Fairfax County Police Watch: Police covered up Florida State players involved in hit-and-run: report

The New York Times reported that P. J. Williams was only given traffic tickets after fleeing the scene of a major car crash along with teammate Ronald Darby on the morning of Oct. 5. Cops also failed to perform a breathalyzer on the star cornerback, and campus police appeared at the crash scene.

BY JAIME URIBARRI

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Already under fire for its handling of the Jameis Winston rape case, the Tallahassee Police Department is facing scrutiny yet again for allegedly covering up the crime of another Florida State University football player.

The New York Times reported Friday that Seminoles cornerback P. J. Williams was only given traffic tickets after fleeing the scene of a major car crash he reportedly caused on the morning of Oct. 5, hours after FSU cruised to a 43-3 win over Wake Forest.

Cops responded to a 911 call around 2:37 a.m., but only found Ian Keith, whose Honda CRV was totaled by Williams’ Buick Century, at the scene of the wreck.

Williams, along with fellow Florida State cornerback Ronald Darby, took off on foot after the crash.

According to the Times, officer Derek Hawthorne originally labeled the incident a “hit and run” and requsted that the car be held for evidence. That quickly changed once the driver was identified as Williams, who wasn’t given a breathalyzer test upon returning to the scene of the crash “approximately” 20 minutes later, nor did police ask him whether he’d been drinking or why he fled in the first place.

All this despite the fact that Williams, the defensive MVP of Florida State’s national title game win over Auburn earlier this year, was driving with a suspended license.

For reasons also unknown, the university sent two security officers to the scene of the crash despite campus police having no official jurisdiction.

Florida State told the Times that a “mutual aid agreement” between both sides required cops to contact campus police - a claim that was denied by the Tallahassee Police Department.

Early Friday evening, FSU released a statement experessing its "profound disappointment" in the article.

Last month, Fox Sports accused Tallahassee police and university administrators of hampering the investigation into Winston, the Heisman Trophy-winning FSU QB who escaped rape charges in Dec. 2013. That report was followed by a Times story that claimed the “treatment of the Winston complaint was in keeping with the way the police on numerous occasions have soft-pedaled allegations of wrongdoing by Seminoles football players."

Williams seems to have been the latest beneficiary of this special treatment.

“Two-thirty in the morning, people fleeing on foot — at the very least you’ve got to charge them with hit and run,” Miami-based lawyer Elijah Stiers told the Times.

“You don’t get out of it just because you come back to the scene.”

Even after escaping with a slap on the wrist, Williams didn’t learn his lesson and reportedly had his license suspended again. The reason? Failing to pay the $392 in fines related to the crash.

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.