Fire New Police Chief, Fairfax Dems Tell County Board

FAIRFAX COUNTY, VA — The Fairfax County Democratic Committee passed a resolution Tuesday night calling for the ouster of new Police Chief Kevin Davis. During the virtual meeting, 79 percent of the approximately 322 members in attendance voted for the resolution, and 21 percent voted against it.

The resolution also called on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors to reopen the search process for a new chief and implement a transparent hiring process. The resolution directed supervisors to employee a "racial equity decision-making framework" and community screening committee similar to the one the county used in 2013 to hire former Chief Edwin C. Roessler Jr.

Davis has been under scrutiny since the board announced his hiring in April, when reports surfaced about a pair of lawsuits against him early in his law enforcement career.

Local groups and community activists decried Davis' appointment and criticized the lack of transparency in the hiring process.

The Fairfax County NAACP sent an open letter to the board questioning its decision and asking for Davis to be fired. It has yet to receive a reply, according to President Karen Campblin. The group also filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the county to obtain relevant documents about Davis' hiring and the non-disclosure agreement that board members signed to prevent them from talking about the hiring.

To date, the board has not answered all of Campblin's questions, and the FOIA request for the non-disclosure agreement was denied. However, she did receive some documentation about Davis' hiring, including his job offer letter from the county. This letter reveals that Davis signed an "employment at will" agreement, which means the board can vote to fire him and that he is not eligible for a grievance process.

In presenting the resolution Tuesday night, Kelly Hebron, chairwoman of the FCDC's Black caucus, recounted incidents in Davis' past that warranted the resolution.

In addition to the two lawsuits in Prince George's County, Maryland, Hebron brought up actions Davis had taken when he was police commissioner in Baltimore, one involving secret drone surveillance in August 2016 and the other a lockdown of the Harlem Park neighborhood for six days in November 2017. In the latter incident, residents had to show identification and submit to searches without search warrants in order to enter and leave their neighborhood.

"The ACLU of Maryland has a lawsuit pending against the Baltimore Police Department and Kevin Davis for violating citizens' constitutional rights several years ago," Hebron said. "Let's let that sink in. We're not talking about him 30 years ago, we're talking 2017."

To date, the board has stayed united in its defense of Davis, saying it believes he is the candidate who will reform the Fairfax County Police Department.

"We looked at the totality of his police career, his background, his work in academia, on reform. He teaches classes on police reform at colleges," Fairfax County Board Chairman Jeff McKay said in an interview with Patch. "The way he answered the questions for us, we were wholly convinced that he was head and shoulders above the other candidates in implementing reforms."

In a May 20 letter to the FCDC signed by all nine Democrats on the board, the supervisors defended the actions they took during the hiring process, including using non-disclosure agreements and a prescreening panel designed by One Fairfax — the board's racial and social equity policy initiative — to expand participation beyond a small group community members, police professionals and police unions.

"The prescreening panel this time was made up overwhelmingly of individuals not affiliated with the police and was more diverse and equity driven, including the involvement of our Chief Equity Officer (a position that did not even exist in 2013)," the letter says.

The supervisors also pointed to the more than 3,000 responses they received to a survey about hiring a new chief and the community input sessions conducted by McKay and Lee District Supervisor Rodney Lusk, who chairs the board's public safety committee, as evidence of broad community involvement

"While we are always improving community engagement in a county of more than 1.1 million people, we are confident that this year’s process was the broadest and incorporated both extensive public input and intentional inclusivity," the letter said. "Regardless, we commit to looking at our entire public participation process for future personnel decisions and establishing a framework for further improvement."

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