Fairfax County NAACP, Unit 7066 | P. O.

Box 394, Fairfax, VA 22038-0394

07/18/2019

Re: FCPD Policies on Gangs and Implicit Bias Training

Chairman Bulova,
County Executive Hill,
Chief Roessler,
And Members of the Board of Supervisors,

The recent shootings along the Route One corridor and the community meeting on July 9th at
Gum Springs Community Center revealed that, despite efforts to improve relations between the
African American community and the Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD), more work
needs to be done. The recurring complaints1 from the attendees of that meeting were that FCPD
is engaging in racial profiling; and FCPD’s uses the term "gang activity" or labeling individuals
as “gang members” without providing supporting evidence should be discontinued. As unsettling
as the shootings and subsequent meetings were, we believe that if the county embraced this
moment to review its policies we can re-emerge stronger and more unified.

We request that a full review the FCPD officer training on implicit bias be conducted in
order to prevent future instances of racial profiling. ​Based on the citizen complaints of racial
profiling voiced at the Gum Springs Community meeting, and past complaints submitted to the
Fairfax County NAACP, including a recent video2 submitted to us featuring what appears to be
an illegal stop of an African American male, we believe that some FCPD officers are engaging
in racial profiling. Racial profiling is not only unfair, but also ineffective and counterproductive.
Racial profiling erodes the public trust that the County has worked so hard to foster. This loss of
confidence reverberates through their network of family members, friends, and the community
writ large, negatively affecting police-community relations and ultimately decreases cooperation.
In addition, when law enforcement officers treat an entire group of people as suspicious, they
inadvertently target innocent people and are likely to miss criminals who do not fit the profile.
Funding was allocated in the 2020 budget for an outside organization to examine the racial
disparity on use of force; and we ask that implicit bias and racial profiling also be examined as
part of this study.

1
​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eLYUGiVhXw&feature=youtu.be
2
​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI9S6H-ilww&feature=youtu.be
 Fairfax County NAACP, Unit 7066 | P. O. Box 394, Fairfax, VA 22038-0394

We request that FCPD update its definition of gangs; create a written policy that governs
when it is appropriate to make allegations of gang activity public; and instruct the office
of the Independent Police Auditor to audit and purge its gang database (or entries it
submits to other gang databases) annually.​ First and foremost, it should be noted that the
very definition of a gang is subjective, and there is no universally accepted definition by any
federal, state, or local law enforcement agency. Nevertheless, Fairfax County is on the wrong
side of the spectrum on this issue, as it currently applies one of the loosest definitions of the
term of any department in the country. According to the county’s website, a gang can simply be
“a group of people who band together for a common purpose and are involved in criminal
activity.” By this lenient definition, almost any group of friends or associates accused of violating
any law can be classified as gang members. Most other jurisdictions recognize the potential
harm of applying such a broad brush and low threshold, and therefore apply more restrictive
definitions that include a minimum number of associates, adoption of a common name and
symbology, territorial claims, and require that the primary purpose of the association is to
conduct criminal activity for the collective benefit of the organization. Failure to apply such
minimum standards universally opens the door to a highly subjective and potentially prejudicial
process where communities of color can be mislabeled and stigmatized unfairly.

Moreover, FCPD recklessly uses the term in public inciting fear and stoking racial stereotypes.
Because of FCPD’s loose definition, individuals may be unfairly entered into gang databases
such as the Northern Virginia Gang Taskforce (in which FCPD participates), FBI’s National
Gang Intelligence Center, ICEGangs or GangNET simply by associating with alleged gang
“members”, “associates” or “affiliates,” - all of which is highly subjective terminology, and which
does not require a criminal conviction. Even the clothes and individual wears or locations they
visit can be used to justify their entry into gang databases. Compounding this matter is the fact
that this information can be collected by almost any means, including a simple “field interview”
which can be virtually any encounter with law enforcement (not necessarily related to a crime).
Once entered into such databases individuals’ personal and biographical data may be shared
across local and federal law enforcement agencies without their knowledge and without judicial
oversight.

These practices have come under increased scrutiny in recent years, and even more so in light
of the increased activity by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). For instance,
in April of this year, Chicago’s Inspector General found that Chicago Police Department
mislabeled at least 134,000 people as gang members using misleading data. It found that the
process lacked oversight which put thousands of innocent citizens at risk of a harsher
 Fairfax County NAACP, Unit 7066 | P. O. Box 394, Fairfax, VA 22038-0394

3
sentences, higher bond, and deportation. We can avoid encountering or exasperating this
problem in Fairfax by being mindful of when we use the label “gang” in our discourse.

Thank you in advance for giving these issues the full attention they deserve.

Sincerely,
 
Kofi Annan 
President, Fairfax Co. NAACP

3
Chicago Tribune; Chicago police gang data collection faulted by city's inspector general as unchecked
and unreliable; Annie Sweeney And Madeline Buckley; Apr 11, 2019