Feb 12, 2008 @ 0:35:
Sept 19, 2008:
Officer Found Not Guilty in Fatal Car Crash
A Fairfax County police officer who drove through a red light with her emergency
lights on but not the siren was found not guilty of reckless driving yesterday in
a February crash that killed a 33-year-old woman...
"Taking the totality of the circumstances," [Judge] Deneke said -- the traffic,
the weather, Perry's actions and intentions -- "I don't find the evidence rises
to a level that the driving was reckless."
McIntosh's family sat in shock, then wept. Perry was allowed to leave the
courtroom through a side entrance used for sheriff's deputies and did not
make a statement. She remains on restricted administrative duty.
March 21, 2009:
Officer Suspected Of Embezzlement
A Fairfax County police officer who was involved in a traffic crash last year
that killed a teacher's assistant has resigned from the police department and is
under investigation for embezzlement, officials said.
August 13, 2009:
Judge Rejects Immunity for Former Officer in Fatal Car Crash
A Fairfax County judge ruled Wednesday that a Fairfax police officer who hit and
killed another driver last year is not entitled to immunity in the civil suit
filed by the dead woman's family.
The ruling by Fairfax Circuit Court Judge R. Terrence Ney was a significant legal
victory for the family of Ashley McIntosh, 33, the teacher's assistant whose car
entered a Route 1 intersection on a green light and was broadsided by then-
Officer Amanda R. Perry. McIntosh was thrown from her car and killed.
Perry, 23, was not in court for Ney's ruling, and she is no longer a Fairfax
police officer. She resigned in March after police alleged that she had been
embezzling from the department by falsifying time and attendance records while
she was on administrative duties in the year after the Feb. 12, 2008, crash. She
has not been charged in that case.
Feb 4, 2010:
County Settles McIntosh case
Ashley McIntosh was killed Feb. 12, 2008 in an auto crash involving former Mt.
Vernon District Police Officer Amanda Perry. After an initial ruling by a
District Court Judge that Perry is innocent of any wrongdoing, the family of Ms.
McIntosh files a $6 million civil suit against the officer, charging negligence
and gross negligence.
Judge Ney Rules Perry was grossly negligent and not entitled to sovereign
immunity. This sovereign immunity trial sets the tone and basis of the civil
suit. The family would only have to prove simple negligence in a trial set for
Feb. 8.
On the eve of the trial, Fairfax County and family of Ashley McIntosh agree to
settle out of court for $1.5 million.
June 14, 2010:
"There's No Transparency, and I Find that Inexcusable"
Meet the 82-year-old ex-cop, World War II vet, and private eye who's challenging
one of the largest police departments in the country
At a stoplight just a few miles from his home, Nicholas Beltrante, 82, puts on
his flashers, opens the driver's side door to his car, gets out, and approaches
my car. I roll down my window.
"You see that little memorial over there?" he asks. I nod. "That's where a
Fairfax County Police officer killed Ashley McIntosh."...
Ashley McIntosh was killed in February 2008 when Fairfax County Police Officer
Amanda Perry, responding to a petty theft at a convenience store, sped through an
intersection without sounding her siren, striking McIntosh's car. Perry was
charged with reckless driving,
the first time in decades an on-duty Fairfax
County cop was charged with a crime.
A judge later dismissed the charge, though Perry was ultimately discharged from
the force for falsifying time sheets.
"They finally settled with the family in February," Beltrante says. "$1.5 million.
That's $1.5 million taxpayers have to pay because Fairfax can't keep its police
officers accountable."
Beltrante emphasizes that it isn't the mistakes but the lack of accountability
that got him agitated enough to start his organization.
"You have this
David Masters who was killed last year," he says, referring to
another incident in which a Fairfax officer shot an unarmed man along the same
highway.
"They won't even release the police officer's name. They won't even
release the report.
"We're just supposed to trust them when they say that shooting was
justified.
"I've worked in government. You don't keep the government accountable
by shielding the people who work for it.
"There's this perception in some departments that officers are above
the law."...
He then rattles off stories. There's the NAACP complaint about Randall Leroy
Rollins, a black man killed by Fairfax police in 2007 during a drug sting. Police
say Rollins reached for a gun. Witness accounts differ from police accounts. More
disturbing, Rollins' family says when his body was delivered to them, his
testicles had been removed. (Rollins was with a white woman at the time of the
sting.)
There's Sal Culosi, the Fairfax optometrist killed during a 2006 botched SWAT
raid on his home. Culosi was suspected of wagering on college football games with
friends.
Then there's Ian Smith, a mentally-ill man shot by Fairfax police just this year
after a tactical team entered his home and he brandished a plastic BB pistol.
Beltrante acknowledges that the actions of the police may have been justified in
some of these incidents. "The problem is that they refuse to share any
information. Not with the press, not with the victims' families. Their
transparency policy is that there's no transparency. And I find that inexcusable."
Beltrante... wants Fairfax to establish a formal civilian review board to oversee
the police department.
It's one of the largest police departments in the country without a citizen
oversight board.
Beltrante also wants to challenge Virginia's open records law, or at least the
way the police departments in Alexandria, Fairfax County, and Arlington have
interpreted it, which is that it gives them carte blanche to turn down any and
all information requests.
"I've already filed the open records request for the report and the name of the
police officer who shot David Masters," Beltrante says. "They turned me down, as
I expected they would. We hope to work with the ACLU to either challenge the law
in court, or get the legislature to change it.
"Think about that. An officer shoots and kills an unarmed man and
we're not permitted to even know the officer's name.
"I find that offensive as a former police officer, as a veteran, and
just as someone who happens to live in Fairfax County."