Fairfax County Police Watch: Weasels

Indiana officer suspended 8 days for deleting phone messages

Police chief gets 7 years in prison for accepting bribes

Indiana officer suspended 8 days for deleting phone messages

ANDERSON, Ind.-- A central Indiana police officer has been suspended without pay for eight days for deleting telephone messages seeking police assistance.

The Herald Bulletin reports the Anderson Safety Board voted unanimously Thursday to suspend Officer Nathan Smith for three violations of general orders.

Board attorney William Byer Jr. says Smith has 10 days to request a hearing or accept his suspension.

City documents show Smith was a desk officer at the city police headquarters. Chief Larry Crenshaw says Smith failed to complete necessary police reports, "purposely deleted" phone recordings requesting police assistance and left his assigned post without supervisory approval.

Byer says once the department realized there was a problem, staffers went over every call that had been missed. He says there should be no liability concerns for the city.

Police chief gets 7 years in prison for accepting bribes

By Torsten Ove / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The self-proclaimed “best cop money can buy” is headed to federal prison for seven years and three months for accepting bribes to protect drug dealers as chief of police in his tiny borough of East Washington.

U.S. District Judge Joy Flowers Conti imposed that term this week on Donald Solomon, 58, who pleaded guilty last year to taking $7,800 to provide protection and Tasers for men he thought were drug dealers transporting cocaine through his town.

But the dealers were undercover FBI agents.

He was originally sentenced to 135 months, but a federal appellate court ruled in September that the judge improperly applied an increase to his term for abusing a position of trust and ordered another sentence.

The new range was 87 to 108 months.

Solomon asked for less than the minimum because he said he has been a model prisoner in Louisiana and has found God. Prior to sentencing, he submitted numerous letters written on his behalf and cited his efforts to rehabilitate himself behind bars.

But prosecutors said he didn’t deserve a break because his deeds as a corrupt cop, some of them detailed in video surveillance, outweigh anything he has done since he went to prison.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Cessar said Solomon “eagerly and actively” marketed himself as a protector of drug dealers in his community, even providing them a police escort as they left town after making deals. Asked after one transaction if he wanted to continue providing protection, he said “Hell yeah.”

He also had an acquaintance shoot up the car of a rival and tried to hire a hitman to kill a borough councilman he thought needed to “go feed the [expletive] fish.”

As police chief, Mr. Cessar said in court filings, Solomon was supposed to protect his community.

“Instead,” he said, “he sold his badge to protect drug dealers and was willing to pollute his community with significant amounts of cocaine.”

The judge denied Solomon’s request for more leniency than sentencing guidelines recommend but imposed the minimum because of his attempts to better himself.

In addition to letters about his reform, Solomon had written a letter to the judge in which he apologized to her, the FBI, the U.S. attorney’s office and his fellow officers.

He had blamed many of his problems on a 2011 divorce from his wife that left him despondent, and by the fact he was not allowed to take a second job to supplement his pay as police chief.

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.