Fairfax County Police Watch: Miramar cop charged with stealing two bottles of liquor during investigation

|By Robert Nolin, Sun Sentinel

A Miramar police officer, patrolling with a citizen observer, has been charged with brazenly filching two bottles of scotch from three suspects.

Antonio Hester, 34, who has been with the department since 2006, was arrested Thursday and charged with petty theft, falsifying records and official misconduct. He was placed on unpaid leave and is under internal investigation, "which precludes the department from speaking further on the matter," spokeswoman Natasha Richardson said.

According to a five-page report by Sgt. Kevin Nosowicz, Hester was on duty May 14, 2013, with Casey Torres, a member of the city's Citizen's Police Academy, accompanying him.

Hester answered a theft call at a Walgreens on Southwest 101st Avenue, and tracked three female suspects to a nearby gas station, investigators said. He and Linkong Sherman, Walgreens loss prevention officer, took suspected stolen property from the women, including two bottles of Johnnie Walker Black Label.

One of the women, Zakia Branton, told Hester the liquor was hers and had been bought in Tampa. She and the other women were subsequently allowed to go.

When the liquor was scanned under the store's inventory system, it was shown not to have belonged to the store, Nosowicz reported. Walgreens assistant manager Heldy Barry told investigators Hester said that "he was going to take the alcohol because it did not belong to Walgreens."

Hester was then seen on store surveillance cameras leaving the manager's office with the two bottles of liquor. Sherman also watched him place the booze in the trunk of his patrol car, the sergeant said.

Torres, the citizen observer, said Hester told him "he had a lot of paperwork to complete" and would place the liquor into evidence. But Torres told investigators the officer did not stop at the police station, but went straight to a Citizen's Academy function.

Nosowicz said Hester filed a report stating he returned the liquor to Branton, but department records didn't back up that claim or show that the bottles were ever placed into evidence. Branton also told investigators she never got her liquor back.

The case was turned over to the Broward County Special Prosecutors Office, which after an investigation lasting more than a year, determined Hester should be charged.

Police reports don't mention whether the Johnnie Walker Black, which retails for around $28 for a 750-milliliter bottle, ever turned up.

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.