Fairfax County Police Watch: Police misconduct tracked in our National Police Misconduct News Feed for Monday, December 20, 2010:

SPONSORED BY THE FAIRFAX COUNTY POLICE AIR FORCE......YEAH, WE HAVE THAT MUCH MONEY , WE HAVE A FUCKING AIR FORCE. YOU SIT IN TRAFFIC BECAUSE THERE IS NO MONEY FOR MORE ROADS AND WE HAVE A FUCKING AIR FORCE

THE USUAL WHITE TRASH BEHAVIOR
An Evansville Indiana police officer is under investigation over a fight he got into with a former Vanderburgh County Indiana deputy while they were drinking at their police union lodge.

FRAUD IS JUST A NICER SOUNDING WORD FOR WEASEL
A Fruitland Park Florida police chief has accepted a plea deal of sorts that will give him diversionary sentencing along with his promise to never work in law enforcement again in order to avoid formal charges of his use of fake diploma mill college degrees to earn an extra $80 in incentive pay per month.

A Kileen TX police officer has been indicted for social security fraud after he was fired last week after an internal investigation into unspecified allegations that officials say weren’t related to allegations that he exposed himself to a woman inside her home.

The town marshal of Brooklyn Indiana who has been has been fired and rehired for that job three times has been arrested on felony forgery, intimidation and official misconduct charges on allegations that he wrongfully arrested a man he had a dispute with and then forged an arrest report by attributing it to another officer. When confronted by that officer he allegedly intimidated him into signing it.

A Louisville Kentucky police officer has been fired for dishonesty and interfering with an officer after a six year-long investigation into allegations she misappropriated funds from a now-defunct police group.

A Proctor Minnesota deputy police chief who is also a city councilor has pled guilty to felony possession of a controlled substance and possession of an illegal sawed-off shotgun charges related to the theft of evidence taken from a pharmacy robbery in exchange for dropping the felony theft charge against him.

A now-former Nashville Tennessee police officer has been convicted of making false statements while buying guns that were intended to be smuggled to Guatemala while he was still an officer.

COPS & WOMEN: THE REPORTS PRETTY MUCH SAY IT ALL
A Barrow County Georgia police officer has been fired after arrested on domestic violence related charges over an alleged physical dispute with is wife.

A US Customs & Border Protection officer who worked at the Atlanta Georgia airport has been arrested for allegedly firing nearly 30 shots when he fatally shot his estranged wife’s boyfriend then chased her through a neighborhood before shooting her to death as well.

YET MORE DRUNK COPS
A Modesto California police officer has been charged with drunk driving after he crashed his jeep down an embankment in November. He allegedly had a .20 BAC and open alcohol containers in the car.

GIVE AN IDIOT WITH LOW SELF-ESTEEM A WEAPON AND THEY’LL USE IT ON OTHERS
Waveland Mississippi police have stopped using tasers pending a review into their use and training after a 4th taser-related lawsuit within the last couple of years was filed against that department.

THE USUAL PUNK BEHAVIOR WE HAVE ALL COME TO EXPECT
A Pinal County Arizona deputy who was hired by his former police chief after he was fired from the Chandler AZ PD over varied misconduct allegations is now under investigation for allegedly abusing detainee who didn’t speak English.

CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATION
A Red Bank Tennessee police officer has been fired and two others have been suspended over an unauthorized search of a house along with a bounty hunter who was looking for a suspect, all without a warrant.

Morrogh finds cop he doesn’t love. In other news, hell freezes.

Probe of fatal police shooting goes to federal authorities

By Justin Jouvenal/Post

The Fairfax County prosecutor has turned over the investigation of a fatal police shooting of an unarmed Springfield man to federal authorities, citing complications with the five-month-old case.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Ray Morrogh said the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia has agreed to continue the probe into the death of 46-year-old John Geer, who was shot during a standoff with Fairfax County police in August. No one has been charged in the incident.

“There is a conflict of interest that has arisen in the case,” Morrogh said Thursday. “And there is a second potential conflict of interest that has arisen out of my office. . . . This is the prudent thing to do.”

Morrogh declined to describe the nature of the conflicts because the investigation is ongoing. The U.S. attorney’s office said Thursday that it could not confirm or deny any investigation or comment on pending investigations.

Police went to Geer’s Pebble Brook Court home on Aug. 29 because of a report of a domestic disturbance. Geer’s father, Don Geer, said his son was upset because his girlfriend, the mother of his two children, had decided to leave him.

John Geer had thrown his girlfriend’s belongings in the front yard. She called police and told them that Geer had a firearm. Police said they tried for about 50 minutes to persuade Geer to leave the home, but he refused.

Don Geer said he watched the climax of the encounter. He said that he could not hear what officers were saying to his son but that he saw him standing with empty hands resting on top of a screen door at the home’s entrance.

At some point, John Geer began to slowly lower his hands and an officer opened fire, hitting Geer in the chest, his father said. Geer retreated inside and closed the door. A SWAT team eventually entered the home and found Geer dead.

Don Geer said detectives later told him that his son did not have a gun on him at the time of the shooting but that there was a holstered handgun a couple of steps from the front door.

Don Geer said it appeared to him that the shooting was unjustified, but he was unsure what to make of the probe being turned over to federal authorities.

“I don’t know whether that’s good or bad — if I had a better idea of why they are doing it, I could form an opinion,” he said.

Geer and friends of his son have been critical of how long the investigation has taken, but Morrogh said police and prosecutors were working to explore all the evidence. He did not think federal prosecutors would have to start from scratch.

“No one wants these things to linger on,” Morrogh said.

Our ink will outlast his career

Under the reign of former Chief of Police Rhorer the Fairfax County Police arrested a man for not wearing clothes in his house while he made coffee, set up an eye doctor on a gambling charge and then used the SWAT team to kill him. An investigation into the charge that the Doctor’s primary clients were cops has never been investigated. The police gunned down an emotionally unstable man because cop who shot him wrongly assumed the man was trying to escape. He wasn’t. The cops also shot dead four other citizens under highly questionable circumstances. The department under Rhorer was sued multiple times by citizens. So did they fire Rhorer? Naw they promoted him. According to news reports Rhorer draws a salary of $191,168 per year as Deputy Fairfax County Executive as well as a concurrent pension from the Fairfax County police of $173000 per year.

Occupation by force

According to the most recent U.S. Census figures, nearly one in five Fairfax residents (17.5 percent) is of Asian descent while Hispanics make up nearly 16 percent of Fairfax’s overall population. Those numbers drop considerably when applied to the Fairfax County Police Department, where only 4.3 percent of officers are Asian and 4.1 percent Hispanic. White officers make up 84 percent of Fairfax County’s 1,360-member police department, significantly higher than the county’s general population (54 percent white). Almost 90% of the force lives outside the county.