James City police kill armed man in shootout in Food Lion parking lot
James City County police shot and killed an armed man who confronted them in the parking lot of the Food Lion store at the corner of Olde Towne Road and Richmond Road Sunday afternoon, police reported.
No one else was injured during the confrontation just before 5 p.m., police said, but the area was cordoned off while county and state police investigated.
James City County police did not identify the dead man or the officers involved in the shooting.
Police Chief Mark Jamison transferred the investigation of the shooting to the Virginia State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation, which is the normal procedure. Jamison placed the two county officers involved on administrative duties while the case is investigated and referred all questions on the incident to the state police.
State police issued a press release stating no information would be given during their investigation.
Sunday’s incident began when police were called to a fight involving a potentially armed man in the 100 block of Dehaven Court.
The suspect fled in a green Nissan truck before police arrived, according to a police press release.
Police said they used a controversial license plate recording system by Flock Safety to track the suspect’s truck headed toward Olde Towne Road. Two county police officers followed the truck into the Food Lion parking lot, where the man came to a stop.
At that point, police said, he got out of the truck with a long rifle and traded fire with the police, who fatally shot him.
Flock Safety, the company whose technology was used by James City County police, has alarmed civil liberties groups who say it creates an unregulated mass surveillance tool, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
The system allows both officials and private individuals to take pictures of license plates, run them against hot lists, and share the information, creating what the ACLU decried as an Orwellian system of mass surveillance.
A 2023 ACLU campaign against the system said it had no issue with license plate tracking used by law enforcement officials in a targeted fashion, which would appear to cover this incident. But the ACLU warned, “there’s no reason the technology should be used to create comprehensive records of everybody’s comings and goings — and that is precisely what ALPR databases like Flock’s are doing.”