Fairfax County Police Watch: Cop punished for drunken behavior at Seahawks game in trouble again

Posted by John de Leon

A Bellevue police officer who was disciplined for his drunken off-duty behavior at Seattle Seahawks game in September 2012 has been charged with misdemeanor drunk driving in an incident in which a fellow Bellevue officer stopped him for erratic driving and then allowed him to go home with a relative.

The officer who was pulled over has been identified as Andrew Hanke.

Bellevue police say on Nov. 20, an unidentified off-duty Bellevue police officer was driving home in his patrol car when he stopped a car on Interstate 90 near Issaquah to investigate the driver for possible DUI. The driver of the vehicle that was pulled over was Hanke, according to Bellevue city Prosecutor Lynn Moberly, who filed the DUI charge Thursday in King County District Court in Issaquah.

The off-duty officer did not arrest Hanke and instead allowed him to be driven home by a relative, police said.

The investigating officer notified a supervisor of the incident.

The following morning, Bellevue police Chief Linda Pillo was notified of the incident and Hanke was immediately placed on administrative leave, said Bellevue police public information Officer Seth Tyler. The department has also opened an internal investigation into the officer who stopped Hanke but did not arrest him.

“While officers are allowed some discretion during a traffic stop, the officer’s decision in this case not to make an arrest is undergoing a thorough and objective internal investigation. That investigation will determine whether the on-duty officer used poor judgment and/or failed to perform their duties,” police said in a news release.

Police say details of the internal investigations will not be released until they are completed.

“I expect our officers to abide by our guiding principles of respect, accountability, integrity and service, and to abide by the laws of the state of Washington both on and off duty,” Pillo said in a statement. “If these allegations are sustained, the involved officers will be held accountable for their actions.”

Hanke was one of two Bellevue officers punished last year for their off-duty behavior at a Seahawks game, when they drunkenly confronted a female Seattle police officer and got into a profanity-laced altercation with a fan and his family.

During the investigation into that incident, which was first reported by The Seattle Times, Hanke was suspended for 30 days without pay and removed from the Bomb Squad. Hanke had told investigators that he was too drunk to remember driving home to Snoqualmie from CenturyLink Field.

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.