Fairfax County Police Watch: Let’s all go home and lock our doors

Sheriff's deputies arrested novelist Nancy Mancuso Gelber, 53, in December in Bryan, Texas, after she had allegedly arranged a hit on her husband. (The "hit man," of course, was an undercover officer.) Gelber said she had walked in on the husband romancing with one of her friends, and the couple were in the process of divorcing (complicated by his having removed her from his health insurance just as she was scheduled for expensive surgery). Gelber is the author of the 2010 "crime thriller," "Temporary Amnesia," and told the "hit man" that she was quite familiar with investigative procedures (though obviously poor at spotting undercover officers). [Huffington Post, 12-16-2011]

Jesse Dimmick filed a lawsuit in Topeka, Kan., in October against Jared and Lindsay Rowley -- whom he has been convicted of kidnapping in a notorious 2009 episode that resulted in his being shot by police. Dimmick broke into the home and held the couple hostage at knifepoint, but now says that, during the siege, the couple made him an "oral contract," "legally binding," that they would help him hide if he would sometime later pay them an unspecified amount of money. According to the lawsuit, since Dimmick was subsequently shot (accidentally, said the Topeka police), his injuries were the result of the Rowleys breaching the contract to hide him safely. (Police, who had surrounded the home, arrested Dimmick when he fell asleep.) [Topeka Capital-Journal, 11-28-2011]

The two men who heroically pulled a woman out of a burning car wreck in 2009, and surely (according to a highway patrol officer on the scene) saved her life, have sued the woman for the emotional and physical disabilities that resulted from the episode (brought to light in an August 2011 Associated Press report). David Kelley and Mark Kincaid not only stopped voluntarily to help, but were the only ones on the scene capable of pulling the woman to safety. (The fire was so hot that it melted Kelley's cellphone.) Kelley said he has suffered serious breathing problems and cannot avoid horrific dreams reliving the episode. The woman, Theresa Tanner, subsequently admitted that she deliberately crashed the car that day in a suicide attempt. [Associated Press, 8-1-2011]

Former 11-year-veteran police officer Louise McGarva, 35, filed a lawsuit recently, asking the equivalent of about $760,000, against the Lothian and Borders Police in Edinburgh, Scotland, for causing her post-traumatic stress disorder. Officer McGarva was attending a supposedly routine riot training session that got out of hand. She said she discovered that she had developed a debilitating fear of sirens and police cars. [Edinburgh Evening News, 11-21-2011]

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.