Fairfax County Police Watch

Shooting Victim Sues Police, Claims Brush-Off

Shooting victim slaps police with $10 million lawsuit

By JOHN SCHRIFFEN

EDT, Sat, Jun 19, 2010

The Fairfax County Police Department is facing a multimillion-dollar lawsuit for an employee's alleged refusal to protect and serve.

“You can see how the bullet got stopped by the cross,” said shooting victim Najib Gerdak.

It was a necklace that saved the life of the 28-year-old. While he’s thankful to be alive, Gerdak said he still lives with the pain and visible wounds from being shot five times. “As soon as I open my eyes I feel the pain,” Gerdak said. “You know, you get ready to go to work, you look at your body in the mirror, sliced from here to here. I have holes everywhere.”

The painful injuries could have been prevented if Fairfax County police responded to his cries for help, he says. On Feb. 2, 2008, Gerdak ran into the Franconia police sub-station at about 3 a.m. after witnessing a road rage incident. But when he got inside, Gerdak says, he found an employee asleep behind the glass.

“I had to knock twice because I didn’t catch her attention because she was asleep,” Gerdak said. “I said, 'There’s two crazy people outside. Some guy is chasing a taxi driver,' and she said the cab driver needs to call his own dispatch.”

Gerdak says he was turned away, and when he went back outside into the parking lot, one of those drivers involved in that road rage incident opened fire.

“I just felt an impact in my shoulder and I heard a gun blast and I knew I’d been shot,” Gerdak said. “I felt my hand turn to fire. One second it was hot and then everything just started spinning.”

Now, more than two years later, Gerdak said he still has two bullets inside his body. One is lodged near his groin, and Gerdak has decided not to get the surgery to remove it because it’s so risky he could lose the ability to have children. He’s decided to file a $10 million lawsuit against the Fairfax County Police Department and that employee on duty that night.

“You’re supposed to run into a police station, and they’re supposed to help you,” Gerdak said. "If they can’t help you, then what? Are we all supposed to carry around guns now? I feel like nobody’s protected.”

To this day, Gerdak said he does not know why he was shot, but he’s hoping this lawsuit will prevent this terrible incident from happening to anyone ever again.

Fairfax County Police would not comment on the lawsuit because it's ongoing litigation.

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.