Fairfax County Police Watch: Imagine this……

You’re having an argument on the phone with your spouse. You are agitated. You take out a gun and kill an unarmed man with his hands in the air. Four witnesses saw you do it.

YOU ARE NEVER ARRESTED FOR THE KILLING AND FOR 17 MONTHS THE POLICE REFUSE TO RELASE YOUR NAME TO THE PUBLIC.

It will take the power of US Senator from outside your state to get the police to act on the killing you committed and even with that the cops withhold information on the case.

You get to keep your job but they send you home for two years….WITH PAY.

The incompetent and corrupt States Attorney holds off on opening the case for two years.

YOU THINK YOU’D BE GIVEN THIS SORT OF TREATMENT?

WELCOME TO FAIRFAX COUNTY!

Fairfax prosecutors summon witnesses in John Geer police shooting

By Tom Jackman June 10 at 7:00 PM

A special grand jury to investigate the Fairfax County police shooting of an unarmed man nearly two years ago has been empaneled and prosecutors have begun summoning witnesses to testify beginning next month, witnesses and the county’s top prosecutor said Wednesday.

John Geer, 46, was standing in the doorway of his Springfield townhouse on Aug. 29, 2013, when he was shot once in the chest by Officer Adam D. Torres while four other officers stood nearby. According to police reports, Torres claimed that Geer had jerked his hands down to his waist, but the other officers — as well as Geer’s father and best friend — said his hands were near his head.

No decision has been made on whether to charge Torres, 32, a nine-year veteran who remains on administrative duty. His attorney, John Carroll, did not return a call Wednesday seeking comment.

Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Raymond F. Morrogh said Wednesday that the special grand jury was selected by a circuit court judge this month without the prosecution’s involvement. State law requires the grand jury to have between seven and 11 members, each individually questioned and qualified by a judge.

Morrogh said that prosecutors had subpoenaed about 20 witnesses and that the grand jury will begin hearing testimony for four days beginning July 27. Two additional days, in early August, will be added if jurors seek more information.

The prosecutor could not disclose who had been subpoenaed, and it was not clear how many Fairfax police officers will be called to testify.

Geer’s father, Donald Geer, and Geer’s best friend, Jeff Stewart, said they received personal visits Tuesday from Fairfax homicide detective John Farrell, the lead investigator in the case, serving them with subpoenas. Stewart said he might be one of the first witnesses to testify so he can provide biographical details about Geer, a self-employed kitchen contractor, and because he spoke to Geer that day and witnessed the shooting from about 70 yards away.

Donald Geer, who met with Farrell several weeks ago, said it was his first contact with Fairfax police since shortly after the killing. “As far as the county is concerned,” Geer said, “I don’t exist, up until the past few weeks.”

Geer said the grand jury investigation was “a year and a half too late. By the time the grand jury comes up with something, it will have been two years.”

Although there have been no charges, the county agreed to pay $2.95 million to Geer’s two teenage daughters to settle their wrongful-death civil suit. Michael Lieberman, the family’s attorney, said the formation of a grand jury and the issuing of subpoenas were “a positive sign that justice may be done in this case. The family’s been waiting a long time.”

The incident began when Geer’s girlfriend of 24 years, Maura Harrington, told him that she signed a lease on an apartment and was moving out, finalizing a breakup they had discussed for some time, Harrington said. Geer responded by throwing Harrington’s belongings onto the front yard of their home on Pebble Brook Court. When Harrington came home and could not stop Geer from tearing up their house, she called 911.

Torres and Officer David Neil were dispatched, and Geer showed them a holstered handgun, which he placed at his feet. Rodney Barnes, a patrol officer who is also a trained negotiator, then arrived to speak to Geer. Over the next 40 minutes, he could not persuade Geer to come out from behind his screen door, where he was standing with his hands on top of the frame, police and witness statements reveal. Other officers surrounded the scene.

Suddenly, Torres fired once. Geer spun, closed the front door and fell behind it. Barnes radioed that he heard movement inside, reports show, and police waited an hour before rendering aid. Geer was dead just behind the front door.

Although Torres said that Geer had lowered his hands as if reaching for another gun, three officers close to Torres and another just up the street said that Geer’s hands were around his head and not moving toward his waist.

Presented with this information in November 2013, Morrogh asked to see prior internal-affairs cases involving Torres. Fairfax Police Chief Edwin C. Roessler Jr. refused to provide them, records reveal. In January 2014, Morrogh sent the case to the Justice Department so federal prosecutors could obtain the files. The Justice Department has taken no public steps on the case since then.

In February, after the internal-affairs files were provided to Geer’s family and to Morrogh, Morrogh said he would not wait for the Justice Department and would request a special grand jury. Fairfax prosecutors have used special grand juries infrequently, and no Fairfax officer has ever been charged in an on-duty shooting.

Tom Jackman is a native of Northern Virginia and has been covering the region for The Post since 1998.

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.