Fairfax County Police Watch: Miami cop facing child porn, molestation charges

BY DAVID OVALLE AND MELHOR MARIE LEONOR

A retired Miami police officer who nicknamed himself “Batman” and downloaded hundreds of child-porn videos is now accused of video-recording himself molesting a young girl, authorities say.

Juan Roman had been free on bond on federal child-porn charges when detectives, while poring through his computer files this week, found the disturbing video clips.

Roman, 57, was re-arrested and booked into a Miami-Dade jail early Saturday, charged with a slew of state counts, including lewd and lascivious molestation of a child.

According to court documents, Roman apparently set up a hidden video camera inside his home bathroom, which later captured him molesting a girl who is 7 years old.

He is also charged with video voyeurism. A Miami-Dade judge on Saturday afternoon ordered him held in jail without bond.

“The defendant is obviously embarrassed by the allegations but he has served the community well for more than four decades,” said his defense attorney, George Cholakis.

His arrest stunned and angered former colleagues at the Miami Police Department, where he worked as a detective and as a spotter aboard the department’s helicopter. Roman retired about five years ago.

Late last month, federal authorities arrested Roman and charged him with possession and distribution of child pornography.

According to federal court documents, cyber-crimes investigators in July pinpointed Roman’s computer as having been used to share illegal sexual images of young girls and boys.

In late August, agents raided Roman’s Biscayne Park home. After waiving his right to remain silent, the former cop insisted that he only used the file-sharing software to download music and had “not really seen child pornography,” according to the federal complaint.

Investigators noticed another odd detail: Roman sported a Batman logo tattooed on his arm, and his computer hard drive was nicknamed the “Batcave.”

Photos on his laptop and hard drive showed him wearing a cape, a mask and Batman underwear in various posed shots, according to documents.

But most disturbingly, investigators found over 500 video files “suggestive of child pornography” on Roman’s laptop and hard drive.

It was on Thursday that detectives, while exhaustively combing through his files, found the videos of Roman allegedly molesting the young girl in the bathroom. Federal prosecutors are now asking that a federal judge revoke his bond.

Miami-Dade Police’s special victims unit arrested him on the state charges.

His arrest comes several weeks after Miami-Dade police officers arrested one of their own on similar charges.

Longtime Miami-Dade Sgt. James Edwards is accused of paying a 15-year-old boy with drugs and alcohol before groping the teen and masturbating in front of him, authorities say. He is charged with lewd and lascivious conduct and exhibition.

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.