Fairfax County Police Watch: Booking blotter back online, still missing arrested officers

By Hannah Winston

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s booking blotter website was back up and running Friday after almost a week of hiatus, but police officers arrested this year remained out of the online database.

On Monday, Sheriff Ric Bradshaw took down the entire online booking blotter “until further notice” after The Palm Beach Post reported Sunday that the agency had deleted arrested officers’ names from the public jail log.

But, open records experts argued, the sheriff needed another way for the public to readily obtain arrest records in the same way the blotter offered.

Lawyers and bail bondsmen complained that they used the blotter in their daily work and didn’t understand why it was taken down without warning. The sheriff’s office has yet to explain why fixing a glitch required the entire database to be taken offline.

When the blotter was restored Friday, the sheriff’s office released a statement:

“After a recent news article the Sheriff’s Office reviewed the operation of the Booking Blotter website and determined that it was not operating in a manner consistent with what was expected of the site.

“Sheriff’s personnel met today and have corrected the issues regarding the booking blotter website. The website is now in acceptable operating condition.”

Spokeswoman Teri Barbera said officer’s names and charges will now be in the blotter but did not offer any reason why officers previously arrested, like Boynton Beach police officer Stephen Maiorino accused of raping a woman at gunpoint and PBSO deputy Roger Kirby who allegedly beat a 5-year-old boy, remained out of the blotter.

When The Post initially asked why officers were not showing up in the blotter, the sheriff’s office said there was an issue with software so they couldn’t redact certain protected information like addresses and dates of birth. The Post pointed out that as recently as last year, arrested officers appeared in the booking blotter with the information redacted.

The sheriff’s office did not explain why.

On Thursday, the agency released a statement on its Twitter account explaining there was a technical problem with the blotter and that it would be fixed shortly.

That statement was tweeted two hours after The Palm Beach Post’s lawyer threatened to take legal action to enforce the public’s right to see, in a timely manner, the records of people booked into the jail.

“The effect of this action is that public records requests for information that was, until now, readily available on the PBSO website, are now being frustrated and unreasonably delayed, which is tantamount to a denial of those requests,” The Post’s attorney Martin Reeder said in an email to the sheriff’s office.

The Post requested records multiple times for all bookings since Monday morning with no timeline of when the records would be released. Friday afternoon, after another email from The Post’s lawyer, the records were released on paper. Hours later, the same records were online

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.