Fairfax County Police Watch: That nagging Dumb Cop Issue

Off-duty police officer accidentally shoots roommate

DC police accidentally shoot man in barber shop

Iowa Cop Shoots at Dog, but Misses, Killing Woman Instead

Undercover APD detective shot by another officer

Off-duty police officer accidentally shoots roommate

Kate Royals, The Clarion-Ledger

A 28-year-old Brandon resident accidentally shot his roommate in the head with a new gun Wednesday night at their home, authorities say.

Zachary Jacob Creel is a Madison police officer who was not on duty at the time of the shooting.

The Rankin County Sheriff's Department responded to the incident in the Barnett Bend III subdivision in Brandon. When officials arrived at Creel's home, roommate Michael Hunter Flynt was alert and Creel was holding a towel to the wound, according to the incident report.

Creel told sheriff's deputies the weapon discharged while he was pulling it from the holster to show Flynt, striking him on the right side of his head.

Flynt was transported by American Medical Response to the University of Mississippi Medical Center, where he was conscious and alert when interviewed by sheriff's deputies, Chief Investigator Raymond Duke said.

Flynt is in stable condition and still at the hospital.

Duke said no charges are expected.

Iowa Cop Shoots at Dog, but Misses, Killing Woman Instead

Posted by: Carlos Miller in Cop kills dog, PINAC News,

An Iowa police officer trying to kill a dog, ended up killing a woman instead.

Not much information is available at the moment, but we have a PINAC correspondent on the ground in Burlington, trying to obtain more details.

According to Opposing Views:

A woman in Burlington, Iowa, was reportedly shot and killed by a police officer outside of her home right in front of her four-year-old son.

According to reports, 34-year-old Autumn Steele was arrested Monday night for domestic abuse. After being released from jail, Steele was told she could not return to her home without an officer to escort her. When she returned to her home to retrieve her things, she reportedly got into a dispute with her husband Gabriel as he was loading their four-year-old son into the car.

The officer who escorted Steele to her home reportedly tried to break up the altercation, and while he was attempting to intervene, the family’s dog reportedly approached. The officer allegedly felt threatened by the dog and pulled out his gun to shoot it. As he fired shots at the dog, one of them reportedly hit the 34-year-old mother in the chest.

“The dog startled the officer. The officer began shooting at the dog. The officer was still shooting when he fell down in the snow,” an eyewitness told The Hawk Eye.

It is not clear at this point if the dog followed through on the perceived attack on the officer, seizing on the opportunity that the cop had fallen in the snow.

DC police accidentally shoot man in barber shop

WASHINGTON (WUSA9) -- D.C. police say they accidentally shot a man in a Southeast barber shop while pursuing three robbery suspects.

It happened in the 2300 block of Martin Luther King Avenue around noon Wednesday.

Police say the suspects got out of a car and one displayed a handgun. That's when an officer opened fire and one of the bullets went through the door of the barber shop, hitting a patron. That victim, an adult male, is expected to be okay.

"I can't believe this neighborhood is going down like this. They should be more careful especially police shouldn't shoot into a crowd," said a nearby resident.

Kicia Brown was picking up her two small children at a nearby school.

"That could've been one of our children or parent walking to go to get their kids. I'm glad my kids are okay. It's ridiculous so close to a school zone," Brown said.

The suspects are in custody and a weapon was recovered. Police are checking to see if the suspect fired his gun.

Undercover APD detective shot by another officer

By Nicole Perez And Robert Browman

Police say the officer – an undercover detective – was shot by another officer in an undercover drug operation. The officer, whose name has not been released, underwent surgery and was in critical condition Friday afternoon, according to APD Chief Gorden Eden. Another officer was injured, according to APD spokeswoman Celina Espinoza, but the injuries were minor and the officer was released from the hospital. Police didn’t say how the second officer was injured. Two suspects from the narcotics operation were in custody, Eden said.

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.