Fairfax County Police Watch: County cop charged with DWI was on-duty earlier in day

Hoa Nguyen, htnguyen

Westchester County police Sgt. Mario Guiliano was driving a county-owned vehicle when he's alleged to have drunkenly rear-ended a DOT truck on the Taconic State Parkway.

MOUNT PLEASANT – The off-duty Westchester County police sergeant charged with driving while intoxicated Wednesday had been working earlier in the day and was operating a county-owned car assigned to his unit when he rear-ended a truck, officials said.

Mario Guiliano, 46, of White Plains, a 23-year Westchester County police veteran, supervises the department's pistol licensing unit, Kieran O'Leary, public information officer for the county police, said.
Guiliano had worked a day shift at the unit on Wednesday before getting into the county-owned 2004 Chevrolet that he and other members of the unit had permission to take home, O'Leary said.
The spokesman said he did not know what time Guiliano's shift ended. The sergeant was driving on the Taconic State Parkway at 8:23 p.m. when he struck the truck owned by the state Department of Transportation in a construction zone, state police said.
Guiliano refused to take a field sobriety test and also refused to provide a sample for a preliminary breath screening, state police Trooper Melissa McMorris, that department's public information officer, said.
Guiliano was charged with DWI after the arresting trooper found a strong odor of alcohol on his breath and noticed slurred speech and watery, blood-shot eyes, McMorris said.
The police sergeant was issued traffic tickets for DWI and refusing to submit to a chemical test, which are to be returned to Mount Pleasant Town Court on Oct. 16. He remains on restricted desk duty, O'Leary said.
McMorris said that because Guiliano was taken to the hospital on a complaint of general pain, state police had not yet fingerprinted him or taken his mug shot. She anticipated he would make plans to turn himself in for processing.
Guiliano, who could not be reached for comment, started working for Westchester police in 1991 and last earned $118,693.
In recent months, multiple area police officers have been accused of drunk driving, including one fatally.
Richard Christopher, an Airmont resident and off-duty New York City police officer, collided with another vehicle on Interstate 287 on Aug. 12, killing himself and another driver. Christopher, who was driving the wrong way, had a blood-alcohol content of .21 percent, or more than double the legal limit of .08 percent, officials said.
In May, off-duty Port Chester Police Officer Jose A. Nieves was charged with drunk driving after a three-vehicle crash on I-287 in Harrison, police said. His blood-alcohol content was .13 percent, or more than 1.5 times the legal limit.
Smart Meter Opponent Who Was Arrested for Filming Cops Last Year Found Not Guilty
Liz Klimas
One of two mothers who were arrested last year in their protest against the forced installation of smart meters on their property was found not guilty by a jury this week.
Malia “Kim” Bendis was acquitted in DuPage County, Illinois, court of a misdemeanor for resisting or obstructing a police officer, the Chicago Tribune reported. At the time of the incident, Bendis was also charged with eavesdropping because she recorded a police officer, but the law that supported this charge was later ruled unconstitutional, according to the newspaper.
TheBlaze first reported the arrest of Bendis and fellow anti-smart meter activist Jennifer Stahl in January 2013. The Napperville, Illinois, women were part of a group that did not support the required replacement of their analog meters with wireless smart meters by the city.
Smart meters are controversial as some believe they could infringe on personal privacy or affect their health and safety.
The American Cancer Society has addressed concerns about smart meter radiofrequency waves, saying the are considered a “possible carcinogen.”
“Because RF radiation is a possible carcinogen, and smart meters give off RF radiation, it is possible that smart meters could increase cancer risk. Still, it isn’t clear what risk, if any there might be from living in a home with a smart meter,” the society’s website stated, adding that it would be “nearly impossible to conduct a study to prove or disprove a link between living in a house with smart meters and cancer because people have so many sources of exposure to RF and the level of exposure from this source is so small.”
Bendis was filming Stahl, who was arrested because she refused to allow smart meter installation, and was subsequently taken in herself when she refused to stop recording

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.