Fairfax County Police Watch: Fairfax Police on Stakeout Slay Custodian at Va. School

The Washington Post

December 30, 1978, Saturday, Final Edition

Caretaker at Fairfax School Slain by Police;

Police on Stakeout Slay Custodian at Va. School

BYLINE: By Athelia Knight, Washington Post Staff Writer

SECTION: First Section; A1

LENGTH: 589 words

There had been a series of burglaries at the secluded, red-brick Talent House Private School off Arlington Boulevard, troublesome enough for owner Eldon Merritt to offer a $500 reward to his employes for help in stopping the crimes.

In the early hours of yesterday morning, part-time school custodian John Jackson, 33, of Manassas, armed with a 22 caliber revolver, returned to the darkened school building, drove up its long, tree-lined driveway and let himself through the kitchen door.

According to accounts pieced together yesterday, Jackson, a trusted worker at the school where he had been employed for six or seven years, believed the single-story structure was empty. It was a fatal mistake.

Waiting quietly inside, unknown to Jackson -- and to do the school's owner -- were two Fairfax County police officers staking out the premises.

Police said yesterday that the two, Offices David Lubas and Nancy Lutz, both in plain clothes, confronted Jackson and ordered him to put down his weapon. Jackson raised his hand, police said, Lubas fired three times, striking Jackson twice in the torso and once in the hand.

Jackson, who did not return the fire, was taken to Fairfax Hospital where he died at 3:37 a.m.

Lubas, a three-year veteran of the county police force, was placed on administrative leave yesterday pending the completion of an internal police investigation of the incident.

Merritt said yesterday he was shocked by Jackson's death. "I thought he was a terrific man. I thought the world of John. He would never take anything. I trusted him."

David Feldman, an attorney and friend of the Jackson family who said he had been asked to look into the death, said. "I just can't understand how the man got killed. I don't know whether it was somebody got trigger happy or what. It's one damn terrible mistake."

According to police and Merritt, the school, located at 9211 Arlington Blvd., had been burglarized five times between Oct. 20 and Nov. 5. Television sets, money and food were taken in the burglaries.

Officers from the Mason District station had staked out the school on 20 nights since Nov. 5, police said.

"I don't know why it happened,"

Merritt said, however, that he was unaware of the stakeouts. He said police apparently were given a key to the school by an assistant director on the staff. Merritt said Jackson was unaware of the stakeout.

said Merritt, who closed the school yesterday because of the shoting, "A good man's life was lost."

According to the police accourt, Lubas and Lutz arrived at Talent House after midnight. Officers on the stakeout generally went to the school after the cleaning crew had left, police said, and stayed until about 5 a.m.

Jackson, who also held a fulltime job as a laborer for Vepco, had cleaned the school, with this wife's help, on Thursday night. Then he drove his wife to Manassas and left her with the couple's 2-year-old daughter before returning to Fairfax.

Jackson arrived at the school about 1:30 a.m. He let himself in the back door with his key and walked in the back the ktchen. Lubas and Lutz stood silently in the main office where they could watch both the front and back entrances.

Police said Lubas then appeared at the kitchen doorway, indentified himself as a police officer and ordered Jackson to drop his gun. When Lubas fired. Police did not say whether the rooms' lights were switched on.

Deputy Police Chief Kenneth R. Wilson yesterday declined to comment on the case.

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.