Fairfax County Police Watch: When Cops Get Arrested, Palm Beach Sheriff's Office Doesn't Put Their Booking Info Online

By Ray Downs

The Palm Beach Sheriff's Office has been selectively taking names of police officers who get arrested off the booking blotter, effectively giving busted cops special treatment over regular folks who get their names, mug shots, and personal information put online for all to see when they get thrown in jail.

A story published Sunday by the Palm Beach Post revealed the practice, which PBSO officials have since admitted to doing. Their excuse is that their computer program doesn't allow them to scrub officers' home addresses and birth dates, which is not allowed to be released to the public under state law. And since they can't take off that information, they decided to just leave police off the record entirely.

The PBSO has done this for all five officers (that we know of) arrested this year, including the recent arrest of Boynton Beach officer Stephen Maiorino, who is accused of raping a woman at gunpoint on the hood of his patrol car.

See also: Boynton Cop Stephen Maiorino Arrested for Raping Woman at Gunpoint

But as the Post points out, the PBSO was able to scrub addresses and birth dates of officers before -- like how they did for Boynton Beach Police Officer Alex Lindsey in 2011 when he was arrested for falsifying documents.

Interestingly, the PBSO's booking blotter was offline Monday night and the link instead goes straight the site's homepage. The PBSO tells the Post it will continue to be offline "until further notice."

Records of the officer arrests are still available to the public under Florida's open records law, but for now, a request to the PBSO must be made to obtain them. But with the booking blotter currently down, even non-police officers will enjoy the privilege of not having their mug shot and private information published online for all to see and use for money-making purposes like charging a fee to take to take the information off private websites. For now, at least.

Jerry Hyland won't come out of the closet and speak up against police murders of unarmed citizens in Fairfax County

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.