Fairfax County Police Watch: Vermont Police Officer Released to Rehab After Allegedly Swiping Drug Evidence

Colchester Police Detective Cpl. Tyler Kinney was fitted with a GPS device before going to rehab

By Jack Thurston

Tyler Kinney, a veteran officer with the police department in Colchester, Vermont, was released from jail to a residential drug treatment program Monday.

The release comes shortly after Kinney was accused of stealing heroin, other drugs and a gun from the evidence storage lockers at the police department. Kinney has yet to answer to the charges formally with a plea in federal court.

Kinney declined to answer several questions from New England Cable News as he departed the federal building Monday with relatives for the Serenity House, a drug treatment program in Vermont's Rutland County. Kinney's defense attorney, John Pacht, did speak to reporters.

"Hopefully, he'll be engaged [in the rigors of treatment]," Pacht said. "That's really proven by the treatment itself, not words you say before you get into treatment. He's very focused on the need, and he seems to have the motivation required to engage in it."

Court paperwork filed last week, in advance of Kinney's initial appearance in federal court last Thursday, showed the detective revealed to a federal investigator he had been an opiate addict for about a year. Kinney was in charge of the evidence room for the Colchester Police Department, which is now the subject of an exhaustive audit of its secure lock-up areas, and its policies, Chief Jennifer Morrison said last week.

Also last week, Chittenden County State's Attorney T.J. Donovan said his office is doing a thorough review of cases Detective Corporal Kinney would have handled that got advanced for prosecution. Donovan said he expects some criminal charges against suspects would have to be tossed, because of concerns over evidence handling.

Kinney's release to rehab Monday was briefly delayed, after the U.S. Attorney's office raised new concerns over threats the officer allegedly made in the past to Peter Burnett. Burnett was identified in court paperwork as a friend of Kinney's who allegedly would use heroin with the detective, and to whom Kinney allegedly gave a stolen gun to use for protection. On his client’s behalf, Pacht denied there were any threats made to Burnett.

U.S. District Court Judge John Conroy permitted Kinney to be released from jail to rehab, provided he wears a GPS monitoring device. The defense and prosecution agreed to the new GPS condition of release.

Jimmy Vezina of Burlington, Vermont told NECN he is now clean and on a good path after he battled drugs, including heroin, for most of his life. "I was shooting up at 13-years-old in this town, and didn't stop until I was 35," Vezina said.

Vezina expressed his opinion that there is no excuse for the police officer's alleged actions, but called the case proof of how far-reaching drug use is.

"It hits anybody," Vezina said. "Anybody can be grabbed by the demon, man."

Kinney remains on unpaid leave from the Colchester Police Department, Chief Morrison said Monday afternoon.

The federal charges against Kinney could bring him 10 years in prison, if he is convicted.

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.