Almost two years & the shameful cover-up continues in Fairfax County, Virginia
Just eight days away from the two-year anniversary of the killing of John Geer and the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and Fairfax County Police Department continue their shameful cover-up. Despite the arrest this week of Officer Adam Torres, the appointment of a commission to improve police practices (of which I am a member) and lots of talk about lessons learned, the leadership in the County and the police department still don’t understand a very important word — transparency.
Instead of finally telling us how this debacle occurred (the cover-up — not the tragic shooting) and holding those in charge accountable, it’s business as usual in Fairfax County. As has been the routine since August, 2013, we watch as scandalous details very slowly leak out under Tom Jackman’s byline in The Washington Post. Today’s news is that a police captain secretly recorded a telephone conversation with a prosecutor assigned to the Geer case.
Previously: ‘What you don’t know can’t hurt me’ again wins out over transparency in Fairfax County
I’m embarrassed for the Fairfax County Police Department
In the same article, we are reminded again that the Board of Supervisors still hasn’t come clean on exactly what they knew and when they knew it in the efforts to withhold important information and documents from the Commonwealth’s Attorney, the U.S. Attorney, the Justice Department, a U.S. Senator, the Geer family and us.
The people we elect — the people we put our trust in — continue to insult us. They hide behind a claim of attorney-client privilege. The Supervisors think we should be satisfied with redacted documents that mask their decision making and the decision making of top Fairfax County officials.
As I pointed out in March, the attempt by the Board of Supervisors to hold deputy county attorney Cynthia Tianti responsible for this entire fiasco was laughable. The decision to fire Tianti (since reversed) has brought a lawsuit that is slowly bringing us more details of the misdeeds by those in charge. It was clear then that the Tianti firing would blow up in their faces and it has.
Chairmen Sharon Bulova and the Board of Supervisors continue to think just naming a commission to change practices in the future will make us all forget this and soon restore confidence in County leaders. It won’t.
Anything short of true transparency will just allow the hits to keep on coming. It’s well beyond time for all of this information to be released, with no or minimal redactions.
Real accountability is also a requirement to finally put this to rest. Months after Cynthia Tianti was thrown under the bus and her job marginalized, it’s extremely obvious the terrible decision making that got us into this mess continues. While that fact says a lot to me, for some reason Sharon Bulova and company refuse to publicly admit Ms. Tianti is not the real problem. Instead, our elected leaders keep paying big bucks to those actually responsible for this embarrassment and allow them to take us deeper into this hole with no end in sight. Shameful.
