Fairfax County Police Watch: One Fairfax County police officer has been cleared and a second officer ordered transferred after an internal investigation of a melee involving the two men

The Washington Post

November 7, 1979, Wednesday, Final Edition

1 Officer Shifted, Another Cleared In Fairfax Melee

BYLINE: By Ronald D. White, Washington Post Staff Writer

SECTION: Metro; C2

LENGTH: 346 words

One Fairfax County police officer has been cleared and a second officer ordered transferred after an internal investigation of a melee involving the two men and members of a Groveton family last August, police said yesterday.

Police Chief Richard A. King said Officer James W. Cavender Jr., 29, a six-year veteran of the force, will be reassigned to unspecified duties outside the Groveton area as a result of the probe.

Cavender is "not really being punished, just reassigned," said King, who added that Cavender "could have used other options" to avoid the incident. w

The second officer, Jerry L. Bowers, 26, was cleared by police.

King ordered the probe of possible use of excessive force by the officers following newspaper accounts of the fracas, in which both officers and some family members suffered minor injuries.

A spokesman in the FBI's Alexandria office confirmed yesterday that an agent also is investigating possible use of excessive force by the patrolmen.

The incident occurred Aug. 10 after 20-year-old Timothy Rickman allegedly flashed his lights and honked his horn at a patrol car being driven by Cavender about 10:30 p.m.

Cavender followed Rickman into the family's driveway of 3408 Memorial Dr. The scuffle ensued when Rickman allegedly refused to be questioned and called for help. Cavender also radioed for assistance and Bowers came to the scene.

Rickman was charged with drunk driving and assault. Obstruction of justice and assault charges were brought against his father, Donald Rickman, his mother Arlene, and his stepbrother Daniel Mancini.

All of the charges were dismissed on Oct. 12 by Fairfax General District Court Judge Martin E. Morris, who cited a lack of evidence.

"They ought to put both (officers) behind the desk. Neither one of them are ready to work in the street," Arlene Rickman said yesterday.

"i couldn't expect much punishment even if they found them guilty. I'm surprised they're doing this much. This is like a police state. . . and they really protect their own," she said.

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.