Fairfax County Police Watch: The national epidemic of mentally unstable cops goes unchecked

Blackman-Leoni public safety officer charged with felonious assault against co-worker

Theresa Ghiloni

JACKSON, MI – A Blackman-Leoni Township Department of Public Safety officer accused of assaulting a co-worker with a dangerous weapon has been arraigned on related charges.

Brent Doxtader, 40, was arraigned on a felony charge of assault with a dangerous weapon in Jackson County District Court on Thursday, July 24.

Doxtader was arraigned in front of Jackson District Judge R. Darryl Mazur on the charge related to a Jan. 19 incident and has posted a $2,500 personal bond, according to court documents.

The charge is related to an investigation by the Michigan State Police First District Headquarters in Lansing at the request of Blackman-Leoni Public Safety Director Mike Jester, MSP Detective Sgt. Thomas DeClercq said.

In a news release Jester said Doxtader has been on unpaid administrative since the investigation began.

DeClercq said his office completed an investigation that led them to believe Doxtader assaulted a co-worker with a "departmental weapon." In the news release Jester describes the weapon as a handgun.

Court documents list David Lubahn, a Blackman-Leoni township public safety officer, as the victim in the felonious assault case.

Washtenaw County Prosecutor Brenda Taylor was assigned the case after the Jackson County Prosecutor's Office deferred the case to the Michigan Attorney General's Office, DeClercq said.

A felonious assault conviction carries with it a sentence up to four years in prison, according to the Michigan Penal Code.

In 2009, a U.S. District Court Judge dismissed a civil lawsuit against Doxtader that stated he and Blackman Township Public Safety officer Kory Torbet used unreasonable force while restraining a man suffering from low blood sugar.

Doxtader was disciplined after an internal investigation of the complaint for being "very abrasive and unnecessarily confrontational in his handling of the incident," according to the opinion filed by Judge Marianne O. Battani.

In 2003, Doxtader resigned from a position as the Village of Pigeon Police Chief after holding the position for 13 months, according to a report from the Huron Daily Tribune. The report said Doxtader had been accused of abusing his power in multiple ways before he submitted his resignation.

A preliminary examination for Doxtader on the felonious assault charge has been scheduled for Aug. 7.

Theresa Ghiloni is a public safety reporter at the Jackson Citizen Patriot. Contact her at tghiloni@mlive.com. Follow her on Twitter.

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.