Fairfax County Police Watch: Parents Blame City Cops for Son's Suicide

By MATT REYNOLDS

SANTA ANA, Calif. (CN) - A teenage boy posted on social media that he was about to kill himself, and Huntington Beach police knew it, and found his address, but did nothing to stop it, the late boy's parents claim in court.
     Seventeen-year-old Matthew Cline shot himself in the head on July 17 at his home in Huntington Beach, his parents, William and Kathleen, say in the lawsuit against the City of Huntington Beach, in Superior.
     Matthew was a high school senior on the varsity football team. His mother found him after she returned from the gym.
     Matthew's parents say that on July 16, their son posted on iFunny: "My name is Matthew Cline. This will be my last post on ifunny as I will be committing suicide tonight."
     The parents say in the complaint that Huntington Beach police knew of the post, and knew Matthew's address, but did not send a squad car to the home or warn the Clines.
     Had it done so, Matthew would "be alive and well today," the Clines claim.
     According to the lawsuit, Ana Gutierrez, a teenager in Los Baños, in Northern California, alerted police after reading Cline's iFunny post, then finding his Facebook page and discovering that he lived in Huntington Beach.
     The parents claim that a Doe police officer, identified in the lawsuit as "Rodriguez," took the call and "lulled" Gutierrez into believing police would intervene and do everything they could to stop Matthew Cline.
     Rodriguez did locate Cline's address in Huntington Beach, hours before Cline killed himself, the parents say. But police neither called the parents nor dispatched officers to the house.
     Rodriguez's police report is attached to the court filing as an exhibit. It states: "I attempted 2-3 phone calls but no one answered. Due to the fact we were unable to determine where the Mathew Cline lived who made the post, no units were sent to any of the addresses we located under that name."
     The parents call that a "blatant, bad-faith" lie: "Approximately 20 hours after the HBPD received the call from Gutierrez, Matthew shot himself in the head and committed suicide at his Dovewood [Drive] residence. Had the HBPD made contact by sending a unit to the Dovewood address, or even just telephoning the Clines, Matthew Cline would be alive and well today."
     Responding officers "immediately recognized" Cline as the person who had posted on iFunny, and questioned neighbors about the post, the parents claim.
     "In addition, HBPD claimed that they had called plaintiff William Cline's cell-phone number upon receipt of the call from Gutierrez, substantially prior to Matthew's suicide, but the Clines received no phone call to warn them, either to their cell phones or their residence phone," the complaint states.

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.