Fairfax prosecutor resumes
probe in police killing of John Geer in 2013
By Tom Jackman
The Fairfax County prosecutor
is resuming his investigation into the Fairfax police department’s shooting of
John Geer in 2013, obtaining the documents that police refused to give him 15
months ago and preparing to make a decision on whether to charge the officer
involved, the prosecutor said Saturday.
In his first public comments on
the case since transferring it to federal prosecutors in January 2014, Fairfax
Commonwealth’s Attorney Raymond F. Morrogh strongly criticized Fairfax County
attorneys for what he characterized as obstructing the investigation into the
Geer shooting.
“Protecting the county coffers”
in anticipation of a civil lawsuit, Morrogh said, “can’t be a factor in a
criminal investigation.”
County officials said Saturday
that they did not have a protocol in place for handling requests from the
prosecutor’s office for internal affairs files at the time Morrogh requested
the documents and that a protocol has since been developed.
Morrogh also provided his first
detailed explanation of why he sought the internal affairs files of Officer
Adam D. Torres, who fatally shot Geer — who was unarmed — while the man stood
in the doorway of his Springfield home on Aug. 29, 2013. Morrogh also discussed
why he then transferred the case to federal prosecutors when Fairfax police
refused to cooperate.
Letters released Friday night
by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) showed that the Fairfax police provided
Torres’s internal affairs files earlier Friday and that Morrogh had hired an
outside prosecutor to screen the files to ensure that he did not receive any
protected material. Morrogh said Saturday that he enlisted Fauquier County
Commonwealth’s Attorney James P. Fisher, who obtained a murder indictment
against a Culpeper County police officer in 2012, to review the files.
The Justice Department, which
is considering whether to file civil rights charges against Torres, said in a
letter Friday that it did not object to Morrogh “conducting a concurrent
investigation.” The letter from Assistant Attorney General Peter J. Kadzik did
not indicate when Justice might rule on Torres’s case, and Morrogh said he also
did not know what the department’s timeline might be.
Morrogh said he planned to wait
to see if federal prosecutors decide to charge Torres before acting. But “in
the event they don’t charge him, I’m going to have to do something,” Morrogh
said. “I’m going to have to be ready.”
Also Friday, Fairfax police
turned over the Torres internal affairs files to the attorneys for Geer’s
family, as ordered by a Fairfax judge in the family’s civil suit against
Fairfax chief Edwin C. Roessler Jr. Circuit Court Judge Randy I. Bellows
required police to provide the internal files of both their ongoing Geer
investigation and of a 2013 incident in which Torres had an angry exchange with
a Fairfax prosecutor outside traffic court.
The Geer family’s attorneys
declined to comment Saturday.
Bellows’s order opened the door
for Morrogh to request the same files, information he had originally sought in
November 2013 while trying to decide whether to charge Torres with a crime.
Torres told investigators in September 2013 that he fired one shot into Geer’s
chest after a 42-minute standoff because Geer quickly jerked his hands from
above his head to his waist, police documents released last month show. Four
other officers, plus Geer’s father and best friend, all said Geer’s hands were
near his head when Torres suddenly fired, their statements show.
Presented with this information
by Fairfax homicide detectives, Morrogh turned to the police internal affairs
bureau for background on Torres.
“I wanted to know the history
of this guy, with respect to what kind of evidence is out there,” Morrogh said.
“We’ve been investigating police shootings the same way all the time. In so
many, it’s necessary to know the background [of the officer], and they’ve given
it to me. In this case, they did not.”
Morrogh said he met with
Roessler and an internal affairs captain in November 2013 and was surprised to
see three Fairfax County attorneys enter the meeting.
He said the county attorneys
told him they would not provide Torres’s internal affairs files in any of his
cases, in part because of the “Garrity” ruling that compelled statements given
by officers cannot be used against them in criminal cases. Morrogh said he
would take steps to ensure that didn’t happen, but he said the attorneys told
him to subpoena the files.
Morrogh said he knew, though,
that Virginia Supreme Court rules, attorney general opinions and case law all
state that a grand jury may only subpoena documents from a person or agency who
is “not a party to the action,” thereby excluding specific defendants or their
government agency.
The prosecutor said the county
attorneys told him if he subpoenaed Torres’s records, they would fight the
subpoena, and Morrogh knew they likely would win. Morrogh said Roessler
deferred to the county attorneys’ advice on the matter.
