Fairfax County Police Watch: This Week’s Capt. Denise Hopson Screw it, it’s the public s money and not mine Award

Lawrence's legal bills top $1m

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By Keith Eddingskeddings@eagletribune.com

LAWRENCE — The bill for hiring outside law firms to defend the city against workplace grievances and allegations of police brutality and for paying judgments against police this year surpassed $1 million with the City Council's recent vote to pay the firms another $276,955.

The appropriation will bring total spending on outside counsel this year to $726,955, an amount that has climbed as the city's legal staff dwindled to a single lawyer and a secretary.

In addition, the city has spent $420,000 so far this year to pay brutality judgments against police for cases handled by the outside firms, leaving just $75,000 in the budget for outstanding claims against the police.

Four claims are pending, including a civil suit filed by a woman repeatedly raped by an on-duty cop in a parked car outside police headquarters on the night of Sept. 28, 2008. The cop, Kevin Sledge, was sentenced to up to 12 years in prison after his conviction in October. The woman, a Haverhill resident, alleges the city failed to properly supervise Sledge.

Spending for other outside firms hired to sue the contractors who built the high school and the Guilmette School also has surpassed $1 million, although precise numbers were not available Friday. Construction at the new high school in 2006 suffered repeated overruns and delays, and much of the interior of the Guilmette School had to be demolished and rebuilt to get at a mold infestation — the second at the school — that the city said was caused by poor construction techniques.

The biggest chunk of the $276,955 the City Council approved spending for outside law firms will go to Morgan, Brown & Joy, a Boston firm that already has received $154,183 to represent the city on contract negotiations, allegations of illegal workplace practices and other labor issues. The issues include a 14-count complaint police filed with the state Division of Labor Relations last year after Lantigua said the city would no longer pay to hire outside firms to defend cops who are sued.

The next biggest check — for $49,794 — is going to lawyer William DiAdamo, who is defending the city against wrongful termination and harassment claims that two former Personnel Department employees filed against the city and Lantigua, Personnel Director Frank Bonet and Personnel secretary Lorenza Ortega, who is Lantigua's girlfriend. The added payment will bring DiAdamo's total earnings defending the city this year to $102,531.

The City Council voted 8-1 to make the additional payments last week. Councilor Marc Laplante dissented, noting that the Council cut $100,000 from the $550,000 Lantigua requested for outside legal help this year with the hope he would spend the money to begin restaffing the law department.

"It didn't make any sense to spend a lot of money to hire an outside firm for something we could have done for a lot less money internally," Laplante said, referring to the labor issues handled by Morgan, Brown & Joy, which he described as a "Cadillac" firm because of its billing rates. "I'm not saying we could do everything inside. I'm saying we could have taken a chunk of the spending for outside counsel and brought that back into City Hall."

That process recently got underway when Lantigua gave City Attorney Charles Boddy approval to hire two lawyers and a paralegal for the law department, where staffing has shrunk from nine — including five lawyers — to two over the last few years.

The permission comes with a challenge: Boddy can offer annual salaries of just $65,000 to $85,000 to the new lawyers.

"We also have good fringe benefits," City Council Vice President Daniel Rivera said about his hope for attracting talent at a modest salary. "Somebody might want to live close. We've got to get what we can afford, let's not forget that part."

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.