A former detective was charged Wednesday with taking cash out of the department's evidence room

By Tricia L. Nadolny
The Philadelphia Inquirer
COATESVILLE, Pa. — A former Coatesville detective accused of stealing more than $40,000 from the city's police union and athletic league was charged Wednesday with taking cash out of the department's evidence room.
Detectives during a July 2013 search found two police evidence envelopes, both empty, in the bedroom of Gerald Pawling's Coatesville home, according to a press release from the Chester County district attorney.
The envelopes, which should have contained about $5,800 total, were found tucked next to a dresser and in an underwear drawer, the release said.
Pawling's fingerprints were also found on another envelope still in the evidence room, which was missing $1,640, officials said.
"A desperate man will engage in desperate conduct," District Attorney Tom Hogan said in the release. "When the defendant fell into financial difficulties, he took care of his problems by stealing from his fellow officers, a charitable organization and even the police evidence room."
Pawling, a 17-year veteran of the department until he retired in 2012, was charged in August 2013 with stealing from the Coatesville Police Benevolent Association while serving as its treasurer and from the Coatesville Police Athletic Union while serving as its executive director.
On top of the new accusations that he stole from the evidence room, the district attorney's office on Wednesday also charged the 43-year-old Pawling with taking an additional $9,000 from those two groups.
Hogan said Pawling took nearly $2,800 from the athletic league to pave the driveway of his Walnut Street home. He is accused of purchasing about $7,000 in computer equipment, iPods, ink cartridges and school supplies on an account opened under the union's name at Staples, according to an affidavit in the case released by Hogan.
Union officials told investigators that they were not aware the group had that account and never approved purchases made there, according to the affidavit.
Pawling came under investigation in April 2013 when Coatesville detective Kevin Campbell, the incoming president of the police union, found discrepancies in the union's financial information.
According to a previous affidavit in the case, Pawling admitted in an August 2013 recorded interview to stealing $30,000 to $40,000 from the union between 2009 and 2012.
Hogan has said union funds typically are spent on fees for officers' legal defense and benefits for families of injured officers.
Coatesville police chief Jack Laufer Wednesday said the department was "once again saddened" by Pawling's actions, calling his conduct a betrayal of the public's trust. Laufer took over the department, which has been plagued by lawsuits and staffing shortfalls in the past and spent much of 2012 without a chief, in January 2013. Hogan said an audit on the evidence room started after Laufer was hired led to the discovery that money was missing from an envelope.
Pawling was previously charged with eight counts of forgery and 51 counts of theft and is facing additional counts of fraud, theft, forgery, tampering with public records and receiving stolen property

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.