Fairfax County Police Watch: Mayor: Lawrence is trying to fire suspended cop

LAWRENCE — Mayor William Lantigua said yesterday he has moved to fire a former police officer who was suspended with pay after his conviction for domestic assault and battery 19 months ago.
Lantigua also said a city planner suspended with pay in August for alleged workplace misconduct will return to work Monday.
Lantigua, responding to mounting pressure to fire Police Officer Daron Fraser and to act in the case of Planner Richard Burke, said his options for dealing with the two have been constrained by Civil Service laws and his desire to "avoid future legal and financial liability" that might follow if he acted hastily.
"I took appropriate action and assure you that I do not support paying individuals that are not both on-site and on-duty," Lantigua said in a press release issued yesterday. "I must, however, keep due process, HIPAA and civil service in mind when I make decisions."
HIPAA, the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accounting Act, guarantees the privacy of medical patients. Lantigua suggested the law limited his options for dealing with Burke while Burke was taking "the necessary steps, under his health insurance policy, to put himself in a position to return to work with the city."
Lantigua did not elaborate, but a month after Burke was suspended from his job, he was jailed on a drunken driving charge. At the time, he also was awaiting trial on other drunken driving charges from an April 2011 arrest in Woburn. He was convicted of the Woburn charges on Oct. 31 and sentenced to two years probation.
Burke, 41, of Marblehead was a legislative aide to Lantigua when the mayor was a state representative and went on the city payroll in July 2010, seven months after Lantigua became mayor. He makes $50,000 a year.
City Personnel Director Frank Bonet has declined to provide details about the misconduct complaint against Burke that resulted in his suspension.
Lantigua yesterday said a Civil Service hearing on his effort to fire Fraser was scheduled for Thursday, but was delayed at the request of his lawyer. Fraser also is appealing his assault conviction. Meanwhile, he continues to collect a paycheck from his police job, which provides him nearly $100,000 a year.
"The City Lawrence will continue to comply with the procedural protections afforded to Officer Fraser by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Civil Service laws, following the process through to its lawful conclusion," Lantigua said in his press release

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.