Fairfax County Police Watch: Couple sues cop, city in shooting of dog

HAMMOND | A federal lawsuit was filed Tuesday against a Hammond police officer and the city over the June 9 shooting of a dog in front of a couple's home.

Plaintiff’s Norma Maldonado and Dario Lemus have a differing view of the incident than the Hammond Police Department.

Attorney Trent A. McCain, representing Maldonado and Lemus, issued a news release stating Hammond Officer Timothy L. Kreischer “unholstered his weapon, pointed it at the dog and fired three times, shooting the dog in the face.”

The news release said the shooting took place near to the couple's 7-year-old child at their former Hammond home.

Lilly, an 18-month-old pit bull, survived the shooting.

The news release refers to a subsequent Facebook posting from Hammond Mayor Thomas M. McDermott Jr., defending the officer’s actions and saying the dog had lunged at him in attack mode.

“Lilly neither charged at nor lunged at the officer,” McCain said. “Lilly was standing almost within arm’s length of a 7-year-old when Officer Kreischer discharged his weapon from 15-17 feet away.”

In a June 24 blog posting on the city of Hammond’s police website, Police Chief John Doughty defended the officer’s actions in response to a 911 call about a loose dog in the 6500 block of Jackson Avenue.

Doughty wrote, “The officer saw a sign and two flags in the front yard designating an electric fence had been installed to contain their dog. It announced a boundary that the dog could not pass. Note, an electric fence is against city ordinance … They can fail.”

Doughty explained when Kreischer attempted to get the attention of an adult, the dog starting running toward him. But as the officer backed up past the electric fence, the dog continued through the fence and continued running toward him.

“The dog retreated after one shot was fired,” Doughty said. “Animal Control was called to the scene. The owners were found to be in violation of several city ordinances, including no (dog) license, failure to restrain their dog and failure to maintain an actual fence.”

He said there were no children in close proximity at the time of the shooting, and police collected evidence indicating the dog had been trained to bite.

The lawsuit contends Kreischer was “intentional, unreasonable and grossly negligent” amounting to “callous or reckless indifference” to the plaintiff’s constitutional rights. The complaint seeks unspecified punitive damages and attorney fees.

Hammond Police spokesman Lt. Richard Hoyda said the department backs Kreischer’s version of events, and he has not been disciplined over the incident.

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.