers use force. The Fairfax County NAACP and ACLU say Fairfax police say something needs to change with the current standard, but Davis opposes their recommendation.
“The necessary and proportional standard is ambiguous and nebulous in scope, thus it is wholly unclear as to how this could be trained to our officers, applied in the field, or ultimately adjudicated in either criminal or civil court,” he said.
One of the other recommendations that the department opposes is further limiting the role of school resource officers. Davis said SROs already have a very limited role in Fairfax County.
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Last year, there were about 1,300 police reports from a school system with about 180,000 students. Almost three quarters of those reports were filed by teachers. Only 6% came from SROs interacting with teachers or students.
Early next year, another community equity workgroup will be established, and a new open data portal will launch online to make all arrests fully transparent and viewable by location, Davis said.
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