Fairfax County Police Watch: Fairfax should force police to come clean over shooting of unarmed John Geer

By Robert McCartney Columnist

Here’s what has happened in Ferguson, Mo., in the two months since a police officer shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed man:

■The officer who pulled the trigger was identified and his record made public.

Robert McCartney’s column on local issues appears Thursdays and Sundays in The Post’s Metro section. View Archive

■The president expressed his condolences, and the U.S. attorney general paid a visit.

■Protesters staged repeated mass demonstrations.

Here’s what has happened in Fairfax County in the nearly 14 months since a police officer shot and killed John Geer, also unarmed, while he stood with arms raised in the doorway of his Springfield townhouse:

■The officer’s name has not been released, despite abundant signs that the shooting was a mistake.

■The County Board of Supervisors wrote a gently worded letter to the U.S. attorney last month expressing concern about the unusually long delay in investigating the incident.

■A meeting of a local activist group unhappy about Geer’s case drew all of six participants Tuesday evening at the Martha Washington Library in Fairfax’s Alexandria neighborhood.

“All those people are bonding together in Ferguson, [but] it’s very difficult to get people to do anything in Fairfax,” said Mary Tracy, a member of the Virginia Citizens Coalition for Police Accountability.

The differences between the two shootings are critical, of course. Ferguson has long suffered from racial tensions between police and the community. The killing there of a black teenager by a white police officer rekindled grievances dating back generations.

By contrast, the Fairfax public shows more confidence in the police, despite several past shooting controversies there. In addition, since Geer was white, the case doesn’t arouse the same racial concerns.

Still, Fairfax mustn’t let county police off the hook just because it’s politically convenient. The Geer case should prompt both the public and elected officials to force the department to come clean about what happened.

So far, the opposite has occurred. Police have provided no explanation for the shooting, or why Geer was left unattended for an hour afterward and apparently bled to death.

Geer’s girlfriend of 24 years, Maura Harrington, said the death still weighs heavily on their two daughters, ages 18 and 14.

“My girls have a right to know why their father was shot, and who shot him,” she said. “It’s not fair to them for this to keep dragging on. They need closure.”

The shooting occurred at the end of a standoff in August 2013. Police had been summoned to the townhouse because Geer, upset with Harrington, had tossed her belongings into the front yard.

Supervisor Pat Herrity (R-Springfield), who represents Geer’s district, said the circumstances of the shooting were worrisome. “I don’t have all the evidence in front of me, but from what I’ve seen, there are serious questions,” Herrity said.

Furthermore, mysterious obstacles have slowed the investigation. Although few details have been forthcoming, a major reason for the delay seems to be that the police have been reluctant to provide necessary information.

Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Ray Morrogh spent five months on the inquiry before giving up and handing it over to U.S. Attorney Dana Boente.

Morrogh told my colleague Tom Jackman one of his problems “concerns some information, and I just can’t get it.”

That apparently referred to a refusal by police to hand over personnel files for the officer involved in the case.

Now Boente has had the case for even longer than Morrogh. It’s reasonable to assume he might be having some of the same problems that Morrogh did.

Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Sharon Bulova (D) told me Wednesday that the board has urged the police to cooperate, while respecting the rights of an officer who might face charges.

“We’ve strongly indicated that we want our police to do everything they can to move things along,” Bulova said. “It’s important that we also do so within the context of a federal investigation that could end up going to trial.”

Police Chief Edwin Roessler Jr. did not comment for this column. Previously, he said the department would not identify the officer who shot Geer because the policy was to wait until a criminal investigation is complete.

Nicholas Beltrante, executive director of the citizens coalition for police accountability, has his own theory about what’s going on.

“They’re stonewalling,” Beltrante said. “They’re allowing time to pass so the citizens of Fairfax County will forget about the matter.”

For the Geer family and the general public, that’s one outcome that shouldn’t be acceptable.

I discuss local issues Friday at 8:50 a.m. on WAMU (88.5 FM). For previous columns, go to washingtonpost.com/mccartney.

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.