Fairfax County Police Watch: Judge moves Bisard's crash trial to Allen County

INDIANAPOLIS — A judge moved the trial of an Indianapolis police officer accused of causing a fatal 2010 crash by driving drunk to Fort Wayne on Thursday.

David Bisard is charged with operating a vehicle while intoxicated, reckless homicide and criminal recklessness in the 2010 crash that killed 30-year-old Eric Wells and injured two others. If convicted, Bisard could face 20 or more years in prison.

A hearing in the case is scheduled for March 8 before Allen County Superior Court Judge John Surbeck.

In an order issued Thursday, Judge Grant Hawkins said that even more than two years after the accident, the case was still generating too much ongoing publicity in central Indiana for Bisard to get a fair trial there.

"It appears clear this cause must be brought to trial a distance away from the Marion County media 'footprint,' " Hawkins wrote in the three-page order.

The case has drawn intense local media coverage as legal snarls caused it to drag on for months and police officers' handling of the crash scene and evidence stirred public distrust and led to disciplinary action against several high-ranking officers, including the demotion of the police chief.

"I don't think anyone who looked at this case objectively thought there could be a fair and impartial jury selected from Marion County," defense attorney John Kautzman told reporters following Thursday's hearing in Marion County Superior Court.

Kautzman said he was still concerned that even an Allen County jury might be tainted, but Deputy Prosecutor Denise Robinson said that was unlikely because the case wasn't likely to attract as much interest in the community 100 miles from Indianapolis.

Robinson said prosecutors were comfortable with moving the case to Allen County in part because Fort Wayne is an urban area like Indianapolis, so potential jurors would be familiar with urban driving conditions, a key component of the case. Bisard's cruiser crashed into two motorcycles stopped at an intersection on the city's northeast side on the morning of Aug. 6, 2010.

Robinson said she hoped the trial could be held sometime this fall.

The case has undergone a series of delays over admission of blood tests which showed Bisard had a blood-alcohol level more than twice the legal limit. The Indiana Supreme Court in ruled in December that the blood tests could be admitted into evidence.

However, Kautzman has said he can still challenge the blood evidence at trial in regards to its chain of custody and that the sample's credibility before a jury also remains in doubt.

Hawkins ruled that the blood drawn from Bisard after the crash was inadmissible because it was drawn by a medical assistant, a profession not included among those listed in Indiana law that are allowed to do so in drunken driving cases. But the state Court of Appeals overturned his decision, saying legislators clearly hadn't intended for such key evidence to be thrown out on a technicality.

Hawkins did allow prosecutors to test a second blood sample despite objections by Kautzman that it was mishandled by police technicians. The results of those tests haven't been released.

Former Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi stunned the victims and public when he dropped drunken driving charges against Bisard just days after they were filed, which he did because of the discrepancy. After taking office in 2011, Prosecutor Terry Curry refiled the charges against Bisard.

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.