Fairfax County Police Watch: Conn. Officer Accidentally Shoots Self in Restaurant

Frank Juliano and Michael P. Mayko

Bridgeport Officer Juan Santiago discharged a gun in a crowded restaurant, shooting himself in the leg.

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. -- The veteran police officer who discharged a gun in a crowded restaurant Tuesday, shooting himself in the leg and blowing a bowling ball-sized hole through a nearby window, has been released from St. Vincent's Medical Center and placed on paid sick leave.

But Juan Santiago, the 55-year-old officer who heads the department's Police Hispanic Society, faces no criminal charges, nor does he face any violation of department rules and regulations, which has caused community activists to claim police use double standards to protect their own.

"This doesn't surprise me," said James Griffin, the city's former veterans' affairs administrator who now heads the Waterbury Center for Economic and Social Justice. "It's just another example of police covering for police."

Griffin, who once served as statewide NAACP president, said Police Chief Joseph Gaudett should have taken immediate action, even if it was just placing Santiago on administrative leave.

"Anybody other than a cop would be in big, big trouble," he said.

Lyle Hassan Jones, who has led marches against gun violence in Bridgeport as the head of Save Our Babies, agreed with Griffin.

"How can he not be charged with unlawful discharge or reckless endangerment?" Jones asked. "That's what would happen to you or me. That gun going off had to scare the customers to death. You think if I fired it I'd be walking out of that restaurant scot-free?"

But Jeff Matchett, executive director of AFSCME Council 15 of the Connecticut Council of Police -- the union that represents 4,000 police officers from more than 60 state communities -- maintained that firing a gun accidentally inside a restaurant would not result in an on-site arrest.

"That's not how I'd handle it, whether it was you, a cop or anyone," said Matchett, a retired Milford police officer. "I'd trace the gun, make sure the owner had a permit, interview witnesses."

Once that was completed, Matchett said he'd apply to the court for an arrest warrant before taking the person into custody.

"Oh, is that right?," countered John R. Williams, a veteran New Haven civil rights and criminal defense lawyer. "Try telling that to the president of the New Haven County Bar who was arrested last summer at a movie theater for having a gun that he had a permit for."

Williams said Santiago's actions represent "a classic case of reckless endangerment ... people's lives were put at risk. If he wasn't wearing a badge, he'd have been arrested."

Nearly a dozen police cruisers -- with their sirens screaming, strobe lights flashing and tires squealing -- skidded to a stop outside the Bagel King restaurant on upper Main Street around 9 a.m. Tuesday on reports that a police officer was down.

Inside, Santiago was bleeding from the leg. Shards of glass from the shattered window lay on the ground.

Moments earlier, Santiago was sitting at a table with Det. Juan Gonzalez. Gonzalez had placed a borrowed .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol atop the table with the intention of returning it to its owner, a local doctor.

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.