Fairfax County Police Watch: Almost two years & the shameful cover-up continues in Fairfax County, Virginia

John Foust. Because even moral cowards need a job

“When the cops murdered unarmed citizens, secretly recorded public officials and held the people of this county in contempt, I said and did nothing. I was silent in the face of injustice. And now I expect you idiots to reelect me”

About Supervisor John W. Foust

John was elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2007 and re-elected in 2011. In all that time he has never, not once, spoken out against the brutality, corruption, excessive power or bloated budget of the Fairfax County Police.

However he did find time to run for reelection several times and run a losing bid for congress.

Since joining the Board of Supervisors, John has sought to provide effective, results-oriented, common sense leadership for the residents of the Dranesville District and Fairfax County…..in as long as providing effective, results-oriented, common sense leadership doesn’t involve speaking out against the cops.

Almost two years & the shameful cover-up continues in Fairfax County, Virginia

From Statter 911.com

By Dave Statter

Aug 21, 2015

Just eight days away from the two-year anniversary of the killing of John Geer and the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and Fairfax County Police Department continue their shameful cover-up. Despitethe arrest this week of Officer Adam Torres, the appointment of a commission to improve police practices (of which I am a member) and lots of talk about lessons learned, the leadership in the County and the police department still don’t understand a very important word — transparency.

Instead of finally telling us how this debacle occurred (the cover-up — not the tragic shooting) and holding those in charge accountable, it’s business as usual in Fairfax County. As has been the routine since August, 2013, we watch as scandalous details very slowly leak out under Tom Jackman’s byline in The Washington Post. Today’s news is that a police captain secretly recorded a telephone conversation with a prosecutor assigned to the Geer case.

In the same article, we are reminded again that the Board of Supervisors still hasn’t come clean on exactly what they knew and when they knew it in the efforts to withhold important information and documents from the Commonwealth’s Attorney, the U.S. Attorney, the Justice Department, a U.S. Senator, the Geer family and us.

The people we elect — the people we put our trust in — continue to insult us. They hide behind a claim of attorney-client privilege. The Supervisors think we should be satisfied with redacted documents that mask their decision making and the decision making of top Fairfax County officials.

As I pointed out in March, the attempt by the Board of Supervisors to hold deputy county attorney Cynthia Tianti responsible for this entire fiasco was laughable. The decision to fire Tianti (since reversed) has brought a lawsuit that is slowly bringing us more details of the misdeeds by those in charge. It was clear then that the Tianti firing would blow up in their faces and it has.

Chairmen Sharon Bulova and the Board of Supervisors continue to think just naming a commission to change practices in the future will make us all forget this and soon restore confidence in County leaders. It won’t.

Anything short of true transparency will just allow the hits to keep on coming. It’s well beyond time for all of this information to be released, with no or minimal redactions.

Real accountability is also a requirement to finally put this to rest. Months after Cynthia Tianti was thrown under the bus and her job marginalized, it’s extremely obvious the terrible decision making that got us into this mess continues. While that fact says a lot to me, for some reason Sharon Bulova and company refuse to publicly admit Ms. Tianti is not the real problem. Instead, our elected leaders keep paying big bucks to those actually responsible for this embarrassment and allow them to take us deeper into this hole with no end in sight. Shameful.

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.