Fairfax County Police Watch: Chief: Alleged Police Brutality a 'Dark Cloud' Over Dept.

Three officers are on paid administrative leave and the AG's office, FBI and U.S. Attorney are all investigating and pledging to "get to the bottom" of the incident.

Posted by Kyle Stucker

Seabrook Police Chief Lee Bitomske pledged Wednesday afternoon that his department, in cooperation with state Attorney General's Office, "will get to the bottom" of whether three of his officers are guilty of criminal misconduct during the arrest of Michael Bergeron Jr.

Bitomske, Deputy Police Chief Mike Gallagher, Town Manager Bill Manzi and the Seabrook Board of Selectmen held a press conference Wednesday afternoon following a nonpublic selectmen session to discuss the incident and the subsequent AG investigation into the matter.

"Obviously it's a major setback for us," said Bitomske. "It's a dark cloud, but I can assure the people of Seabrook we do have professional officers in the department — men and women... I hope this will be dealt with swiftly and sooner rather than later, but we will get to the bottom of this with the resources that are available to us to help us out."

Seabrook Patrolmen Mark Richardson, Adam Laurent and Keith Dietenhofer have all been placed on paid administrative leave while the AG's office conducts a criminal investigation into recently-surfaced surveillance footage that shows the officers using force in the Seabrook police station following Bergeron's arrest on driving while intoxicated charges on Nov. 11, 2009.

U.S. Attorney John Kacavas confirmed to Patch on Wednesday that his office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are also involved in the investigation due to possible civil rights violations.

Gallagher said the AG's office has assumed the lead in the investigation and that Seabrook's investigation is "on hold" until the AG has completed its findings.

"We will not be running a parallel investigation because the officers have due process rights under the [U.S.] Constitution and they also have due process rights under their collective bargaining agreement," said Gallagher. "One investigation might affect the other."

Officer Dave Hersey, the fourth officer shown in the video, which was posted by Bergeron to YouTube on Monday, hasn't been placed on administrative leave.

Manzi said the incident isn't a reflection of the regular protocol of the Seabrook Police Department and that the members of the department will continue to "do an outstanding" and "exceptional job" for local residents.

"Everybody at this table stands behind the police department and the men and women of the police department," said Manzi. "We don't consider anything we're looking at as the norm."

Bitomske said the video was made available to Bergeron as part of the discovery process of a potential court case started by Bergeron at some point following the incident, which is consistent with Bergeron's version of the events.

The reason the court case never came to fruition was still unknown Wednesday, and it is still unknown why the video surfaced this week more than four years after the arrest of the then-19-year-old Bergeron, a Seabrook resident with a lengthy history of arrests.

Bergeron, now 23, has not answered media requests for comment.

Gallagher and Bitomske both said Wednesday that they each saw the video for the first time this week, and that they are working to determine whether anyone else saw the video after it was recorded in 2009.

“We’re looking for answers at this point ourselves,” said Gallagher, answering a question about how the events could take place on station surveillance cameras without the incident being brought to the attention of supervising officers or other members of the department.

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.