“It was unprecedented when this
occurred and put a lot of obstruction in this investigation,” Morrogh said.
“You’ve got a police department that’s investigating itself, and they’re
fighting the prosecutor? How’s that going to look to the public?” He said he,
and the police, were tasked with seeking justice in the case and that concern
about a possible lawsuit “should be the furthest thing from anyone’s mind in a
criminal investigation.”
Morrogh then found that federal
subpoena rules were different, asked the U.S. attorney in Alexandria if he
would take on the case, and in January 2014 shifted the case there.
Fairfax County Attorney David
Bobzien said Saturday that in 2013, “the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office and
the Police Department did not have a protocol in place for handling requests by
the Commonwealth’s Attorney for an officer’s [internal affairs] files.” He said
both sides recognized that internal affairs investigations “are legally
protected,” that a police officer’s internal affairs statements cannot be used
against him in a criminal case and that a protocol for prosecution requests has
now been developed. But Morrogh said the police had previously provided such
files without incident.
In Roessler’s letter to
Grassley, the chief stated that he “had a general awareness soon after the Geer
incident that Officers Torres and [Rodney] Barnes had different accounts of Mr.
Geer’s actions.” But Roessler said that because he must rule on any internal
discipline for Torres, he has not read the officers’ statements or other
investigative materials, though the county has posted them on the Internet.
Grassley also asked Roessler
how often he briefed the Board of Supervisors and what he told them. Roessler
responded only that he first met with the board in September 2013, and again
“in other sessions” in 2013 and 2014, but he declined to specify what
information he provided them.
Tom Jackman is a native of
Northern Virginia and has been covering the region for The Post since 1998.
Fairfax County Creates Panel to
Review Police Procedures
FAIRFAX, Va. — Fairfax County
officials are creating a commission to review police department policies after
an officer shot an unarmed man and investigative documents were kept secret for
17 months.
County Board of Supervisors
Chairman Sharon Bulova announced the creation of the new commission Friday. The
panel will include law enforcement personnel, citizens and scholars.
Bulova says the commission’s
review is part of an effort by county supervisors to take a “hard look” at how
police inform the public about major incidents. The commission will recommend
changes to Fairfax policies to improve transparency around police-involved
incidents.
The proposal for a commission
comes after criticism of the slow pace of an investigation into the 2013
shooting of an unarmed man, John Greer, by an officer. Federal authorities are
now handling that case.
Follow WNEW on Twitter
In Fairfax, Va., a different,
no-less-scary police shooting
18 months ago John Geer was
shot by police while standing at his front door with his hands raised
By Neil Macdonald, CBC News
Senior Washington Correspondent
Neil Macdonald is the senior
Washington correspondent for CBC News, which he joined in 1988 following 12
years in newspapers. Before taking up this post in 2003, Macdonald reported
from the Middle East for five years. He speaks English and French fluently, and
some Arabic.
White privilege didn't protect
John Geer.
That's not to say he didn't
have it. As a middle-class kitchen designer living in the pleasant Washington
suburb of Fairfax, Va., he had nothing whatsoever in common with the
impoverished black men killed by police in Missouri and Brooklyn last year.
Those deaths triggered riots,
marches and demonstrations across America, and interventions by the White
House.
But Geer, pierced 18 months ago
by a police bullet as he stood inside the screen door of his own home, his hands
raised, begging not to be shot, simply disappeared into the emotional mixing
bowl of American news and political priorities.
That should not have happened.
The killing of John Geer is probably the clearest and most compelling example
of what amounts to police impunity in recent American history.
He committed no crime the day
he was killed. Even the officer who shot him acknowledges that. There was no
struggle. The details are not murky.
But because no one was marching
in the streets on behalf of John Geer, because he was absent from national
headlines, the system was able to make his outrageous death go away by the
simple expedient of doing nothing and refusing to discuss it.
Here are the facts:
In August 2013, Geer's common
law wife, who was breaking up with him and moving out, called police to report
he was angrily throwing her possessions onto his front lawn.
Asked whether Geer had weapons,
the woman answered yes, but they were legally owned and secured. No, he hadn't
been drinking.
John Geer, 46, was fatally shot
by police in August 2013 in an unusual confrontation for which no charges have
been laid. His family has launched a suit for wrongful death. (Jeff Stewart /
Washington Post)
Two squad cars — four officers
— initially responded. Geer, on seeing
them, retreated into his home, refusing to answer questions.
