Fairfax County Police Watch: Woman wins Clackamas false imprisonment case

Jurors who deliberated less than two hours have awarded more than $101,000 to a Happy Valley woman who spent a night in jail and was sent to court in shackles before authorities in Clackamas County accepted that she had been a victim of identity theft.
The county claimed its deputies were only carrying out an arrest authorized in a warrant from New York, where detectives were investigating a case in which a man had been drugged and robbed, the Oregonian (http://bit.ly/HPeVIu) reported Monday.
But the woman, Kimberly Fossen, argued that the Clackamas County sheriff's office should have known she was innocent: More than a year before they arrested her on the New York warrant, a Clackamas County deputy had told her that her identity had been stolen.
Fossen has described her time in custody as horrific, saying she was strip searched and paraded in chains before her daughter.
"You really have to experience it to know how it feels," Fossen told the jury.
Jurors voted 10-2 to uphold her claims of negligence and false imprisonment.
Clackamas County deputies arrested Fossen Nov. 4, 2009, on a New York warrant accusing her of theft.
The woman police were looking for, Minh Thuy Nguyen, had assumed Fossen's identity. Nguyen identified herself as Fossen when she gave DNA samples during previous arrests.
So when DNA found at the New York crime scene was tested, Fossen became a suspect.
But Fossen's fingerprints didn't match those associated with the crimes, and after about 24 hours in custody, she was released.
In a statement Tuesday, her lawyer, John Devlin, said she was in jail 19 hours after the sheriff's office learned from the State Police her fingerprints didn't match any on file in the United States.
How Nguyen assumed Fossen's identity isn't clear, although Fossen lost purses to theft in 2000 and 2004.
In 2008, a Clackamas County deputy knocked on Fossen's door and told her that a woman arrested in Las Vegas had a Florida driver's license issued in Fossen's name.
Even so, the sheriff's office carried out the arrest a year later when New York issued a warrant. County authorities blamed the mix-up on New York detectives and a magistrate.
John Devlin, Fossen's attorney, said the arrest "just didn't make sense." He said Fossen was a suburban mom who had lived in the same Happy Valley home and worked at the same restaurant job for years, she's 10 years older than Nguyen, and the women looked nothing alike.
Nguyen pleaded guilty to larceny charges in 2011 and was sentenced to five years of probation

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.