Although the professional journalism association Investigative Reporters and Editors has ranked Virginia a very high fifth in the most transparent states in the union, the automatic default position of the Fairfax County police department is to decline all requests for information, from the public, the press and defense lawyers.
The Virginia Freedom of Information Act, passed by the General Assembly in the 1968, includes an unintentional loophole that allows local governments to have a complete blackout for "complaints, memoranda, correspondence, case files or reports, witness statements and evidence." Basically, all of the information the press and the public and concerned public officials needs to determine how investigations were conducted and how conclusions were reached.
The Fairfax Police department has managed to misinterpret a very sound and seemingly simple freedom of information law to its favor and also because elected officials in the county are apparently too intimated by the department to do anything about it.
As a result of their total secrecy in protecting themselves from the public, the Fairfax County police are the least transparent police department in Northern Virginia, if not in the entire United States.
The department rejects simple, unobtrusive requests for incident reports about arrests even though the department then hands out the same information as a press release. A police spokesperson told reporter that releasing any information to the press would have a "chilling effect" on victims and witnesses coming forward to report crimes. Although the statement hasn’t proven true anywhere else in the county, the Fairfax Police refuse to budge on releasing public information to the public.
The department knows, from the public’s point of view, that it’s an idiotic position and has said as much through its spokespersons. But from an internal police viewpoint, the "Go ahead and ask because we won’t tell" policy makes perfect sense because it keeps the public from having to release information on police graft, corruption and generally bad behavior of its officers. And, with the help of good pal in the States Attorney office who has never prosecuted a single Fairfax County police officer for anything at all, and whipped board of Supervisors who share office space with the officers, they get away with it.