Fairfax County Police Watch: Police commissioners weigh Beck’s decision not to fire officer who lied

By Adam Poulisse, Los Angeles Daily News

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck’s decision to suspend an LAPD officer with strong family ties, overruling a disciplinary board’s recommendation to fire him, has sparked criticism.

Shaun Hillman, 33, was suspended for 65 days by Beck for denying a heated altercation at a Norco bar that was caught on tape in January, according to several media reports. Hillman allegedly used a racial slur and pulled a handgun during the fight but later lied about it in an LAPD internal investigation.

The board unanimously recommended that Hillman be fired.

The issue was brought up by L.A. Police Commission president Steve Soboroff at Tuesday’s Los Angeles Police Commission meeting, but he didn’t mention anybody specifically other than Beck. State law prohibits going into specific details of a disciplinary case.

“The question is, do we, in evaluating the direct reports ... take into account all aspects of what’s going on, including the areas that we may disagree? The answer is, of course we do,” Soboroff said.

The situation has elicited questions of favoritism, as Hillman’s father is a former LAPD officer and his uncle is former Deputy Police Chief Michael Hillman. The discussions align with the commission’s evaluation of extending Beck’s contract another five years.

“In the evaluation, of course this information comes up, (as well as) all the other information we collect,” Soboroff said. “Our evaluation is happening right on the cusp (of the situation), so are we asking for more and more information to do the evaluation right? Of course we are.”

Beck was on a scheduled vacation at the time of Tuesday’s meeting. Soboroff declined to comment further.

The Los Angeles Police Protective League, which represents LAPD’s rank-and-file officers, also wouldn’t comment on the personnel issue.

The disciplinary board weighs evidence and recommends ways to deal with disciplined officers, then their decision goes to the chief.

“The chief of police can lessen the penalty but cannot give a penalty that is greater than what is recommended,” LAPD spokesman Commander Andy Smith said.

According to several reports, Beck has agreed with 98 of the past 100 disciplinary board decisions to fire an officer.

“Chief Beck occasionally disagrees with the board,” Smith said.

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.