Fairfax County Police Watch: New Mexico police officers face murder charges in shooting death of homeless man

Two New Mexico police officers accused of killing a homeless man will be charged with murder, the state's district attorney announced on Monday. They are the first charges against Albuquerque officers in connection with shootings.

James Boyd, a 36-year-old homeless man diagnosed as schizophrenic, was shot by the Albuquerque PD after he became engaged in a four-hour standoff with the officers who caught him illegally camping in the Sandia foothills. Boyd was armed with two small knives, which he appeared to brandish towards an officer with a dog. He was pronounced dead the next day.

At a press conference five days after the shooting, Chief Gorden Eden told reporters that he believed the shooting was justified because Boyd made a “threatening” move toward the officer with the dog. Boyd had an extensive criminal past, and mentioned killing the police earlier during the encounter.

Bernalillo County District Attorney Kari Brandenburg filed paperwork Monday charging former Albuquerque Police Department (APD) Detective Keith Sandy and APD SWAT Team member Dominique Perez with one open count of murder each in the March 2014 shooting death of Boyd.

Sandy and Perez will face a preliminary hearing before a judge who will decide whether there is enough evidence to proceed with the charges, Brandenburg’s office said in an email release. No date has been set for the court hearing, the Albuquerque Journal reported.

Brandenburg filed the charges via criminal information papers, allowing her to charge the officers without presenting evidence to a grand jury. Grand juries have declined to indict law enforcement agents in several high-profile, officer-involved shooting deaths over the last several months, including in the cases of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, leading to widespread protests across the country.

Lawyers for the two men argued that they will both be cleared of wrongdoing.

Sandy “had not only the right, but the duty to defend a fellow officer from a mentally unstable, violent man wielding two knives. Keith did nothing wrong,” his attorney Sam Bregman said in a statement. “To the contrary, he followed his training and probably saved his fellow officer’s life.”

“This is truly a shame. Throughout his career, Officer Perez has been called upon to make life-altering decisions while protecting Albuquerque citizens and his fellow officers,” attorney Luis Robles said in a statement to KRQE. “And having made one of those decisions, Officer Perez now faces an open count of murder. Regardless, I am confident that the facts will vindicate Officer Perez’s actions in this case.”

According to the Huffington Post, Sandy was fired from the New Mexico State Police in 2007 over allegations of fraud.

The APD has been under fire since the Boyd shooting. Less than a week after the homeless man’s death, the department released video footage taken from the helmet-cam of an officer on the scene of the crime that shows a cop opening fire on Boyd while his back was turned. He was the first of three shooting deaths involving the department in five weeks: On March 25, the APD shot and killed another man, Alfred Redwine, following an armed stand-off. Three weeks later, Albuquerque police shot and killed Mary Hawkes, who was suspected of stealing a truck.

The US Department of Justice conducted a 16-month review into the police department in New Mexico’s largest city, and recommended a “systematic change” in the final document. The early April report found that the APD had fallen into a pattern of using force more often than necessary which, consequently, caused a number of unjustified fatal shootings by officers in recent years.

APD has been involved in more than 40 shootings since 2010, resulting in 27 deaths, the Journal reported.

In October, the police department reached a deal with the Department of Justice to overhaul many of its practices. The reforms involve new training and recruitment procedures and field supervision of officers, and will require the department to employ body cameras on its officers. Additionally, the APD will begin monitoring every use of a Taser, and officers will have to report every time they point a gun at another individual, regardless of whether or not it is fired.

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.