A few minutes later, Officer
Rodney Barnes, a trained police negotiator, arrived, and as the four other
policemen stood close behind him with weapons drawn, he began trying to coax
John Geer out onto the porch.
Barnes would later recall that
Geer was polite, but reluctant to leave his home, saying repeatedly he was
frightened of being killed.
He said "I don't want
anybody to get hurt," the negotiator told investigators a few months
later. "I don't want to get shot."
'I know I can get shot'
Barnes asked Geer if he owned a
pistol. Geer said yes, and fetched it. He held it up, holstered, for Barnes to
see and set it aside, raising his hands again. He offered to let Barnes come
into the house and retrieve the weapon.
He asked for permission to scratch
his nose, Barnes said, and did it slowly, then raised his hands again. He asked
to reach into his pocket for his phone; Barnes asked him not to, and he obeyed.
"He said 'I know if I
reach down or drop my hands I can get shot," Barnes told detectives later.
"I said, hey, nobody's going to shoot you…"
But Geer pointed to one nearby
officer in particular: Adam Torres, who kept raising his Sig Sauer pistol from
the "ready" position (pointed at Geer's legs) to aim at Geer's chest.
Please ask him not to point his
gun at me, Geer begged Barnes. Geer even offered to come out and be handcuffed
voluntarily if Torres and the other patrolmen would agree to move "way
back."
Then he asked to scratch his
nose again. Barnes consented. And Torres fired.
Geer, grabbing his wound,
screamed in pain and stepped back, slamming his door.
"And I'm like, who the
fuck shot?" Barnes told detectives later. "I kinda got a little
pissed."
Torres acknowledged it had been
him, and began muttering how he was sorry, and that his wrist was hurting.
Then, unbidden, he told Barnes how he'd had a fight over the phone with his
wife just before arriving on the scene.
Everyone else is wrong
Asked by Barnes why he'd fired,
Torres said Geer had dropped his hands to his waist suddenly, that he appeared
to be going for a weapon.
"I said I didn't see
that," said Barnes later. "You know, and I never took my eye off him
(Geer)."
In this cellphone video,
Fairfax County police stand outside John Geer's home after he had been shot by
an officer and fell back into the house. The officer at left is said to be
Rodney Barnes, the main negotiator. By the time police tactical forces arrived
to enter the home, Geer had bled to death. (CBS)
The other three officers who'd
been present told investigators the same thing. So did two civilian witnesses.
But prosecutors and police
commanders and county officials buried the case.
Fairfax County's top prosecutor
declared a conflict of interest and referred the shooting to federal
authorities.
The police department stonewalled
reporters.
Federal investigators did
investigate, and have reported to the U.S. attorney in Virginia, who has done
nothing.
And all this was done under a
cloak of secrecy, until, earlier this month, a judge finally ordered disclosure
of nearly 11,000 documents, containing interviews with nearly everyone
involved.
Torres, it turns out, stuck to
his story that the other four officers were wrong.
Does he regret having shot
Geer? "I don't feel sorry for shooting the guy at all."
Why did he tell Barnes immediately
afterward he was sorry? He was concerned about having upset Barnes by shooting,
he said.
Why did he talk about his wrist
hurting? He doesn't remember. Why did he immediately say he'd just had a fight
with his wife? "I don't know why."
Under the radar
The judge's disclosure order
has created a bizarre situation: Nearly all the available evidence, including
audio of the witness statements, is now available on the Fairfax County
website.
According to those official
documents, the shooter — a cop with significant anger issues (he once screamed
and cursed at prosecutors in open court) — is contradicted by four fellow
officers and two civilian witnesses. That sort of rank-breaking is practically
unheard of.
And yet there has been no
judicial action, and almost no public uproar. Most politicians have remained
silent. Those who have marched against police shootings in the past have been
largely uninterested.
A protest at Fairfax police
headquarters drew a couple of dozen people. Only the Washington Post has taken
a serious interest in the case.
But the killing of John Geer
should frighten everyone. It is the best example yet that while police often
target minorities disproportionately, their basic and overriding demand is
total and unquestioning submission to their authority.
Resist, however peacefully and
even in your own home, and heaven help you, no matter what your skin colour.
