Fairfax County Police Watch: Why weren't these cops arrested?

4 officers punished in YPD traffic stop incident

By WYTV Staff

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (WYTV) – Monday, the Youngstown Police Department announced that three officers will be suspended and a fourth will lose pay in connection with a Nov. 28 traffic stop in which investigators allege that officers failed to file an OVI charge against the brother of a YPD lieutenant.

According to results of an internal investigation obtained by WKBN, Lieutenant John Kelty will be suspended for five days without pay and demoted to the rank of police officer for his role in the incident.

Officer Thomas Wisener and Lt. Gerard Slattery will be suspended for 15 and 10 days without pay, respectively, and officer Assad Chaibi will lose his pay for four hours of accumulated time.

According to police reports, Wisener pulled over Joseph Slattery, 54, the brother of Lt. Slattery, on the night of Nov. 28 along Mahoning Avenue for running a traffic light.

Wisener, who made the stop, said he found an open can of beer on the floor of the car. Slattery received citations for failing to obey the red light and having an open container of alcohol in his vehicle.

Documents included in the investigation results show that Joseph Slattery had a blood-alcohol content of 0.136% when tested that night. Ohio’s legal limit is .08%.

According to the investigation, Wisener said that he called Kelty, who told him to charge Joseph Slattery with have an open container of alcohol and running a red light. Wisener said he wrote a police report that was not completely true to match up with those charges.

The investigation found significant differences between the descriptions of the incident by Wisener and Kelty, each saying that the other was responsible for not filing the OVI charge. A polygraph test showed deception for Kelty’s responses when he was asked if he told Wisener not to charge Slattery and showed no deception on the part of Wisener when asked the same questions.

According to the investigation, Gerard Slattery expressed his displeasure with Wisener to Kelty after receiving a call from his brother about the possible OVI charge. Slattery also picked up his brother’s car without paying the towing fee, a violation of the YPD code of conduct, the report found.

Chaibi placed the test results for the blood alcohol content testing machine in a shred bin, according to the internal investigation report. The report also states that Kelty allowed Chaibi to do this, along with allowing Joseph Slattery’s car to be released to his brother and ordering the deletion of the tow report for the car.

YPD Lt. Brian Butler, who sent the report to YPD Chief Robin Lees, made five recommendations based on the results of the investigation:

• A camera should be installed in YPD’s BAC room

• Lt. Slattery should pay for the towing of his brother’s car.

• Towing companies that work with YPD should get a memo from the chief’s office stating that vehicles are only to be released after receiving a request in writing from an authorized representative from the police department.

• An administrating officer should keep and document all BAC test results, whether or not charges are filed.

• Joseph Slattery should be charged with OVI.

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.