Fairfax County Police Watch: More drunk and drugged up cops…….

Aiken area police officer charged with DUI

AIKEN, S.C. -- A Wagener police office has been charged with drunken driving. The Aiken Standard reports that 30-year-old Craig Martin of Wagener was off duty but driving a town police car when he was arrested about 3:30 a.m. Friday. Police Chief Tom Gray said Martin was relieved of his duties. A sheriff’s report says Martin was driving his Ford Crown Victoria in circles around a parking lot in Aiken and traveling very slowly on Highway 39 without headlights. When deputies stopped him, he acknowledged he was an officer and provided his badge. The report says there was a case of beer in the car and an open beer in the cup holder. Martin refused to take a field sobriety test or a breath test.

Police Officer Arrested, Charged With Illegally Purchasing Prescription Drugs

DECATUR, Ala. (WHNT) – Decatur Police have charged Officer Timothy Hughes with receiving a controlled substance. This was a result of an investigation by Decatur’s Organized Crime Unit and the Morgan County Drug Task Force. Hughes, 24, was booked in the Morgan County Jail. He posted a $2,500 bond and was released.

Decatur Police Chief Ed Taylor said Hughes illegally purchased prescription medication, specifically Oxycodone. The department got a tip earlier this week and started an investigation. Officer Hughes was arrested around 9 a.m. in the parking lot of the Garden Suites Inn (former the Holiday Inn) on Wilson Street NE in Decatur. Officers with the Decatur Police Department’s Special Operation Unit used a cooperating witness working under their supervision to sell Hughes the Oxycodone. He resigned after his arrest.

DeKalb police officer arrested on drug-trafficking charges

A DeKalb County Police officer was arrested Friday on accusations he helped a ring of methamphetamine dealers, serving as a lookout and offering police information, authorities said. William Miguel, an 11-year veteran, is charged with conspiracy to traffic methamphetamine and was taken into custody Friday morning by DEA agents and Gwinnett County District Attorney’s Office investigators as he came to work, DeKalb Police Chief Cedric Alexander said. Miguel, 44, was funneling vital police information to the head of a drug organization regarding arrests made in DeKalb County, among other things, Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Officer facing charges

A local officer will appear in court Friday to determine whether he should be charged in an alleged hit-and-run, drunken driving accident in March. Evan Robitaille, 32, who has been on paid administrative leave since the alleged incident, is scheduled to appear at a clerk magistrate’s hearing at Lowell District Court to answer a summons issued to him by State Police following the March 11 accident. The “criminal summons” was for operating under the influence of liquor, leaving the scene of an accident causing property damage, negligent operation of a motor vehicle and failure to use care in starting, stopping, turning or backing up a motor vehicle, according to the State Police daily log for March 11. At the hearing, a court magistrate will review the case and determine if there is enough evidence to issue a criminal complaint.

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.