Fairfax County Police Watch: Charlotte City Council expected to overhaul police review board

JEFF WILLHELM - jwillhelm@charlotteobserver.com

City councilmen David Howard (left) and Warren Cooksey (right) listen to a presentation on the Citizens Review Board in August. JEFF WILLHELM - jwillhelm@charlotteobserver.com

The City Council is poised to approve an ordinance that would overhaul the Citizens Review Board, nine months after an Observer investigation showed the police oversight board has never sided with citizens.

The city manager’s office is recommending approval, and a grassroots organization that has lobbied the council for reform is planning a victory party afterward.

“We’re thrilled,” said Matt Newton, one of the organizers for CRB Reform Now. “Certainly, the ordinance itself can be improved upon, but as far as the essential tools to raise an effective board, they will be there. In our minds, it’s a huge victory for the city.”

The 11-member volunteer board hears complaints from people dissatisfied with disciplinary decisions following Internal Affairs investigations by Charlotte-Mecklenburg police. City Council established the board 16 years ago to restore public confidence in the department after three unarmed African-Americans were killed by white officers.

Since the board was created, citizens have appealed 79 cases to the board, and almost all of them have been dismissed without receiving a full hearing.

Under the new recommendations, citizens would no longer face unusually strict criteria to get full hearings. They would no longer have to prove that a “preponderance of the evidence” shows the police chief abused his discretion. With the changes, they would have to prove only “the greater weight of evidence” indicates “the chief of police clearly erred.”

In April, then-Mayor Anthony Foxx asked a city task force to meet with police, the Charlotte School of Law and citizens to consider re-crafting the ordinance that affects the Citizens Review Board. The months-long process yielded a statute that doesn’t go as far as some advocates for change wanted. The board, for example, will not have independent subpoena or investigative powers.

But the city’s Community Relations Committee will have access to the department’s investigative file when the Citizens Review Board hears a 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.