Fairfax County Police Watch: Fairfax County hires former Mark McGwire lawyer in John Geer police shooting case

By Tom Jackman

In response to an inquiry from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) about the August 2013 slaying of John B. Geer by Fairfax County police, the Fairfax Board of Supervisors has hired a Washington lawyer who previously counseled baseball slugger Mark McGwire to evade Congressional questions about steroid use.

Fairfax police and prosecutors and federal prosecutors in Alexandria have all refused to say who shot an unarmed Geer in the doorway of his Springfield home or why, and no ruling has been made on whether the shooting was justifiable after nearly 15 months. On Nov. 13, Grassley sent a three-page letter to both Fairfax police Chief Edwin C. Roessler Jr. and U.S. Attorney Dana J. Boente with five questions about the case and when it might be resolved. The case was referred to federal prosecutors after five months by Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Raymond F. Morrogh.

Fairfax County moved quickly and hired Mark B. Bierbower of Hunton & Williams, a Richmond-based firm frequently used by Fairfax as outside counsel in various legal matters. Bierbower contacted Grassley’s office on Nov. 17 and told them he was representing the county, according to both officials in Grassley’s office and Michael Lieberman, the lawyer for Geer’s family. The family filed a civil suit against Fairfax police in September after a year without any answers in the case.

Fairfax County spokesman Tony Castrilli said he could not comment on, or even confirm, the hiring of Bierbower, or say how much county taxpayers would be paying Bierbower. Fairfax Chairman Sharon Bulova did not return a message seeking comment.

In a photo taken by a neighbor just minutes before the shooting, John B. Geer stands in the doorway of his Springfield townhouse with his hands on the top of his storm door, with two officers aiming their service weapons at him. Soon after, one of the officers fired one shot, and Geer died. Almost 15 months later, no ruling has been made on the legality of the shooting. (Courtesy DiMuro Ginsberg)

Lieberman said Bierbower’s hiring “strikes me as an awful waste of funds in this case just to keep information from becoming known to the public, about what happened. If they’re hiring counsel to answer those five questions, I’m sure they’re not doing it to provide that information.”

Although Fairfax has its own county legal department, headed by county attorney David Bobzien, Bobzien has been involved in advising the Fairfax police on how to respond to investigative inquiries from county and federal prosecutors, several people familiar with the case said, and also must oversee the county’s response to the Geer family’s civil suit. Lawyers said either situation may have caused Bobzien to feel he had a conflict of interest in responding to Grassley.

Several people close to the Fairfax board said the supervisors are taking Grassley’s inquiry into the unsolved police shooting very seriously, and Bierbower lists two of his specialties as “Congressional oversight and investigations” on his web page. He is a former president of the Bar Association of D.C., as was his father, and the two partnered to represent Environmental Protection Agency assistant administrator Rita Lavelle as she came under intense congressional scrutiny in the 1980s. Lavelle was later prosecuted and convicted of lying to Congress.

In March 2005, Fairfax Congressman Tom Davis (R) convened a hearing into steroid use in baseball. McGwire, who had set the single season home run record in 1998, hired Bierbower and later said he wanted to testify truthfully about his steroid use during his playing days. But he was not granted immunity from criminal prosecution, Davis and Bierbower later said, and so he tried to answer questions without lying.

“My lawyers have advised me that I cannot answer these questions without jeopardizing my friends, my family, or myself,” McGwire said in his opening statement. In response to pointed questions, McGwire often said, “I’m not here to talk about the past…I’m here to be positive about this subject.” His testimony was not well received publicly, and he has not been admitted to the baseball Hall of Fame.

In 2010, McGwire admitted he had used steroids while playing. Bierbower then told American Lawyer Daily that “I think [Mark] deserves credit for being honest and open, and obviously the situation is different today than it was five years ago…He wanted to tell the truth then, which was quite a risk at the time. He was aware that he could be prosecuted and that his family and friends could be the subject of criminal investigations. And now he felt it was time to get this off his chest and tell the truth.”

Grassley’s office said neither the Justice Department nor Fairfax County police had yet provided any answers to the senator’s questions.

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.