Fairfax County Police Watch: 02/01/11

A Harris County TX deputy is under investigation on allegations that he beat a 72yr-old mentally ill man so severely in an empty visitation room that he died. There is some speculation that the beating was caught on camera but it seems unlikely.

Antioch CA has settled a lawsuit for $750,000 to a former police officer who claims that police illegally broke into her home when she was having a dispute with a tenant then tasered her before falsely arresting her on a resisting arrest charge.

The now-former police chief of Sullivan City TX has pled guilty to drug trafficking charges for helping Mexican cartels smuggle drugs into US.

Two Clearwater FL police officers have been suspended after internal investigations. One received a five day unpaid suspension for chipping a detainee’s tooth when he hit him in the head with his flashlight and the other received a single day without pay for hitting a metal pole with his police cruiser.

A Las Vegas NV police officer is facing felony charges on allegations that he gave a handgun to a felon. The same officer was involved in the controversial Costco shooting incident last year that took the life of a soldier under questionable circumstances.

A number of Wildwood NJ seasonal police officers are under investigation over a YouTube video that shows the officers harassing the person filming them and threatening to have him arrested for interference. However, it’s unclear of the seasonal officers are sworn law enforcement officers and it’s something I’m trying to verify before adding this to our database.

A Shillington PA police officer is now the subject of a search warrant after failing to appear at his arraignment on stalking-related charges.

The sheriff of Franklin County NC resigned a day before state officials announced that they are investigating allegations that funds are missing from the sheriff’s department.

A North Charleston SC police officer was arrested on DUI charges after crashing his police cruiser into a ditch. It wasn’t clear at the time of the article’s publication if he was on-duty or not but it seemed to indicate that he was.

A Gresham OR police detective was arrested on drunk driving charges after he crashed his unmarked cruiser into a ditch, though this officer appeared to be off-duty at the time.

An Austin TX police officer who was mired in controversy a year ago after he fatally shot a teen under questionable circumstances and is current appealing his termination over a domestic violence charge has pled guilty to a DUI charge that he was fired for, then rehired after he appealed that disciplinary action.

Two East Bank WV police officers are the subject of a lawsuit alleging that they harassed a woman for petitioning against a “police protection fee” by misleading her about needing to appear at court over a neighbor dispute so that she then became the subject of a bench warrant and subject to arrest.

A Thunder Bay ON police officer has been suspended after charged with official misconduct on an unspecified neglect of duty allegation involving a subordinate officer.

And finally, two Prince George’s County MD police officers who were assigned to desk duty while under investigation on different misconduct allegations, including one for excessive use of force, have been reassigned again now that they are under investigation for misbehaving while on desk duty by shooting property containers with bb guns.

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.