Fairfax County Police Watch: King City police Sgt. Baker pleads no contest to false imprisonment

KING CITY, Calif. —Police Sgt. Mark Baker became the first officer arrested in a King City corruption scandal to enter a no contest plea.

According to the warrant, Kenneth Tippery is a registered sex offender, has been the King City Police Department's IT manager for over two decades, and helped Sgt. Bobby Carrillo illegally gain secret, remote access to the KCPD network.

Baker, 45, of Paso Robles, agreed to a plea deal with the Monterey County District Attorney on Wednesday. Prosecutors dropped a charge of making criminal threats in exchange for Baker pleading no contest to false imprisonment.

He will be sentenced on March 18 and faces a maximum sentence of one year in jail. Baker must serve five years of probation and cannot possess firearms.

Baker has been on paid administrative leave since he was arrested in February. When asked if Baker will be removed from the police force because he cannot have a gun, Assistant District Attorney Steve Somers said that decision is up to the KCPD.

"In a practical sense, he can no longer be a peace officer. It's a requirement for a police officer to have a gun in order to do his job. I'm not saying what the King City Police Department will do," Somers said.

The district attorney said the investigation into Baker stemmed from an Aug. 19, 2013 incident when Baker's personal truck was stolen and stripped for parts.

Three days later, while Baker was in uniform and on duty, he decided to go find the thief who stole his truck. He found a suspect in a King City motel.

"(Baker) confronted him and threatened him by telling him that he was going to 'make him disappear, and not to jail.' (Baker) was in uniform and armed when he made this threat. The victim, believing the threat, then confessed to possessing the items stolen from (Baker's) truck. Baker gave him two hours to return the items, including $40 for the gas used after the truck was stolen," the District Attorney's Office wrote.

After Baker got his stuff back, he never made an arrest, or filed a police report.

Currently, nearly 40 percent of the King City police force is on paid administrative leave, and the city is being patrolled by 11 sworn officers.

The six officers arrested in the February bust were: Baker, Sgt. Bobby Carrillo, then-Police Chief Bruce Miller, former Police Chief Nick Baldiviez, Officer Mario Mottu, Sr., and Officer Jaime Andrade. Miller's brother, Brian Miller, was also arrested.

Andrade is so far the only officer who has been fired by King City. He was fired by City Manager Michael Powers because of an internal investigation conducted by the city.

Prosecutor Doug Matheson said the investigation into Andrade was spurred when Andrade's stepson, 17-year-old Anthony Ramirez, was arrested by Salinas police in July 2013 for illegally possessing Andrade's handgun. Andrade was charged with two felonies: illegal storage of a firearm and illegal possession of an assault weapon.

Carrillo, both Millers, Baldiviez, Mottu, and Andrade pleaded not guilty and are waiting for their trials to begin.

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.