Fairfax County Police Watch: Officers facing serious criminal charges should be stripped of pay: police chiefs association Waterloo Region Record

By Liz Monteiro

WATERLOO REGION — Police say their hands are tied and they have no choice but to pay officers who are suspended while they face misconduct charges.

The Police Services Act dictates that officers continue to receive their salaries while they are under suspension from their jobs.

The only time the chief of police can suspend an officer without pay is when an officer is convicted of an offence and receives a prison sentence.

Joe Couto, spokesperson for the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, said the association is trying to lobby the provincial government to make changes to the act.

"No party has the appetite to do the right thing and change the law," he said.

The association recognizes that officers facing misconduct charges get paid through the proceedings to protect the officer until a decision is made, he said.

However, officers who are charged with a serious criminal offence shouldn't be protected, Couto said.

In a white report written by the association in 2010, the group says Ontario police chiefs "lack the legal authority to take reasonable and appropriate steps in dealing with allegations of serious criminality."

The paper says this leads to "an erosion of public trust" with the public concluding that "the police are protection their own."

This week, three officers were before a police tribunal at Waterloo Regional Police headquarters. Jeff Vongkhamphou, Timothy Green and Graeme Kobayashi plead guilty to charges of neglect of duty, deceit and discreditable conduct.

Vongkhamphou was charged criminally with obstructing justice and given a suspended sentence. He admitted in 2012 that he disposed of a sex toy and nude photographs that were stolen on police calls by Const. Christopher Knox the year before. Knox resigned.

All three officers are being paid even though they are suspended from their jobs. They are awaiting sentencing.

The tribunal heard that the men were part of a BlackBerry Messenger group in which officers made offensive remarks about a mentally ill woman and a pregnant woman, a boy with Down syndrome and a group of Asian men in a pub, as well as ridiculing someone of Middle Eastern descent.

The officers mocked a supervisory officer with a cleft palate, referring to the officer as "whistle lips." They also made fun of an officer for his sexual orientation.

In one case, an officer stole a sex toy while on a police call from a citizen's home and then attached the sex toy to another officer's vehicle. Nude photos of a woman were also stolen from her partner's cellphone.

The prosecution at the hearing wants all three officers fired for what was described as a "cavalier" and "callous" attitude when mocking members of the public and posting their photos to the BlackBerry Messenger group.

An officer can appeal a decision by a hearing officer to the Ontario Civilian Police Commission. They also get paid during that process.

Earlier this month, Const. Craig Markham was ordered to resign from the Waterloo Regional Police after hearing officer Supt. Pat Dietrich said Markham was careless and reckless when he leaked confidential information on someone who was in custody to the person's partner. He is appealing the decision and will receive his salary until his case is heard.

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.