Fairfax County Police Watch: Police brutality claim still under investigation

POWDER SPRINGS — Months after a driver says he was Tased twice by Powder Springs police officers during a traffic stop, two separate investigations are still going on.

The city council of Powder Springs, meanwhile, rejected a settlement request for half a million dollars from the driver, Brice Wilson, 23.

According to Wilson’s attorney, he was stopped last June 1 by Powder Springs Police Lt. Vernon Bailey and Sgt. Keith Moore because his license plate light didn’t work. Police say Wilson later resisted arrest after one of the officers said he smelled like marijuana.

He is represented by lawyer James Howard of Tucker.

In a November letter to the city, Howard said the officers put Wilson in a choke hold, groped his crotch and slammed him to the ground, and that Bailey twice used a Taser on Wilson, including once when he was already in handcuffs.

Wilson is a college graduate and Delta Air Lines employee with no prior criminal record, Howard said. The lawyer said that continued criminal prosecution could threaten Wilson’s future job prospects, while the repeated Taser use threatened Wilson’s heart and life due to a congenital heart condition.

In a phone interview, Howard said he did not expect the City Council to immediately approve a settlement.

“This case isn’t really about compensation. It’s about making sure it doesn’t happen again,” he said. “So far, nobody (in Powder Springs government) has indicated the officers did anything wrong.”

Sewell, who became chief on Aug. 1, said he could not discuss the case while an internal affairs investigation is ongoing. The investigation is one of two taking place, because Sewell has asked Cobb County Police to investigate it as well.

Cobb Police Sgt. Dana Pierce said his agency is investigating any wrongdoing, on either the part of the officers or Wilson.

“We’re not going to leave out something the suspect did or didn’t do, and the same thing with the officers,” Pierce said.

Lt. Bailey resigned Aug. 3 after an unrelated incident in which he was accused of taking a pellet gun from a scene where police were looking for suspects after a mobile home fire. Sgt. Moore, who pulled Wilson over, remains on the force.

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.