Fairfax County Police Watch: Bill to grant state oversight of reserve police officers clears Michigan Senate in unanimous vote

By Brad Devereaux

SAGINAW, MI — A bill that would give a Michigan agency the power to make rules for reserve police officers has cleared the Michigan Senate by a unanimous vote.

The bill to grant oversight of reserve officers is a "step in the right direction" that has been needed for a long time, the president of the Deputy Sheriff's Association of Michigan says.

Sen. Tonya SchuitmakerMLive/Kalamazoo Gazette file photo

Senate Bill 411, introduced by Tonya Schuitmaker in June 2013, updates responsibilities of the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement (MCOLES) and allows the agency to create rules regarding "minimum standards and procedures for reserve officers."

It passed through the committee on judiciary in June 2013 and was referred to the committee of the whole. With every member of the Senate voting on Sept. 23, it passed on a 38-0 roll call vote and was sent to the House and read a first time that same day, then sent to the House Committee on Judiciary.

Schuitmaker, R-Antwerp Township, said the part of the bill that gives the the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards was included at the request of MCOLES and the Deputy Sheriff's Association of Michigan and is intended to keep reserve officers in check from going above and beyond the scope of their allowed duties.

Dave LaMontaine, a Monroe County sheriff's deputy and the president of the Deputy Sheriff's Association of Michigan, said a change regarding reserve officers has been needed for a long time.

Senate Bill 411 is "a step in the right direction," he said.

Dave LaMontaine

"There's widespread abuse," he said of reserve officers in Michigan. "That bill is not going to fix the problem, but it's a good start."

One of the primary issues is licensing, he said, noting hairdressers, doctors, lawyers and others have to be licensed, but reserve officers do not. LaMontaine said he wants the state to require licensing of reserve officers, though the bill does not specifically call for that.

An important part of the bill is that it gives the deputy sheriff's association a seat on the MCOLES board, "and we'll continue the discussion on licensing," he said. "We're going to talk about it every time we can."

The association has been in talks with Gov. Rick Snyder and his staff, LaMontaine said, and working closely with him on the issues including oversight of reserve officers.

Currently, police chiefs and governments of municipalities where reserve officers operate have full control of how their reserve forces are run.

LaMontaine views the proper way to run a reserve unit as the way Monroe County does. A collective bargaining agreement there states a reserve officer must be directly supervised by a sworn officer.

"They're meant to augment, they're not meant to replace licensed police officers," he said, noting there is potential for other types of abuse without more oversight.

Explaining to citizens that he is a licensed police officer is not something he wants to have to deal with while out doing his job.

"I don't want a person I'm having contact with question whether I'm a police officer or not. It's not a conversation we need to be having with people," he said. "We don't want people to question whether we're a real police officer, or somebody's uncle."

MCOLES having oversight of reserve officers would guarantee a vetting process that will allow the agency to know what reserve officers' training processes are and what they can and cannot do, he said.

"It will legitimize who these people are," LaMontaine said, which is different from the current model. "Who are they? I don't know."

"The problem we have right now is there is no oversight. We don't know where these people came from, we don't know what training they got."

He said some reserve officers are out at sporting events and they often look the same as licensed police officers.

"At a Detroit Tigers game or a Lions game, you think you're seeing a Wayne County sheriff's deputy," he said, but some are reserve officers. "It's frightening to me as a licensed and certified police officer.

"We're not there, but we're moving in the right direction," he said. "And it's for the first time ever. I've been in law enforcement for 26 years. It's been an issue for

us for a long time."

Michigan police reserve units face scrutiny

LaMontaine called the situation in Oakley, where there is a police department that includes about 100 reserve officers for a village of nearly 300 people in southwest Saginaw County, "probably an example of pretty significant abuse," but did not give specifics. "There are others, too."

In Saginaw County in July, MCOLES and the Michigan Attorney General's Office began an investigation of the village of Oakley, several months after a Saginaw News series revealed the village was being dropped from its insurance coverage through the Michigan Municipal League.

Oakley Chief of Police Robert Reznick operates a police force with about a dozen certified officers.

The league cited rthe Oakley Police Department's lack of cooperation in the league's risk management efforts as one reason to drop the insurance.

The Saginaw News broke the news about the controversy in an ongoing series published starting in March called, "Small Town, Big Problem."

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.