Fairfax County Police Watch: Boston gang-unit officer charged with lying to FBI

By Milton J. Valencia

A former Boston police officer assigned to a Youth Violence Strike Force was charged in federal court Thursday with making false statements to an FBI agent investigating a violent street gang in Roxbury.

Mel Steele, 36, faces one count of lying to the FBI during the course of a federal investigation.

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Steele recently resigned from the department.

Boston Police Department spokesman David Estrada said the charges stem from an internal investigation that was conducted by the Boston Police anticorruption unit along with the FBI.

He said Steele resigned effective Oct. 17, but he would not comment further.

Steele’s attorney, Rudolph Miller, could not be reached for comment late Thursday.

According to court records, Steele was charged in relation to an investigation into a violent drug-dealing gang based at the Academy Homes housing development in Roxbury.

Authorities said that Steele, who was assigned to the Youth Violence Strike Force, the Police Department’s gang unit, was a longtime friend of an associate of the Roxbury gang.

Steele is accused of providing internal police information to the associate while Boston police and the FBI were investigating the gang from 2009 to 2011.

On one occasion, authorities said, Steele used his Boston police computer to run a license plate check on a vehicle. The vehicle turned out to be an unmarked Boston police car driven by a detective conducting surveillance on the gang.

Steele also allegedly contacted a State Police trooper to seek information about a gang member’s pending charges in another criminal case.

Steele is accused of making false statements when FBI agents confronted him in May 2011. He faces up to five years in prison and three years of supervised release, though if he is convicted, he is likely to be sentenced to less than the maximum.

Steele, raised in Mattapan, started at the police academy in 2002, according to Estrada, but it was unknown Thursday how long he had been a member of the gang unit, where he was considered a rising star. His work to quell street violence was featured in the Boston Herald in 2008.

Former supervisors said that they had been impressed by Steele’s ability to connect with young people on the street, according to one Boston police official who knows Steele and considers him a friend. The official said Thursday that Steele could talk to young men about music, school, and where their life was headed.

“He had a great reputation,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

“He grew up on the streets. He could relate to these kids. I can’t believe he got caught up in that. He was a really good police officer.”

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.