Virginia chief requests police academy graduation certificates be re-signed in English

A Virginia police chief sent an email faulting the director of the Fairfax County's police academy for signing graduation certificates in a language other than English and requested the documents be signed again.

Maj. Wilson Lee, who is Chinese American, has signed the ceremonial documents in Chinese with his legal given name, Lee Wai-Shun, since taking over the Fairfax County Police Criminal Justice Academy over a year ago.

The Herndon Police Department recently sent its first class of officers to the academy since Lee took over, and before Thursday’s graduation ceremony, Chief Maggie DeBoard emailed Lee and several others, writing, “I just found out that the academy graduation certificates were signed by you in some other language, not in English. This is unacceptable for my agency.”

She requested that her officers’ certificates be reissued with an English signature.

In a statement from DeBoard, who has more than three decades of law enforcement experience in Northern Virginia and became Herndon’s chief in 2012, she said, “Because we operate in our profession on a written common platform of English, I asked to have our officers’ certificates reissued to the graduates with the commander’s name written in English, as has always been the tradition.”

DeBoard says Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis privately confronted her before Thursday’s graduation and “inappropriately accused me of being racist and made other disparaging remarks to me, which I quickly dispelled.”

“There was no intention of racial insensitivity on my part when I made the request to address this change, and it is quite concerning from a professional standpoint that he has chosen to raise this issue outside of our agencies and place judgement on my character,” DeBoard said in her statement to News4.

She said Herndon police always “embraced and celebrated diversity.”

In a statement to News4, Fairfax County police expressed pride in Lee’s leadership and confirmed the agency does not plan to reissue the certificates.

“Our last several recruit classes are majority minority as we make historic strides to better reflect the community we serve,” the statement said. “Any expressed sentiments that appear to take issue with these realities are unfortunate and not reflective of Fairfax County’s commitment to our inclusive One Fairfax mission.”

Recent census information shows Asian people make up almost 20% of the population of Fairfax County.