Fairfax County Police Watch: Dover officer subject of assault probe

Grand jury will consider excessive force case next week

Written by Cris Barrish

A Dover police officer has been on paid suspension for four months while police and prosecutors investigate his use of force in arresting a man the officer’s lawyer claims is a combative “career felon.”

Cpl. Thomas W. Webster IV, 40, an eight-year veteran of the force, is receiving his $64,000 annual salary while authorities probe his Aug. 24 arrest of Lateef Dickerson, 29, on assault and other charges.

Attorney General Beau Biden’s office is planning to seek a grand jury indictment next week charging Webster with assault, sources familiar with the case said. Webster’s lawyer expects him to be indicted.

“We can confirm that the officer is under investigation, but can’t comment any further,” Dover police spokesman Cpl. Mark Hoffman said. “Things should be moving on this issue in the next week or so.”

Details of what Webster is being investigated for have not been made public, but investigators have a video of the confrontation, Hoffman and Chief James E. Hosfelt said Wednesday, adding that they will not release the video now. “That’s all evidence at this point,” Hoffman said.

Richard Smith, president of the state NAACP, said Hosfelt briefed him on the case and possible charges against Webster on Saturday.

“He said the video was so bad that he had to take a stand to lock this police officer up,” Smith said. “He said we wouldn’t want to see the video because it would upset the whole community. He said it was pitiful but wouldn’t go into details.”

Smith said relations between police and the black community have been tense in recent years, and said that if Webster is charged criminally, that might send a message to residents that the city won’t tolerate police brutality.

“We hope to see him charged and that justice will prevail. Just to see him go to court would unite people,” Smith said. “The black community and the city of Dover need to come together.”

The investigation began on Oct. 13 after a complaint was filed with Dover police, Hoffman said. The NAACP’s Smith said Dickerson filed the complaint and that during the investigation the video was given to police.

Webster was suspended with pay on Nov. 4, but the suspension was not announced in keeping with the department’s personnel policy, Hoffman said.

Reached Wednesday morning at his home near Felton, Webster would not comment. But his attorney, James E. Liguori, issued a statement that said his client’s use of force was proper and necessary.

“Tom Webster’s quick thinking and instincts helped keep a very bad guy off our streets,” wrote Liguori, who added that Webster spent nine years as a Delaware corrections officer before joining the Dover force.

Dickerson has four felony convictions and has been arrested several dozen times, Liguori wrote.

The altercation occurred at the Hess service station on U.S. 13 in Dover, where officers were dispatched after a 911 call that Dickerson and others “were armed and in a fight,” Liguori’s statement said. No one had weapons, Liguori said, but Webster had to use force against Dickerson.

The defense attorney did not say that Dickerson was violent before Webster used force, only that the suspect did not comply with police orders.

“All Lateef Dickerson had to do was comply” with Webster and another officer “and it wouldn’t have been necessary for him to be forcefully restrained,” Liguori wrote.

Webster “looks forward to trial in this matter. His actions were justified. This was not an indiscriminate exercise of the use of unnecessary force. Tom Webster’s day in court will not be soon enough. He protected all of us that day, even Mr. Dickerson, when he chose to use less than lethal force to get this career felon under arrest and off of our streets.”

Dickerson was charged with assault, theft, resisting arrest and other offenses in the Hess incident, Hoffman said Wednesday morning, adding that the criminal case remains open.

Dickerson is currently serving 60 days at the Central Violation of Probation Center in Smyrna, corrections spokesman John Painter said.

News Journal files show that Dickerson, was charged with assault on a police officer, resisting arrest and drug offenses in September 2012 after a traffic stop in Middletown, and with armed robbery and weapons charges in 2006 and 2008.

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.