January 25, 2019
It has now been 14 months since US Park Police shot dead Iranian-American Bijan Ghaisar at point blank range in Virginia, but no investigative report or even official comment has yet been released.
The two police officers who fired at Ghaisar’s head from just a few feet away remain on administrative leave with pay. No charges have been filed against them, and they have not been publicly named.
The Park Police started an investigation immediately after the November 17, 2017, shooting. After three days, they turned the investigation over to the FBI. Neither the Park Police nor the FBI have said anything about the probe since then. It isn’t known if the investigation has been completed or, if not, why it is taking inordinately long.
Ghaisar, 25, was shot dead in Fairfax County, Virginia, just outside Washington, DC. Two Fairfax police cars followed the Park Police and caught the shooting on their dashboard cameras. (Park Police do not have either body cameras or cameras on their patrol car dashboards.) The Fairfax County police released one of the dashboard videos in January 2018 and the other just a few weeks ago. The second video adds little to what was previously known, but brought the case back to public attention and prompted The Washington Post to publish an editorial demanding an explanation from the FBI and calling the prolonged silence a “scandal.”
Ghaisar had been driving south on the George Washington Memorial Parkway, which leads from Washington, DC, to George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon.
For some reason, he stopped in one of the parkway’s driving lanes and a car following him slammed on its breaks but bumped into the rear of Ghaisar’s car. Ghaisar never got out of his car, but drove off at moderate speed.
The Park Police pursued him. The Park Police were involved because the parkway is on the US National Parks land. Twice Ghaisar stopped on the parkway. The police car pulled up beside him both times and the officer in the passenger seat got out and approached Ghaisar’s car. Both times Ghaisar drove off. Eventually, Ghaisar pulled off the parkway into a residential neighborhood. Once again he stopped. This time, the Park Police pulled their car around in front of Ghaisar’s jeep to prevent him from driving off again.
The videos show the Park Police officers firing five shots at Ghaisar. His jeep begins to move forward slowly. The police fire two more shots. The jeep moves again and begins to slide down an embankment. Two more shots are fired and the jeep comes to a halt, leaning on a stop sign.
Ghaisar was born in Virginia (in the same hospital where he died after spending 10 days in a coma) to parents who had emigrated from Iran. He held an accounting degree and had been working for his father’s business.
The family’s lawyer, Roy Austin, told The Washington Post, “No matter what angle you view this from, this was an illegal shooting of an unarmed, unthreatening young man. The slow drip of information over the past year has been difficult, but it is certainly better than no information at all. The family remains thankful that Chief [Edwin] Roessler [of the Fairfax police force, which released the two videos] continues to be more transparent than anyone in the federal government.”
Roessler released the second video in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Washington Post.
Five years ago, a Fairfax County police officer shot and killed an unarmed resident. The county charged that officer with murder, and he later pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter.
In a December 15 editorial, The Washington Post wrote: “For 13 months, not a word of information has emerged to illuminate why Ghaisar was shot, the thinking and conduct of the officers who shot him, or the reasons for the glacial pace of the investigation…. Justice delayed is justice denied—and, in the case of Ghaisar’s death, the delay is now so prolonged as to constitute a scandal…. A police shooting that looked unjustified from the outset by now takes on the characteristics of a coverup: stonewalling, unaccountability and a code of silence whose effect is to protect uniformed officers from the consequences of their poor judgment.”
The US Park Police is the police force of the US National Park Service. They are not the uniformed park rangers that visitors see when visiting national parks. The rangers are not law enforcement officers and are not armed.