Fairfax County Police Watch: Firefighter Arrested by CHP Officer During Rescue at Crash Site

By Michael Mullins

A firefighter was arrested by the California Highway Patrol (CHP) after he refused to move his emergency vehicle from a lane after being ordered to do so by police. The firefighter was assisting a crash victim at the time of this arrest.

The dispute and arrest were caught on camera by a CBS 8 News crew which was at the scene covering the accident on Wednesday.

In a video, 36-year-old firefighter Jacob Gregoire, a 12 year member of the Chula Vista Fire Department, is handcuffed and led away by an unidentified highway patrolman.

"It's unbelievable you have to do this," the cop says as he slaps the cuffs on Gregoire.

"It's unbelievable that you guys have to treat us like this," Gregoire responded to the cop in the video. "We are on the road trying to help people."

"We asked you. We asked you to clear the road and you said no, and you are getting arrested for not moving it," the cop snapped back before leading the firefighter away from the camera.

During the exchange, Gregoire's fellow firefighters are seen assisting victims at the scene from the rollover accident. The crash victims were taken to an area hospital, but their conditions were not reported.

In addition to not providing the police officer's name, CHP would not say whether the officer was reprimanded for his decision to handcuff and detain a first responder while he was attending to victims at the scene, CBS 8 noted.

The CHP and Chula Vista Fire Department met Wednesday afternoon, after which they released a joint statement to the media.

"Last night there was an unfortunate incident at the scene of a traffic collision on I-805," the statement read. "Both the CHP and the Chula Vista Fire Department share a common goal of protecting the public and. . . have the utmost respect for each other and our respective missions. This was an isolated incident and not representative of the manner in which our agencies normally work together toward our common goal."

Though there have been disagreements between the two departments in the past, this is reportedly the first time a patrolman has arrested a firefighter for a disagreement at the scene of an accident.

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.