Fairfax County Police Watch: Lyons police officer charged with robbery by FBI

LYONS – An officer with the Lyons Police Department has been charged with robbing and extorting targets of his investigations into the sale of contraband and counterfeit cigarettes, the FBI's Chicago Office announced Monday.

Jimmy J. Rodgers, 43, was charged in a one-count criminal complaint filed last Thursday in U.S. District Court in Chicago with Hobbs Act robbery, a felony, according to a news release.

The complaint against Rodgers was unsealed Friday after he appeared in court. Rodgers was released pending his next court appearance, which is not yet scheduled.

Rodgers is accused of recruiting a cooperating source to help set up sales where the source would sell contraband cigarettes to potential targets. According to the criminal complaint, Rodgers would pay the source a fee for each transaction the source conducted. The complaint detailed two transactions between the source and targets, for which the source was provided a village of Lyons check to pay for his services. The complaint further alleges the source was later paid in cash following subsequent transactions from money paid to the source during the transactions, the source told the FBI in June.

According to the release, the source agreed to record conversations and meetings with Rodgers in connection with another contraband cigarette transaction with a potential target. On July 30, the source received $11,280 from the target in exchange for 300 cartons of cigarettes and was told by Rodgers to keep $3,280 of that amount.

The source was also given 30 cartons of cigarettes to pass to another source, which help arrange the transaction with the target.

According to the release, Rodgers was recorded allegedly acknowledging that he was not supposed to pay the source from the proceeds of the transactions and told the source to say all payments were given via check from the police department.

An FBI agent reviewed the report of the July 30 transaction filed by Rodgers and noted that the report did not mention the seizure of cash from the target. The Lyons Police Department also had no record of Rodgers turning in $8,000 from the transaction.

Robert J. Shields, Jr., acting special agent in charge of the Chicago Office of the FBI, thanked the assistance provided by the Lyons Police Department and the FDA's Office of Criminal Investigations during the course of the investigation.

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.