Fairfax County Police Watch: Fairfax supervisors should supervise their cops

By:Barbara Hollingsworth05/10/11 8:05 PM
Local Opinion Editor

Nicholas Beltrante is a former D.C. homicide detective with more than five decades of law enforcement experience. Two years ago, he founded the Citizens Coalition for Police Accountability after Fairfax County cops shot and killed David Masters in Beltrante's Mount Vernon neighborhood.

The 52-year-year old Masters' capital crime was stealing flowers on his way to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Beltrante knew that the Fairfax PD's regulations forbid the use of lethal force to apprehend a person accused of a misdemeanor. He was also troubled that the department refused to release the Nov. 13, 2009, incident report under the Freedom of Information Act.

It took a year -- and the threat of a lawsuit -- before the department finally released the name of Officer David Ziants, who shot Masters in the back of the head while his SUV was stuck in traffic at a Richmond Highway intersection.

So now the cop's cop is spending his golden years trying to force the Fairfax PD to be more transparent and accountable. During the past six years, he says, 13 people have been slain and 13 wounded by Fairfax police officers, some under "highly questionable circumstances."

When challenged on these matters, the department hides behind a wall of silence. Later, taxpayers learn they have to pay millions of dollars to settle cases they knew little about.

In January, for example, the Fairfax Board of Supervisors agreed to a $2 million settlement with the family of Dr. Salvatore Culosi, an unarmed optometrist who was killed by a Fairfax SWAT team during a 2006 gambling raid.

Court documents debunked Officer Deval Bullock's version of events -- that his .45-caliber automatic pistol accidentally discharged after the door of his police car bumped his elbow -- because the spent cartridge was found halfway between the vehicle and Culosi's body.

Did the officer lie, I asked? "Absolutely," Beltrante says.

Another $1.5 million out-of-court settlement was paid to the family of Ashley McIntosh, a 33-year-old teacher who was killed by another Fairfax police officer who ran a red light with no warning lights or sirens on.

"I am pro-police," Beltrante told The Examiner. "I have police blood in me. Ninety-nine percent of police officers are wonderful, but every police department has that 1 percent that taints its image. The era of the police policing the police has ended."

Beltrante wants the county to set up a civilian review board to monitor police activity, but such boards have been used in the past by people with political axes to grind. And Fairfax County already has a civilian review board. It's called the Board of Supervisors.

However, supervisors have not been doing their job, perhaps because the Police Association of Fairfax County is a major campaign donor to both Democrats and Republicans on the board.

And Virginia's FOIA law, which makes release of police reports optional rather than mandatory, needs to be strengthened.

Beltrante says that since 1942, "Fairfax County is the only jurisdiction in the United States in which no police officers have ever been charged with misconduct after a shooting death." How does this happen without ongoing coverups at the top levels of county government?

On March 29, Police Chief David Rohrer and County Attorney Tony Griffith insulted the public's intelligence by suggesting that an auditor who reports directly to them be in charge of reviewing all police misconduct complaints. The board's public safety committee, which meets June 14, should reject this "solution" out of hand.

So should voters. Supervisors who don't supervise don't belong on the board.

Barbara F. Hollingsworth is The Examiner's local opinion editor.

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.