Fairfax County Police Watch: Kanawha prosecutor to review cases involving suspended cop; Charleston mayor says back off

By Kate White, Staff writer and Rusty Marks

Kanawha County Prosecuting Attorney Mark Plants has ordered a review of all pending criminal cases that involve suspended Charleston police Lt. Shawn Williams, but Charleston Mayor Danny Jones thinks Plants should stay out of the way of the police department’s investigation.Plants’ office issued a news release Thursday afternoon stating, “Any time a law enforcement officer is under an investigation for misconduct, the reliability of their testimony is an issue.” Jones said the Charleston Police Department has a handle on the investigation and pointed out bad blood between Plants and CPD officers.Williams was suspended with pay last month, pending an investigation by the CPD’s Professional Standards Division. Police Chief Brent Webster has said he will not discuss the investigation because of personnel laws.However, sources familiar with the investigation said it involves racially insensitive videos allegedly found on Williams’ home computer. Two people who have seen the videos said they depict Williams’ young daughter dressed in what appears to be articles of a police uniform and dancing to a song about the Ku Klux Klan. A man purported to be Williams can be heard asking the girl questions, in which racially derogatory language allegedly can be heard.Plants’ office has reviewed the investigation of Williams “related to allegations of racial discrimination,” according to the news release, which was issued by assistant prosecutor James Bailey. During Plants’ investigation into Williams, the officer will not be relied upon as a witness in criminal cases, the release states. The mayor made clear his disdain for the prosecutor’s inquiry.“Mark Plants is not smart enough, when the negative light is cast in another direction, to stay out of that negative light,” Jones said. “He just has to involve himself in something that has nothing to do with him.“We are investigating this. The Charleston Police is going to handle this. We don’t condone any kind of activity that is being alleged.” He said the city will move to keep Plants from getting involved. Plants is facing two misdemeanor domestic violence-related charges. Kanawha County commissioners are waiting to hear if a three-judge panel will remove him from office. The commissioners say that, because of the case against him, the prosecutor isn’t able to do the job he was elected to do. After Plants was charged with domestic battery for striking his 11-year-old son with a belt and violating a domestic violence protection order that required him to stay away from his ex-wife and their two sons, a judge barred his office from handling charges similar to the ones Plants faces. Kanawha Circuit Judge Duke Bloom took that action after the city of Charleston filed a petition requesting Plants’ removal.Additionally, Plants is now married to the ex-wife of a Charleston police detective, and city officers have publicly criticized him. “Everyone knows there’s no good feelings between him and the Charleston Police Department,” Jones said.Charleston officials took their investigation of Williams to the Prosecutor’s Office at the request of Plants’ chief of staff, Charles Miller, Jones said.“Plants wanted to be involved, and we’re not going to involve ourselves in anything with Mark Plants,” the mayor said. “We are handling it.”Until recently, Williams was head of the police department’s Patrol Division, and orchestrated a series of well-publicized raids on the city’s West Side and the downtown transit mall. Williams told reporters at the time he was trying to help clean up the city’s “riffraff.”Plants said, “Although this investigation is ongoing, racism or prejudice of any kind is completely unacceptable, especially concerning law enforcement officers who we entrust with protecting our liberties.”Webster said he does not know how long the police department’s internal investigation will take.In response to Jones’ comments, Plants said he’s not investigating Williams, he’s investigating the cases in which Williams has played a part. “By law, prosecutors are required to disclose instances of substantiated misconduct by law enforcement officers. Mayor Jones should understand the facts and law before saying that this has nothing to do with my office,” Plants said. “Every criminal case that involves Lt. Williams will be impacted.”Reach Rusty Marks at rustymarks@wvgazette.com, 304-348-1215 or follow @rusty_marks on Twitter. Reach Kate White at kate.white@wvgazette.com, 304-348-1723 or follow @KateLWhite on Twitter.

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.