New Police Captain Leads Sully District Station

In 30 years as a police officer with the Fairfax County Police Department, Captain Purvis Dawson has worked in just about every capacity imaginable: investigated homicides, patrolled the streets on a bike, dispatched helicopters, worked with stray animals. 

But a year and a half before he's set to retire, Dawson has finally gotten to do the one thing left on his bucket list: command a police station. Dawson took the reigns as commander of the in April after  at the Criminal Intelligence Division.

"How I ended up in the jewel of Fairfax County I don't know. I will tell you it's an answer to prayer; it's fulfilling a life-long dream to get my own district station command," said Dawson, a county native who lives in Mount Vernon. "But it's also a humbling experience, because I know that there's other captains that are just as qualified as me and just as suited for the job."

Despite his three decades on the police force, it wasn't a slam-dunk for Dawson to get ahold of the highly-coveted position. The police department has nearly two dozen captains, and just about every one of them would like to command a station. In January, Dawson was working 12-hour shifts as a staff duty officer at a patrol bureau, where he had spent the last three and a half years. It was at that point that he had a long talk with Chief David Rohrer about the next step in his career. 

"He asked me: 'are you ready for a change?' And I said 'yes, sir I am.' And he asked me what I'd like to do. I said—I truly said—the last thing on my bucket list is I would like to be a district commander. But I also know that there's others that are waiting in the wings, " Dawson said.

Dawson has worked as a captain at the animal services division, worked at six different stations and in tech services. As commander of the helicopter division, he dispatched choppers at the Sully District Station . He was also assistant director of the 911 center on September 11th, 2001, when calls were rolling in frantically. 

Despite the high profile assignments, Dawson cites his time patrolling and Mount Vernon on a bike as an example of the way he hopes to run the Sully District Station. He wants to get out and introduce himself to the community, maybe even pitch a tent with other officers at a local shopping center to introduce themselves. 

"One of my priorities is to make sure that the officers are getting out of their cars, getting into the community, that my neighborhood patrol unit is being seen in the communities, my crime prevention officer is visible in the community, our school resource officers...I want to make sure that people see us as accessible," he said.

Reporting by Mary Stachyra; video produced by Garrett Johnson.