Fairfax County Police Watch: 07/29/14

U.S. Attorney’s Office July 25, 2014

Southern District of Ohio (937) 225-2910

COLUMBUS, OH—Stewart Alan Miller, 48, of Columbus, Ohio was sentenced in U.S. District Court to 121 months’ imprisonment for obtaining and receiving thousands of images and videos of child pornography via the Internet and peer-to-peer file-sharing programs from approximately June 2003 through July 2013.

Carter M. Stewart, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, and Kevin R. Cornelius, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced the sentence handed down today by U.S. District Judge Algenon L. Marbley.

Miller pleaded guilty on December 17, 2013 to one count of receipt of child pornography. According to testimony provided by the government during the plea hearing, the FBI began investigating Miller, who was a Columbus Police officer at the time, in October 2013 after receiving a tip. They obtained and executed search warrants at Miller’s residence at the time and a storage facility he rented, recovering various computers and digital media.

A forensic examination of two external drives located in the crawl space above Miller’s bathroom revealed the presence of images and videos of child pornography. The images dated back to 2002. The children in the videos ranged in age from toddler to teenager. The file paths of some of the images indicated that they were originally downloaded via a peer-to-peer file-sharing network. Images and videos of child pornography were also located on a laptop computer seized from the basement of the residence. Additional images of child pornography were recovered from several CDs seized from the storage facility rented by Miller.

“The fact that the defendant was a sworn law enforcement officer at the time he committed this offense actually exacerbates the seriousness of it, as he was violating his duty to protect the public by committing the offense,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Heather Hill told the court prior to sentencing.

Miller was also fined $17,500, ordered to pay restitution of $7,500, and sentenced to remain under court supervision for five years after he completes his prison sentence. During that time, he will be required to register as a sex offender anywhere that he lives, works or goes to school. He must also allow the court to install monitoring software on any computer he owns, uses or has access to that is connected to the Internet.

This case is being brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by United States Attorney’s Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children as well as to identify and rescue victims.

U.S. Attorney Stewart commended the investigation by the FBI Columbus Child Exploitation Task Force, which includes officers from the Westerville Police Department, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Heather Hill, who prosecuted the case.

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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.