Fairfax County Police Watch: IMPD officer faces second drunken driving charge

Steph Solis and Jill Disis

An Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officer was arrested Friday on preliminary drunken driving charges in Hamilton County.

Fishers police said officer Allen Johnson, 27, was driving his personal vehicle in Hamilton County while intoxicated. He was arrested and taken to Hamilton County Jail.

IMPD officials said Johnson, a 5-year veteran of the department, was off-duty at the time of his arrest. He was suspended without pay pending the outcome of an internal investigation.

Friday's arrest was the second time Johnson has been arrested on drunken driving charges. In November 2012, Johnson was pulled over in a pick-up truck on Keystone Avenue near 71st Street for speeding. According to court documents, Johnson told an officer he had three drinks before getting in his car. Johnson failed field sobriety tests and registered a blood-alcohol content of 0.086 percent, which is above the legal limit to drive.

Court records show Johnson was found guilty in that case of one count of operating a vehicle while intoxicated, and was placed on probation. IMPD spokesman Chris Wilburn said Friday he did not know any details about the outcome of any internal investigation in that case.

"As a department we are very disappointed right now," Lloyd Crowe, IMPD assistant chief, said in a statement after Johnson's second arrest. "We expect our officers to have better decision making skills both on-duty and off-duty. We will continue to ensure our officers have the resources available to address stress-related issues that come with a career in law enforcement, but we will not accept behavior that puts our community at risk."

Since Johnson has not been formally charged, the Hamilton County Prosecutor's office had no other information available Friday afternoon, including Johnson's blood-alcohol content at the time of his arrest. OWI charges are used when a person drives a vehicle while registering a blood-alcohol content of at least 0.08 percent.

It's unclear what Johnson's standing with IMPD will be after his internal investigation. Department policy recommends a suspension for officers who are arrested on OWI charges while driving a personally owned vehicle. A second such offense, however, can be grounds for dismissal.

Johnson is the latest in a string of IMPD officers charged with drunken driving.

On May 18, officer Edward Zehner was pulled over in New Palestine after one of the town's officers saw him driving erratically. Zehner registered a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.16 percent. Sgt. Kendale Adams, an IMPD spokesman, said Zehner served a 30-day suspension and is back on duty.

IMPD officer Bryan Neal, a patrolman on the late shift, was arrested June 6 after police said he was visibly drunk and had a blood-alcohol level nearly three times the legal limit when he arrived at work.

IMPD Capt. Mark Rice was arrested on June 22 by Indianapolis International Airport Police after an officer saw him driving onto the median of an I-465 exit ramp, according to a probable cause affidavit. Court documents said Rice registered a blood-alcohol content of about 0.09.

Kevin Edward Brown, who worked at IMPD for 16 years, quit after he was arrested for the second time on drunken driving charges last week. On July 28, Brown was arrested after he drove through a White Castle drive-through while apparently intoxicated and turned on his emergency lights, according to court documents.

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.