Fairfax County Police Watch: The NACOLE Digest

News and events in civilian oversight and police accountability.

In this Edition...

• Early Registration Deadline Approaching for 21st Annual Conference

• Purchase Your Annual Scholarship Fundraising Dinner Tickets Today

• Nomination Period Open to Run for the NACOLE Board

• Announcing 2015 NACOLE Award and Scholarship Recipients

• BART Police Department Adopts Transgender Policy

• NACOLE Attends 39th Annual NOBLE Conference in Indianapolis

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Early Registration Deadline Approaching for 21st Annual Conference

The early registration deadline for the 2015 Annual NACOLE Conference is JULY 31, 2015. All paid registrations received on or before this date will qualify for the reduced rate. To guarantee your discount, register today!

This year’s conference will feature a conference schedule with more topics, more speakers, and more opportunities to contribute to the growing national dialogue around civilian oversight.

For a copy of the complete 2015 conference schedule, go to the website

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Purchase Your Annual Scholarship Fundraising Dinner Tickets Today

Join us for our annual scholarship fundraising dinner at Heroes Restaurant and Brewery, located in downtown Riverside. In addition to good food and good conversation, you will be supporting NACOLE’s efforts to offer financial support to those wishing to attend the Annual Conference, to increase the reach of civilian oversight, and to promote participation by individuals from a broad spectrum of social, economic, racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

Seats to this event are limited and WILL NOT be available for purchase at the conference. Make sure to purchase your tickets today!

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Nomination Period Open to Run for the NACOLE Board

The nomination period to run for the NACOLE Board of Directors is open until September 6, 2015. File your declaration today! Serving on the Board is an exciting way to help shape the direction of the association, to work closely with your oversight colleagues, and to support communities across the country looking to establish or improve oversight of the police.

To be eligible, candidates shall have been association members in good standing for one year; they must have attended at least one of the two previous annual conferences; and their membership dues must be current. This year, the membership will elect the President, the Vice-President, and two Board members at the Annual Meeting on October 7, 2015.

How to file: Send your signed declaration form (and bio and photo) to the Election and Bylaws Committee by no later than September 6, 2015. Please mail or email your declaration to: Ainsley Cromwell, Chair, NACOLE Election Committee, 1063 Trevor Place, Detroit, MI 48207, or cromwellac@yahoo.com.

All election-related material and information can be found HERE on the NACOLE website.

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Announcing 2015 NACOLE Award and Scholarship Recipients

NACOLE is pleased to announce the recipients of its 2015 Flame Award and Achievement in Oversight Awards. They are:

Charles D. Reynolds, recipient of the 2015 Flame Award, is a court-appointed consent decree monitor, a former chief of police in five communities, a past-president of an international police executive organization, a recognized expert on police organizational and management issues, and a past NACOLE board member.

St. Louis City Aldermen Terry Kennedy and Antonio French serve their community with distinction as elected representatives of their wards on the Board of Aldermen and are together recipients of one of this year’s Achievement in Oversight awards.

Samara Marion, a policy analyst and staff lawyer with the San Francisco Office of Citizen Complaints, is a recipient of the second Achievement in Oversight award.

NACOLE is also pleased to announce the recipients of the 2015 Scholarship Awards in the following categories:

Founders’ Community Scholarship Award: Deborah Jacobs, Melissa Smith, Olga Orraca, Torin Jacobs

Presidents’ Scholarship Award: Lynn Erickson, Marielle Moore

Membership Scholarship Award: Richard Olquin, Aisha Miles

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BART Police Department Adopts Transgender Policy

As a result of a recommendation made by its Civilian Review Board, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Police Department adopted a policy on interactions with individuals identifying as transgender.

The policy aims to increase awareness among officers and to support the need for all members of the community to be treated fairly and with respect.

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NACOLE Attends 39th Annual NOBLE Conference in Indianapolis

NACOLE President Brian Buchner and Cameron McEllhiney, NACOLE’s Director of Training & Education, attended the 39th Annual Conference of the National Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) in Indianapolis, Indiana. NOBLE invited Mr. Buchner to participate in the Opening Plenary Session where the Attorney General for the U.S. Department of Justice Loretta Lynch delivered the Keynote address. As an invited guest, NACOLE was also given free booth space in the Exhibition Hall, which turned out to be a great opportunity to meet and speak with law enforcement officials and NOBLE members about NACOLE and civilian oversight. It was a good opportunity to build a relationship with NOBLE and its members, as there is alignment between what NOBLE and NACOLE have been working toward for many years. NOBLE’s 40th anniversary conference will be held in 2016 in Washington, DC. More information about NOBLE is available on its website, www.noblenational.org.

Our mailing address is:

NACOLE

P.O. Box 87227

Tucson, AZ 85754

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.