Fairfax County Police Watch: Ex-Princeton cop arrested for allegedly helping hide runaway teen

By Travis Crum

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Police on Saturday arrested a Barbour County man after he allegedly helped a 15-year-old girl run away from her mother in Greenbrier County.

Christopher Scott Winkler, 27, of Union, and a former Princeton police officer, was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a misdemeanor, according to a criminal complaint filed in Greenbrier County Magistrate Court.

On Feb. 1, police were called to the Lewis Terrace apartments and met Anna Bennett, who told officers she could not find her 15-year-old daughter.

Bennett said her daughter had not been at the apartment of her boyfriend, Dustin Bryant, as expected, according to the complaint. Police learned that Bryant was last seen getting into a black Toyota SUV.

Officers later located the SUV driving into the MedExpress parking lot in Lewisburg, police said.

Winkler, the driver, "became very nervous" and told police he did not know where the girl was, according to the complaint. When he stepped out of the SUV, he then told police that he had been at Lewis Terrace earlier that day to drop off some photos for his photography business.

Winkler said Bryant came to him and asked him to drop the girl off at a house in Caldwell and to drop Bryant off at Walmart in Lewisburg, according to the release.

Police asked Winkler if he knew that the girl's mother had been looking for her and he said he suspected something was wrong and that the girl seemed like she was trying to run from someone, according to the complaint. Winkler told police he did not want to accompany them to the police station to talk about the incident, according to the complaint. Police found Bryant at Walmart and brought him in for questioning. Bryant told police he asked Winkler to drive the girl to a house in Caldwell so her mother could not find her, according to the complaint. Bryant said Winkler knew the girl's mother was looking for her and that the girl was running away from her mother.

Winkler is currently being held in Southern Regional Jail without bail on Saturday.

Winkler is on probation after he pleaded guilty to a bribery charge in October 2012. Police said Winkler met a 17-year-old boy in the parking lot of a Mercer County supermarket in March 2011 and tried to get the youth to perform oral sex to pay off a debt. Winkler, a former Princeton police officer, was allegedly in uniform at the time.

Winkler first made news in April 2010, when he was knocked unconscious during a training exercise at the West Virginia State Police Academy in Institute. Winkler's mother said another instructor had to pull two troopers off of Winkler after they allegedly kept hitting him after he was down. Winkler was involved in a multiple-assailant training scenario at the time.

Both then-Gov. Joe Manchin and Kanawha County prosecutor Mark Plants requested investigations into the incident. Neither investigation found fault with the instructors' actions.

Reach Travis Crum at travis.c...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5163.

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.