Fairfax Officials React To Death Of George Floyd In Minneapolis

FAIRFAX COUNTY, VA — Fairfax County Police Chief Edwin C. Roessler Jr. and other local officials shared their reactions to the death last week of a black man in police custody in Minneapolis.

A video released online shows George Floyd, 46, struggling to breathe as a Minnesota police officer pressed his knee into his neck, as three other officers watched.

Derek Chauvin was the officer who was seen with his knee on Floyd's neck during an arrest Monday. Floyd later died after saying that he was struggling to breathe during the arrest, the video shows. The four officers were fired and, on Friday, agents with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension arrested Chauvin, charging him with third-degree murder and manslaughter.

Roessler, who has been an FCPD officer for over 31 years and chief since the summer of 2013, called the video "awful" and had an immediate reaction when he saw it.

"I go right to prayer," he said. "I pray for the family of Mr. Floyd, because they're in morning. I also go to prayer for the community that's in mourning, a nation that's in mourning and obviously a law enforcement profession and a local agency that's in mourning."

Beyond prayer, Roessler's other concern is the righteous anger in the country about racism in law enforcement.

"The community is righteous in their anger," he said. "It is my prayers that this country, my 18,000 peers, could use that righteous anger to be more transparent with the communities that they are put in authority to deliver law enforcement services and that they constructively use this anger to make their local police department and this profession better."

According to Roessler, Fairfax County uses a cooperation policing model, which entails using transparency to engage with the community to create policies and review training collectively as a community.

"So, the police services that we deliver is what the community desires and that includes use of force training, being transparent with our data, putting that on a website and having academic institutions and professional consultants come in and look at these policies, with committee members," he said. "That's what we've been doing in Fairfax County since 2013, specifically to prevent awful action by police officers and to have policies in place and training in place and mental health services for officers."

Roessler considers himself blessed to have a high level of engagement in the county through formal committees and with the participation of advocate organizations, which help to prevent a similar tragedy happening in Fairfax County.

"We are doing everything to engage community, especially now after this tragedy, and it's been quite a few over the last couple of weeks, to make sure that my community knows that their chief and their police department is doing everything with their community to prevent awful events like this," he said.

Lee District Supervisor Rodney Lusk had a hard time watching the video of Floyd's arrest.

"It certainly was difficult to watch and somewhat heart wrenching that this could happen pretty much in broad daylight," Lusk said. "This could happen with someone who didn't appear to be as a threat and that there were other police officers on the scene who either pretended not to see or chose to do something and respond to their fellow officer who was basically taking someone's life."

Lusk is chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisor's Public Safety Committee and said the county has already taken steps to lessen the chance of a suspect dying in custody like Floyd and to make the arrest process more transparent.

For example, FCPD's general orders do not permit officers to kneel on a suspect's neck in order to restrain them. Also, the county has started the process of deploying body cameras for police officers.

Although three police stations — Reston, Mason, and Mount Vernon — implemented body cameras on May 1, implementation at the remaining six stations has been delayed. The implementations were originally slated for 2021 and 2022, but all body camera funding as well as funding for other projects were cut from the Fiscal Year 2021 Budget the Board approved last month to offset the financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

"There were so many things that were in the original FY 2021 Budget that we were excited about being able to fund, and then obviously there was this COVID-19 pandemic," Lusk said. "We've had to retool, reshuffle and basically restructure pretty much the entire budget for this upcoming year."

Going forward, the Board will be looking at the county's receipts and expenses on a quarterly basis to try and find funding for some of the things that were cut from the budget. Lusk considered finding funding for body cameras a priority he would support.

"There's a lot of priorities that I want to see if we can look back at it and figure out how we can program them back in, and this would be one that I would be aggressively trying to bring forward as well," he said.

Lusk also pointed to the efforts of the Civilian Review Committee, which monitors the use of force by Fairfax County Police officers, as another check in the system.

"I'm not going to say that we are at a place of perfection here Fairfax County, but I think we're doing some things that are right, and that we've got to continue to build on those and engage the public so that we do not have a situation like this in our, in community," Lusk said.

Like many other people, Sean Perryman, president of the Fairfax NAACP, was horrified by the Floyd arrest video.

"It was heinous, cruel and callous, and the only good part about it is that it was caught on video and that the people that witnessed it did have the courage to come forward and post that video," he said.

Perryman can also understand how others who saw the video would be upset and want to take action.

"I think that everyone is justifiably upset about what happened in Minneapolis," he said. "And I think that we all need to realize as a community that during a pandemic, everyone is under pressure and that we're all one bad incident in away from something like this happening, so that we more than ever need to be proactive and speak out as a community."

Cayce Utley is the lead organizer of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) in Northern Virginia, a grassroots organization helping to organize white people for radical justice.

"We've been following what's going on and paying attention to what the organizers on the ground there in Minneapolis are saying," she said. "They're asking people to across the country to respond by organizing in their communities, for racial justice against anti-blackness and police brutality."

For the last few years, SURJ been organizing around abuses that have happened in Fairfax County, Alexandria, Arlington, and Prince William County.

"What happened to George Floyd could happen here, right?" she said. "It has happened here. And I think that's the thing that we want people to understand is that Minneapolis and the response there is an outgrowth of the oppression that black people have been experiencing at the hands of police. And that's happening here too. So, it's a flashpoint, but it's not an exception."

SURJ is hosting a vigil to #EndWhiteSilence in Fairfax on Tuesday, from 6-7 p.m., outside the Fairfax County Government Center (12099 Government Center Parkway, Fairfax).

Also see ...

• Body-Worn Police Cameras Debut May 1 In Fairfax County
• DC Officials React To Death Of George Floyd In Minneapolis
• George Floyd: Bail For Ex-Officer Derek Chauvin Set At $500K
• George Floyd Death: Former Cop Derek Chauvin Charged With Murder
• Photos: Devastation In Minneapolis As Unrest Spreads Across U.S.