Fairfax County Police Watch: Chandler detective suspended for misusing records

Chandler detective suspended for misusing records

By Jim WalshThe Republic | azcentral.comFri Jan 31, 2014 11:33 PM

A Chandler police detective who violated policy by looking up information about his wife’s lover in a police databank was suspended without pay for four days, or one workweek, records show.

Garrett Dever told police investigating his actions that he suspected “something was going on” between his wife, former Tempe Detective Jessica Dever-Jakusz, and the man he looked up in the Arizona Criminal Justice Information system databank.

Officers are not allowed under law to access the system for personal use, but Dever admitted that’s exactly what he did.

“Dever said he kind of went into a ‘panic’ and ‘his world got flipped’ ” as he attempted to learn more about the man, according to a Chandler police internal investigation.

Dever-Jakusz, once a highly respected officer, resigned after a suspect who was the target of a drug investigation revealed that he had an affair with her.

The drug suspect — who was under investigation for selling “Molly,” a street drug similar to Ecstasy, at Mill Avenue clubs — said he was stunned when Dever-Jakusz told him she was an undercover officer and identified two other undercover officers. Police halted the investigation for fear that the officers’ safety was compromised.

Dever-Jakusz was indicted Nov. 30 on charges of hindering prosecution and conflict of interest as a public official. Prosecutors have filed notice that they intend to use her employment as a police officer as an aggravating factor in sentencing if she is convicted, according to court records.

“At the time of the commission of the offense(s), the defendant was a public servant and the offense(s) involved conduct directly related to the defendant’s office or employment,” according to a court document filed by prosecutor Kalon Metz.

A judge granted her defense attorney additional time to file a motion to remand the case to the grand jury for reconsideration of charges, according to the court records.

Garrett Dever told Chandler police that he wanted to “see what he looked like,” according to the internal investigation, and that he was distraught and in a “cloud.”

Police concluded Dever accessed the drug suspect’s driver’s-license photo and performed a warrant check from a computer on his desk on Sept. 12. He said he did not use the information for any purpose and deleted it.

A suspension notice said the investigation sustained two counts of conduct unbecoming an officer. One related to violating a criminal statute of the state or the U.S. The second was for using police electronic systems for personal benefit.

Lyle Mann, executive director of the Arizona Peace Officers Standards and Training Board, said that it’s not uncommon for officers to abuse the system for personal reasons and that he has no problem with Dever’s discipline.

“It certainly makes sense,” Mann said. “It sounds like it’s in the parameters of normal discipline in such circumstances.”

Sgt. Joe Favazzo, a Chandler police spokesman, said that Dever was emotionally overwhelmed and that the key to the case was that he took no actions against the drug suspect.

“If they do something with the information, we will terminate them and possibly prosecute,” Favazzo said.

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.