By Tom Jackman February 11
Sen. Charles E. Grassley
(R-Iowa) on Wednesday released two new letters he has sent to the Justice
Department and the Fairfax County Police Department seeking further information
about the investigation into the fatal police shooting of a Springfield man
nearly 18 months ago.
Also on Wednesday, Fairfax
disclosed that it has paid $130,000 to the District law firm Hunton and
Williams to help prepare a response to a November letter Grassley sent to
county police about John B. Geer’s death. No decision has been made on whether
to charge Adam D. Torres, the officer who fired the fatal shot, prompting
Grassley’s inquiries.
The letter sent Tuesday to
Fairfax police asks when they and elected county officials knew that four
officers who were at the scene of the 2013 shooting had contradicted Torres’s
claim that Geer had quickly lowered his hands to his waist before he was shot.
In his letter to Attorney
General Eric H. Holder Jr., the senator asks whether the Justice Department
will share information with Fairfax’s chief prosecutor and whether federal
authorities would object to the county prosecutor’s resuming his investigation.
Grassley’s initial inquiry to
the Justice Department in November helped unlock a torrent of information.
Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Randy I. Bellows cited Justice’s response to
Grassley when he ordered Fairfax police to provide extensive portions of their
investigative file to the Geer family’s attorneys and declined to place the
file under seal. In the response to Grassley’s letter, an assistant attorney
general said Justice had not instructed Fairfax to remain silent on the case.
Last week, Bellows again cited
the Justice Department’s letter to Grassley when he ordered Fairfax to turn
over police internal affairs files on Torres and again declined to impose a
protective order on the material. The judge said he would allow federal
officials to file a motion for a protective order by Feb. 20 if they wanted
internal materials withheld from the public.
Geer, 46, had been involved in
a domestic dispute with his partner of 24 years when police arrived at his
Springfield townhouse Aug. 29, 2013. According to police records, he showed
officers a holstered handgun, placed it at his feet and then kept his hands on
the top of a screen door for 42 minutes before Torres shot him.
Torres remains on paid
administrative duty.
After Fairfax police refused to
provide Torres’s internal affairs files to Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney
Raymond F. Morrogh, he referred the case to the Justice Department in January
2014, where it has remained.
In an interview Wednesday,
Grassley said he decided to get involved in the incident both because it had
become a federal matter, one in which the Senate Judiciary Committee has
oversight, and because “transparency brings accountability. The big picture is
what can police departments learn from this?”
In Tuesday’s letter to Fairfax Police
Chief Edwin C. Roessler Jr., Grassley said the police department’s “refusal to
cooperate with the Commonwealth Attorney” led Morrogh to shift the case to the
U.S. attorney. This forced “the expenditure of limited federal resources on an
investigation that should have been handled at the state level,” the senator
wrote.
Grassley noted that after the
case went to federal prosecutors, Fairfax police still refused to provide
Torres’s internal affairs files “until ordered to do so by the court, after over
two months of litigation.”
Grassley said Fairfax police
used the federal investigation as an excuse not to release any information
about the case, and “now we know that FCPD unnecessarily prolonged that
investigation by its failure to cooperate.”
Grassley asked Roessler to
provide the date when he learned that “at least four of these officers provided
accounts of the shooting that conflicted with that of Officer Torres.” He also
asked what information the police had provided to members of the Fairfax Board
of Supervisors.
The county’s chief spokesman,
Tony Castrilli, said Fairfax “will continue to cooperate fully with the Senate
inquiries.” He said the county had no experience with Senate inquiries and had
hired “additional legal expertise,” led by Mark Bierbower, who represented
baseball slugger Mark McGwire during congressional inquiries into his use of
steroids.
A Justice Department spokesman
did not respond to a request for comment on Grassley’s letter.
Tom Jackman is a native of
Northern Virginia and has been covering the region for The Post since 1998.
