Fairfax County Police Watch: Anaheim Police Arrest Activist Weeks After Cops Crashed Her Birthday Bash

By Gabriel San Roman

Yesenia Rojas gave Anaheim Deputy Police Chief Julian Harvey what she thought was a courtesy call yesterday morning. She's a noted community activist in the city's Anna Drive neighborhood, which gained international attention two years ago for a police killing there that led to days of riots in Anaheim.

"I called...to invite him to events we are going to have in our community," Rojas says. He was busy but returned her call later with some urgent news. "That's when I found out I had an arrest warrant for me."

Rojas walked into the Anaheim Police Department headquarters that afternoon to turn herself in at Harvey's suggestion. After meeting with him, she was booked and held on $10,000 bail for charges of interfering with police before being released late into the night.

The police are mum about the details, but back on September 6, neighbors and family in Anna Drive held a surprise party for Rojas' 37th birthday. Just before 10 p.m., Rojas had just invited her neighbor Donna Acevedo, a city council candidate who's is the mother of someone killed by the Anaheim PD, to come to the fiesta when a mother came screaming for help.

In a nearby alley, Anaheim police were arresting the mother's son. Residents quickly rushed to the scene, whipped out their smartphones and began filming. Footage seen by the Weekly shows gang unit officers standing stoically in the alley keeping people away from the scene.

Rojas walked with her hands up, Ferguson-style, berating police to respond; she claims a cop grabbed her arm and pulled it down. The activist tried clearing a path through the crowd as officers carried a handcuffed man to the street and into the backseat of a gang unit patrol car."Why are you taking him?" residents can be heard screaming. "Let him go!"

"We were trying to get names, badge numbers, and they didn't even answer," Rojas says.

Anaheim police told the Weekly that two arrests occurred that night. Eriberto Castro, 20, was taken in for violating the gang injunction in effect around Anna Drive. Police booked Esgardo Villa, also 20, for drug possession and resisting arrest.

Police units eventually left the alley to angry residents telling cops to get out of their neighborhood. "I don't see any changes," Rojas said, about whether relations have improved between the police and Anna Drive residents. "It's the same."

The circumstances surrounding Rojas' arrest remain unclear at this time, as police wouldn't elaborate. But getting arrested three weeks after her party for trying to keep the peace isn't going to stop Rojas from trying to see real improvements in Anna Drive.

"I think they are doing this to intimidate my community, but this injustice against me is only going to make me stronger," Rojas says. "I'm going to continue fighting for the rights of the community I live in."

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.