Fairfax County Police Watch: Two police officers who shot and killed a 21-year-old Mount Vernon man by mistake

The Washington Post

March 21, 1979, Wednesday, Final Edition

No Violation of Police Procedure Ruled in Officers' Slaying of Man

BYLINE: By Liza Bercovici, Washington Post Staff Writer

SECTION: Metro; C3

LENGTH: 319 words

Two police officers who shot and killed a 21-year-old Mount Vernon man by mistake last month have been cleared of violating police procedures in the incident, although an investigation by the Fairfax County prosecutor is continuing.

Fairfax County police Sgt. Walter Blankenship, 38, and Officer Kenneth Madden, 33, of the Arlington police force were cleared by an internal review by the Fairfax police department, Fairfax Chief Richard A. King said yesterday.

Fairfax Commonwealth's Attorney Robert F. Horan Jr. is still investigating to determine if there were criminal violations in the death of Stanley Hughes, who was shot to death Feb. 12 as he ran unarmed from his apartment where a murder suspect was staying. Horan refused comment yesterday on the status of his investigation.

Blankenship, who had been suspended from the force, returned to his job Monday at the Groveton police substation. Arlington police said Madden, assigned desk duty pending the Fairfax police department review, would be back on street patrol by today.

The officers who shot Hughes had been staking out Hughes' apartment at 3332 Lockheed Blvd. in the Mount Vernon area in hope of capturing Kenneth Eugene King 34, who was sought in connection with the death of his father-in-law and the wounding of his mother.

Hughes was shot as he ran from his apartment after gunifire was heard from outside. Afterward, police said, they found King inside the apartment dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

At first, the police effort to investigate the matter was frustrated, first by the officers' refusal, on advice of their attorneys, to discuss the matter, and then by Hughes' mother, Naomi Hughes, the only other eyewitness to the incident, who announced she would have "nothing to say to police."

Blankenship and Madden decided about two weeks ago to talk with police investigators about the incident.

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.