Fairfax County Police Watch: NOPD officer charged with stealing Road Home funds

Officer Tracie Medus, a 17-year NOPD veteran, was suspended without pay Tuesday after the U.S. attorney's office charged her with stealing funds from the post-Katrina recovery program Road Home. Her attorney said she is cooperating with investigators. (NOPD yearbook)

By Naomi Martin, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

A New Orleans police officer is charged with stealing $158,700 from the state's Road Home recovery program created after Hurricane Katrina.

Tracie Medus, an officer for 17 years, was suspended without pay Tuesday after federal prosecutors charged her with theft of government funds, authorities said. Her attorney, Townsend Myers, said she is cooperating with prosecutors.

Medus, 39, is accused of taking money between July 2009 and March 2011 from the Road Home's small rental property program. She "knew she was not entitled" to the funds, which were awarded through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, according to prosecutors. Read the charging papers here.

The program, which is aimed at shoring up more affordable housing for low to middle-income renters, provides small-time landlords forgivable loans to restore rental properties that were destroyed. In exchange, the landlords must agree to rent the property at relatively low, set rates to tenants who meet certain income requirements.

According to a source close to Medus, she restored her properties and rented them out. But prosecutors allege that she overcharged her tenants in rent and at least one of her tenants did not meet the income eligibility rules for the program, the source said.

Medus plans to repay the money, her lawyer says.

"We are working with the United States government and the Road Home program to repay all loan monies received and to achieve a result that is fair both to the government and to Officer Medus," Myers said.

If convicted as charged, Medus faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to twice the amount stolen, prosecutors in U.S. Attorney Kenneth Polite's office said.

During the investigation, the NOPD in August placed Medus on administrative reassignment, or desk duty. She was most recently assigned to the NOPD's 6th District, which covers the Garden District and Central City, said department spokesman Tyler Gamble.

In March 2012, the department suspended Medus for three days for arguing with her supervisor and calling him "ADD--Attention Deficit Disorder," according to a story by

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.