Fairfax County Police Watch: Witness who filmed Delray melee describes chaotic scene

Cory Provost, a witness of the Delray Beach melee says the situation started over an argument with police

By Kate Jacobson

A witness to a melee that broke out in Delray Beach on Saturday said the situation became heated when police officers approached a birthday party at a house in the Southwest neighborhood..

It lead to a 50-plus person melee that included a group of people forming a human shield to keep officers from a man who police wanted to detain.

Raw video of a melee that broke out in Delray Beach on Saturday, after Officers say they smelled marijuana in the area.

Cory Provost, a New York City resident who is visiting Delray Beach over the holidays, said about 30 people were at a birthday party on the corner of Southwest Eighth Avenue and Southwest Third Court just after 7:30 p.m. when an unmarked police car pulled up to the house.

He said two officers wearing uniforms got out of the car, walked onto the lawn and accused the partygoers of smoking marijuana. Provost said that wasn't true.

"There was a lot of shouting back and forth," he said. "The residents were asking the cops to leave the yard and they didn't do so."

Part of the exchange was caught on camera, which Provost uploaded to his YouTube channel.

Police Sgt. Nicole Guerriero late Wednesday said the footage doesn't show the entire incident. And because only a portion is being shown, police said, it's not a fully accurate depiction of what happened.

Officers smelled marijuana in the area, saw someone who they thought was smoking and followed him into the yard, Guerriero said Tuesday. In an arrest report, officers said the man they saw was a known drug user with whom they've had contact in the past.

Provost said the situation did get out of hand — for both the partygoers and the police. He said at first, people formed a semi-circle around police questioning them as to why they were there. When police started yelling at them, he said, the people became more agitated and began shuffling around.

"Then, a little later on, something was thrown," he said. "You heard a glass crack, I think a bottle or something was thrown, and I believe it hit the police vehicle."

Guerriero said the police vehicle's windshield was damaged in the skirmish.

In the arrest report, police said they were patrolling the area because it is an area known for high drug use.

Guerriero said Tuesday the officers were afraid of what could happen in the situation and called for backup. There were four officers and an estimated group of 70 people involved by the end of the scuffle, she said. It lasted for more than an hour.

Provost said police should've tried to calm down the group in this situation. When the partygoers questioned why the police were on private property, Provost said they should've gotten answers, not yelling from the police.

"There's a lot of rhetoric going around that if you question police you're anti-police, and I don't think that's the case," he said. "I think we want to have police approach situations with a little more compassion and respect because we, too, are human beings. If there was more trust in the community of our police, a lot of these situations wouldn't happen."

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.