Fairfax County Police Watch: Former Lee police chief drowning in debt as he siphoned $120,000 from Christmas toy charity

By Stephanie Barry

SPRINGFIELD — Former Lee Police Chief Joseph Buffis, accused of ripping off a police-sponsored Christmas gift fund for needy children, was drowning in debt as he siphoned money off the charity, according to prosecutors.

Buffis is facing a 12-count criminal indictment in U.S. District Court in connection with the alleged scheme. Federal investigators argue Buffis stole $120,000 from the Laliberte Toy Fund since 1999 to pay overdue credit card bills and other debts; they contend Buffis transferred cash from the charity to his personal bank accounts. Buffis has denied all the allegations.

"Mr. Buffis was in extreme debt," Assistant U.S. Attorney Deepika Shukla told a judge on Tuesday.

Buffis is scheduled to go on trial starting March 2. He is accused of extortion, wire fraud, money-laundering and other related charges. Lawyers in the case are currently wrangling over whether a single count in the indictment, alleging the defendant improperly passed on his family's cell phone bills to the town, belongs in the trial.

Defense lawyer Lori H. Levinson has argued the so-called "Verizon count" in the indictment should be severed from the remaining counts because it shares no common thread with the others beyond dishonesty.

"It would simply make Mr. Buffis look like 'a bad guy,'" Levinson argued to U.S. District Judge Mark G. Mastroianni, adding that the taint would unfairly prejudice her client at trial.

It would simply make Mr. Buffis look like 'a bad guy.'

The prosecution was first prompted by a revelation that Buffis allegedly steered a potential prostitution case away from two innkeepers in Lee in exchange for a $4,000 donation to the toy fund. When investigators began digging in, according to court records, they discovered Buffis had used virtually all of the donations the public intended to help poor families to assist his own.

A recent filing by the government states investigators found just two receipts for toys since 1999 - totaling just over $500 - and the fund otherwise showed balances near zero.

Shukla states in her motion that prosecutors intend to call former Buffis co-workers to tell jurors that he often complained of being "cash-strapped" and "broke," plus a neighbor who will testify that he loaned Buffis $20,000 to pay for his son's motocross school tuition.

Of the "iPhone fraud" allegations, a town official told federal investigators that Buffis first maintained the phone were for task force members, and he did not grant Buffis permission to pass along $5,000 in family cell phone bills to the Lee taxpayers.

Buffis was fired after being indicted in 2013, however, town officials attributed the firing to the cell phone allegations.

Mastroianni is considering the defense motion to sever that count from the rest.

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.