Fairfax County Police Watch: Jury hung on 10 counts in case of former West Sac cop accused of sexual assault; reading of verdict continues Thursday

By SARAH DOWLING

A Yolo County jury hung on 10 counts Wednesday in the case of a former West Sacramento police officer accused of sexual assault; however, the remaining 17 charges were not read until Thursday morning.

Jurors were not able to come to a decision on the following charges Sergio Alvarez, 38, faced: three counts of rape, sexual penetration, and oral copulation by threatening to use his authority as a police official, four counts of rape, sexual penetration and oral copulation by means of duress, and two counts of aggravated kidnapping.

Yolo County Superior Court Judge Timothy Fall declared a mistrial on those 10 counts. Before he could read the definitive verdict on the remaining charges, Fall found an error on the verdict form for count one and ordered the jury to correct the error and continue deliberations.

After 30 minutes, Fall addressed the court, continuing the reading of the verdict to Thursday morning in Department 2.

The jury was given the case on Friday, Feb. 14. Jurors were on their eighth day of deliberation, not deliberating on Presidents' Day Monday, Feb. 17. The jury entered Department 2 at the Yolo County Courthouse one by one on Wednesday afternoon, the jury foreman with a smile on his face. The foreman read a list of 10 charges that the jury was not able to reach a decision on.

Alvarez, 38, is accused of using his position as a uniformed police officer to coerce at least five female victims to have sex with him. He pleaded not guilty to charges of kidnapping, sexual penetration, oral copulation and sodomy.

During closing arguments, Supervising Deputy District Attorney Garrett Hamilton said that Alvarez was a "rogue" police officer who drove the West Sacramento streets in the early morning hours, targeting the "vulnerable members of our society" and using his authority to subdue them.

Hamilton went over each of the five victims, stating that "these women were selected by Alvarez for victims on the belief that they were not going to report it, and that no one would believe them if they did." The alleged victims were prostitutes and drug addicts.

J. Toney, defense counsel for Alvarez, said that this case is really about an embarrassed police force "throwing the book" at an officer. The case, according to Toney, is actually about two things: the women Alvarez admitted to having sex with, and the women that he didn't.

Alvarez admitted to having consensual sexual relationships with three of the five female victims and did not deny that a number of the sexual occurrences happened while he was on duty.

Alvarez was arrested in February 2013 and remains in custody with bail set at $26.3 million.

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.