Fairfax County Police Watch: 11/03/13

It’s about cumulative damage.

It took the Fairfax County Police four days to report to the public, the people who pay them and provide them a $300 million a year budget, that the man they shot in killed in a homeless shelter assaulted a cop with a baton. The baton was taken from the cop. We pay for the cops training on how and when to use the baton. There were two cops at the scene. How and why he got the cops baton is a question for another day.

Another question would be why didn’t one of the two cops use a taser on the man? It takes the same amount of time to reach for, unholster, unlock, point and shoot a taser as it takes to let off the three bullets the cop fired that night.

It’s a worthy question because we have a police force that shoots both the rich and poor alike and they could damn well kill you or someone you love, so the cops should be questioned about their all too frequent use of force.

Being the cops doesn’t mean having permission deadly force doesn’t mean you have to do it, a point seemingly lost on the Fairfax County Police.

If the cops don’t have tasers, why don’t they have them? At $300 million a year, they should be able to buy a taser factory. If they can afford a PR department, they can afford tasers.

This is what will happen. The Internal Affairs office, AKA Pinocchio Central, will look at the case to determine where the department is exposed, cover that hole, and then announce the cops have investigated the cops and that the cops are innocent of any wrong doing, cowardly behavior, overreacting and/or just generally bad decision making.

If, in secrecy, they determine that the cops in question over reacted, will they secretly fire those cops and you’ll never hear about it? If they do, that isn’t right. It’s our government not theirs. Hell, 8 out of 10 Fairfax County cops don’t even live here. We have a right to know.

While we’re on the subject, what happened to the cop who gunned down Sal Culosi? How about the cop who shot David master to death over a house plant? Are they still on the force? Have they been fired? The department never released the information.

Departmental critics, which are nation wide at this point (Google the killing of Sal Culosi) have cited the County cop’s love of secrecy but secrecy doesn’t have a damn thing to do with it. It’s all about arrogance and contempt. And the price for secrecy, arrogance and contempt of the public, by government operatives, is suspicion, doubt and distrust by the public of government.

So what?

Well that’s the part the rank and file cops don’t get. It’s about cumulative damage. In a century of cameras everywhere and the internet, it’s just a matter of time before a Fairfax County cop is recorded shooting someone and goes trial for it. It won’t matter if the cop was right in using deadly force.

As more and more information about the shoot first think later mentality of the police is made public, it all adds up, the more juriors will have to consider about the cops motive.

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.