Fairfax County Police Watch: Officer Charged With Murder Shot Man in Back

ROCKY FORD, Colo.

Investigators say a police officer who killed a man while patrolling a rural Colorado community shot him in the back after stopping him on the street and following him home even though the man wasn't an imminent threat.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation found James Ashby aggressively pursued Jack Jacquez, 27, after stopping him Oct. 12, according to court documents released Thursday.

The bureau's investigation concluded Ashby fatally shot Jacquez even as Jacquez was moving away.

Jacquez was skateboarding on a street when the officer approached him. Ashby said Jacquez cursed at him and walked erratically before heading toward the yard of what turned out to be his house.

Ashby told authorities he suspected Jacquez was trying to burglarize the home. He also said he thought Jacquez was getting ready to strike him with a baseball bat.

However, the officer's account was contradicted by the evidence and a man who was doing a ride-along with him that night, according to Ashby's arrest affidavit.

Ashby was fired after being arrested in the shooting. His lawyer did not return a call seeking comment.

The ride-along witness, Kyle Moore, said Jacquez said something about going home when Ashby stopped him. Jacquez did not use an expletive, Moore said, and he walked straight toward the home after talking with the officer.

Ashby told authorities he was standing near an entrance to Jacquez's house when he shot Jacquez, whom he said was inside the house holding a bat that he grabbed after entering.

The officer said he feared Jacquez was "loading up" to strike him in the head with the bat. However, the autopsy showed Jacquez was fully facing away from Ashby when he was shot, and his body couldn't have been turned in a way to get ready to strike the officer, according to the affidavit.

Moore didn't witness the shooting but said he heard Ashby yelling at Jacquez to show his hands and to drop a bat.

The shooting prompted demonstrations in the city on Colorado's southeastern plains.

Ashby is being prosecuted at a time when police tactics are under review nationwide following the fatal shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri, and the chokehold death of an unarmed man in New York City.

Grand juries declined to charge officers in those cases, but this week two Albuquerque police officers were charged with murder in the shooting death of a knife-wielding homeless man that led to violent protests.

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.