Fairfax County Police Watch: National group helps defend shot dog

By Ashley B. Craig,

A national dog advocacy group is stepping up to offer help to a Mason County family whose dog was shot by State Police. The “Justice for Willy Pete” Facebook page announced Tuesday that The Lexus Project, founded four years ago by a New York-based couple who took legal action to rescue a greyhound from being euthanized, had taken up the case.Richard Rosenthal, co-founder and general counsel for The Lexus Project, said the group only recently began taking such cases. “It’s becoming an epidemic,” Rosenthal said. “It’s not dogs running loose, it’s officers going into yards.”He said they now receive three to five calls a week about a police-related shooting.Rosenthal is teaming up with local attorney Trent Redman. He said he plans to sue the West Virginia State Police and Sgt. S.T. Harper within the next two weeks.“We’re in the midst of putting together all the facts and getting our ducks in a row,” Rosenthal said. He said he would travel to West Virginia in the next few days to meet with Redman, and Ginger and Jeremy Sweat, Willy Pete’s owners.Ginger Sweat told the Daily Mail last month that the 6-year-old beagle-bassett hound mix left the porch of her rural Ashton area home and went to meet troopers coming out of the woods nearby. The troopers were members of the State Police Special Response Team. They had with them a leashed police dog and were searching for a man accused of threatening his wife and firing a shot at a Mason sheriff’s deputy.Ginger Sweat was inside when she saw through a window that the officer had his weapon raised at her dog, which she said suffered from arthritis.She said she ran outside screaming and pleading with the officer not to shoot. She said the trooper, later identified by State Police as Harper, fired one shot at the dog but missed, sending the dog running back to her.She said Harper fired three more times at the dog as it ran in her direction. The dog died behind her home. According to the Facebook page, a necropsy performed on the dog showed the animal had been shot in the back.State Police apologized in a statement, issued a week after the June 24 shooting, but stood by the officer’s actions.Troopers said the report from the investigation showed Willy Pete charged toward officers while they were in the road and “growled and bared his teeth as he continued toward Diego,” the police dog at the scene.Troopers said Harper shot the dog three times when the dog was within 10 feet of the police dog and five feet from him. Harper has been a member of the State Police’s K-9 Unit for 14 years, the last two he spent as instructor. The sergeant was said in the statement to be “well-versed in canine body language and canine behavior.”“Based upon his observations that Willie (sic) Pete’s hackles were raised, he was growling and his teeth were barred as well as the fact the dog could not be deterred by two other means of non-lethal force from advancing toward K-9 Officer Diego and the WVSP SRT members, Sgt. Harper made the decision to shoot the dog,” the statement said.State troopers have shot and killed 15 dogs in the last four years including Willy Pete, the Charleston Gazette reported Tuesday. Harper shot three of those dogs in that time frame.“We’re talking about an arthritic beagle-type dog that was shot in the back, in his own yard, in front of his family, by a police officer — who this is the third dog in four years he’s shot,” Rosenthal said.He said leadership in the police department should stand up and tell the officers they won’t tolerate that kind of behavior.“It is unfortunate that the government instead of being outraged is a party to the cover-up and I think that’s the bigger crime,” Rosenthal said. “It’s unfortunate that it’s happened.“The police department is complicit in it by not expressing outrage and not disciplining officers unless in the most egregious cases. The rest of the cases, it’s a wink and shrug and they stand behind the thin blue line.”Rosenthal said the family would seek damages. He hopes the jury will award a large verdict, sending the message that the people won’t accept the needless killing of animals.He also has hope for an injunction barring officers from shooting dogs and requiring police departments to provide realistic animal training.Rosenthal is providing his services at no charge, but the family is accepting donations to help pay for court fees. Donations can be made at www.youcaring.com/nonprofits/justice-for-willy-pete/204466.Contact writer Ashley B. Craig at ashley.craig@dailymailwv.com or 304-348-4850.

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.