Last November 17th, someone shot and killed a 52-year-old man named David A. Masters. He was sitting behind the wheel of his car on Virginia’s Route 1, just outside the Capital Beltway. The Fairfax County police know what happened, but they’re covering up the details of the investigation and not even revealing the perpetrator’s name.
That’s because the perpetrator is a cop, and Fairfax County prosecutor Raymond Morrogh has decided not to prosecute, because he found that the cop did nothing wrong. From a Washington Post story by Tom Jackman, here’s what the police say happened [1]:
[Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Raymond F.] Morrogh said that three officers approached Masters’s Blazer and that Masters began rolling forward, nearly striking an officer. A second officer, on Masters’s left, thought the first officer had been struck but did not fire, Morrogh said.
The second officer told investigators that he then saw Masters reach down, Morrogh said. “The officer believed he was reaching for a weapon and fired twice,” Morrogh said. The first bullet went through the door pillar, into Masters’s left shoulder, through his chest and then pierced vital organs. The second bullet went through the rear passenger window and grazed Masters, Morrogh said.
Masters turned out to be unarmed.
Well, that’s their story. It may even be the true story. The problem is, it’s hard to tell. As Radley Balko of Reason reports, the police aren’t willing to talk about it [2]:
There exists dash-cam video of Masters’ shooting. There are also police interviews of other witnesses, and the police report itself. But the public and the press are as unlikely to see any of those as they are to learn the officer’s name. That’s because the Fairfax County Police Department—along with the neighboring municipal police departments of Arlington and Alexandria—are among the most secretive, least transparent law enforcement agencies in the country.
It’s not as if reporters aren’t trying:
Michael Pope, a reporter who covers Northern Virginia for the Connection Newspapers chain and for the Washington, D.C., NPR affiliate WAMU, filed a series of open records requests with the Faifax Police Department related to the Masters shooting. All were denied. Last month, Pope asked Fairfax County Police Public Information Officer Mary Ann Jennings why her department won’t at least release the incident report on Master’s death, given concerns raised about the shooting. “Let us hear that concern,” Jennings shot back. “We are not hearing it from anybody except the media, except individual reporters.”
That’s an astounding answer. “Except the media?” That’s exactly who you would expect to file most open records requests. When asked why her department won’t even release even the name of the officer who shot Masters, Jennings got more obtuse. “What does the name of an officer give the public in terms of information and disclosure?” Jennings asked in reply, presumably rhetorically. “I’d be curious to know why they want the name of an officer.”
It’s none of Officer Jennings’ business why the media wants to know the name of the officer. The police department is doing the public’s business on the public’s dime. They shouldn’t be allowed to keep secrets from the public, especially when they kill one of us. The question isn’t why the media wants to know, the real question is why are they afraid to tell us?
I can’t speak for the reporter in the story, however, as a courtesy to Officer Jennings, I will be happy to explain why I want her department to reveal the name of the officer: I think she might be a liar. And I think the shooter might be a liar. And I think the shooter might be a violent asshole who has done things like this before. And I think the Fairfax Police department might be covering it up. And I think prosecutor Morrogh might be helping them. Satisfied?
Of course, it’s possible that none of these things are true. This could certainly be an understandable mistake by a police officer who had a split second to make a life-or-death decision. He could simply have misjudged the situation with tragic results. (Although when non-uniformed police surprise a civilian by breaking into his home while he’s asleep, and he shoots one of them, police and prosecutors are suddenly a whole lot less understanding [3] about split-second decisions that turn out to be wrong.) The point is, we have no way of knowing whether our police are corrupt or merely imperfect until the police department opens up and lets us see the evidence.
It’s not like this is the first time this sort of thing has happened. Four years ago, Fairfax County Police shot and killed Dr. Sal Culosi outside his home while they were serving a search warrant for the crime of betting on football with his friends. Like Masters, Culosi was unarmed. The cops didn’t want to talk about that either, until the Culosi family forced them to release their internal report [4].
My guess is that not more than a dozen people in Fairfax County know the details of the Masters shooting investigation, and these people expect everyone else to just take their word for it. Or maybe it’s worse than that. Maybe they don’t care if we take their word for it. Maybe they want to be able to kill citizens and never have to justify it to anyone.
There’s a name for a small group of government agents who keep their identities secret and kill citizens. It’s called a death squad. To be clear, I don’t for a moment believe that Fairfax County is operating a death squad. But that’s not the sort of thing I want to have to take on faith alone. I’d like to be able to check for myself, and I’d be suspicious if I was prevented from investigating.
Here’s Alexendria Alexandria Police Chief Earl Cook, as reported [5] by Michael Lee Pope:
“I don’t think we have to justify it,” said Alexandria Police Chief Earl Cook in an interview about access to public documents. “A lot of things can be said about transparency, that doesn’t make it effective.”
And here’s County Commonwealth Attorney Randolph Sengel, completely missing the point in response [6] to Pope’s article:
The most offensive theme of this article is the notion that law enforcement agencies decline to release these reports to protect their own, or to conceal corrupt behavior…Believe it or not, the reporter and his colleagues are not the last true guardians of truth and justice, the attainment of which does not hang on unfettered exercise of journalistic zeal. Last time I checked there were multiple safeguards in place to assure the integrity of the criminal justice system. Conscientious and dedicated judges, prosecutors, public defenders, and law enforcement officers work in a system which is as transparent as it needs to be, constrained by reasonable and appropriate limitations which are there for the greater good, not for purposes of playing hide the ball.
I can’t imagine why anyone should care if Sengel is offended. I’m sure he doesn’t doesn’t care if he offends all the people he accuses of crimes. And if he think’s that law enforcement agencies don’t protect their own and conceal corrupt behavior, then he’s not paying attention.
It’s not uncommon for police agencies to be infiltrated or controlled by organized crime. Here in Chicago, various parts of the police department have been connected to the Chicago mob for decades. At least one police officer has been accused of abusing over 200 suspects to get confessions. More recently, officers have been indicted for robbery, kidnapping, home invasion, and murder, and a chief of detectives confessed [7] to operating a jewelry theft ring. At one point, the Cook County Sheriff’s office had to take over law enforcement in the suburb of Cicero (famous for having been Al Capone’s headquarters) after literally half the town’s police force was indicted.
I’m only picking on Chicago because I live here and know the stories off the top of my head, but this sort of thing happens everywhere. The Rampart scandal in Los Angeles [8] implicated over a dozen officers and cost the city $125 million in settlements. Police departments aren’t ordered to pay out millions in damages and required to operate under court supervision because they were obeying the law. Are we supposed to believe that the kinds of officers who take mob money and commit murder for hire wouldn’t also maybe lie about a shooting?
Reporters may not be “the last true guardians of truth and justice,” but neither are the police and prosecutors. The press is part of the system of multiple safeguards that Sengel is talking about. It’s one thing to say that certain elements of police investigative methodology should be redacted from reports, but this is a homicide of a citizen by a police officer. It deserves an especially close look, by everyone who wants to see what happened.
Finally, Sengel’s statement that the system operates for the greater good is mere supposition. We all want it to operate for the greater good, and many of us hope it operates for the greater good, but we can’t know that it operates for the greater good if folks like Sengel and Cook and Jennings and Morrogh won’t let us take a close look at it ourselves to see how it operates.
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[11]Mark Draughn [12]
[11]Latest posts by Mark Draughn (Posts [14])
- Death For Extremist Speech? [15] - December 24, 2010
- Fairfax Police should reveal details of the Masters shooting [16] - April 7, 2010
- We don’t work for the money [17] - March 22, 2010
- Spending is worse for the economy than taxing [18] - March 15, 2010