Fairfax County Police Watch: Atlanta cop fired for Eagle raid lies gets job back

By Matt Hennie | Apr 2, 2014 | 5:46 PM

A Georgia court ordered Atlanta to rehire Sgt. Willie Adams, one of several police officers fired for lying about their roles in the botched raid of gay Atlanta bar the Eagle.

Sgt. Willie Adams will be reinstated to Atlanta police and receive back pay, according to the court ruling. WSB first reported the court decision on Wednesday.

"He feels nervous because he still doesn't believe they will actually do it," Mary Huber, Adams' attorney, tells WSB. "This hurt this officer very deeply."

Turner suspended Adams and six other officers in June 2011 and then fired him and five others days later. The discipline came in the wake of two damning reports about the agency's role in the botched raid in September 2009. Adams was fired for lying about his actions during the raid in the later investigations, an action the city's civil service board upheld. The raid cost the city some $2.7 million in legal fees and lawsuit settlements.

A police union, the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, paid Adams' legal fees. Last year, a Fulton Superior court judge overturned the firing and the city appealed. The Georgia Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Adams, ordering the city to rehire him.

"A careful and complete review of the entire record, the transcripts, and the briefs of the parties reveals that the superior court correctly concluded that no evidence in the record supported the Board's findings," the court ruled.

Adams and Cayenne Mayes, also fired for lying about his role in the Eagle raid, were later hired by the Clayton County Sheriff's Office.

A statement from Mayor Kasim Reed's office said the city "respectfully disagrees" with the court's decision.

Chief George Turner dismissed Willie Adams based on inconsistent statements Adams made during the City’s investigations into the Eagle matter. Chief Turner takes violations of the Atlanta Police Department’s work rules seriously and, in fact, three APD work rule violations were upheld against Adams. Adams’s dismissal was the only discipline resulting from the Eagle investigations which was overturned. While the City of Atlanta respectfully disagrees with the Court's decision, the City is prepared to reinstate Adams to his former position.

John Geer

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.