Fairfax County Police Watch: Omaha Police Oversight Board Created

There’s a new plan on the table to address the ongoing question of who polices the police in Omaha. A Citizen Review Board will be tasked with sorting through complaints.

Mayor Jean Stothert, police management and the police union have worked for months to structure the board that will serve as the go-to location for citizen complaints against police.

The board itself will consist of five members, one from each precinct plus one at-large member. There will also be an alternate. Then there will be three non-voting advisers to the board: someone from Omaha Police command; someone from the Human Rights and Relations Department and someone from the City Law Department.

The board members will not be paid. They will not have subpoena powers and they will not conduct their own investigations. They will review only what police investigate after the complaint is made.

The mayor said, “We've had a Citizens Review Board in the past. We had an auditor in the past. In my opinion, neither worked extremely well. This is a different approach. Like I said, got a lot of input. Basically I feel there is the ability with a board for broader citizen oversight.”

The mayor's executive order is not playing well in some parts of North Omaha. While some see it as a step in the right direction, others see it as political sideshow.

The intent is to build trust between police and the citizens of Omaha.

Robert Wagner reviews the mayor's executive order that creates the board. Wagner has filed a complaint against the police for a rough arrest in the past and he said Friday action doesn't go far enough. He said the board will have no power to create change in a police force that needs change.

"This is just a patchwork,” he said. “Just put together almost like a campaign promise. She just threw something out here and I don't believe it has any merit at all. As far as being a help in terms of that trust between the community and police, it's not going to do anything for that."

Community leader Willie Hamilton actually laughed at the mayor's proposal. He said people in the minority community are outraged at the idea of the weak panel with no power.

Hamilton said, “Not all police officers are bad but history speaks for itself. We can go back to Robert Ammons, George Bibbins, just recently Robert Wagner. You got the Johnson family, then the filing of an ACLU lawsuit and the best we can do is a citizen review board with a bunch of volunteers with no subpoena power? That's ridiculous."

Stothert unveiled the plan at a news conference where she was joined by Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer and Omaha Police Union President John Wells. Stothert said she wants to have the board operating within a matter of weeks.

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.