Fairfax County Police Watch: License Plate Readers at Center of Legal Dispute in Fairfax County

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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.

License Plate Readers at Center of Legal Dispute in Fairfax County

ACLU is defending a Fairfax County man who says police department is unlawfully collecting information on law-abiding Virginians.

By MARY ANN BARTON (Patch Staff)

This week, a little known technological advance used by police — automatic license plate readers — was front and center after alleged killer Vester Lee Flanagan was caught on Interstate 66 in Northern Virginia by a state trooper who used the technology.

The technology is at the center of a case brought again the Fairfax County Police by a local resident who is being represented by the ACLU.

Today, Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Grace Carroll denied the Fairfax County Police Department’s request to dismiss the case, brought by the ACLU challenging the FCPD’s use of automatic license plate readers to “unlawfully collect the personal information of law-abiding Virginians,” according to a news release from the Virginia ACLU.

Filed in Fairfax County Circuit Court, the lawsuit is being brought on behalf of Fairfax County resident Harrison Neal, who, the ACLU says, discovered that his license plate had been scanned twice in one year and stored in a database, even though he wasn’t part of any police investigation.

Neal is represented by ACLU of Virginia staff attorney Hope Amezquita and ACLU of Virginia cooperating attorneys Edward Rosenthal and Christina Brown of the Alexandria firm Rich Rosenthal Brincefield Manitta Dzubin & Kroeger, LLP.

“This case is simple,” said Rebecca Glenberg, legal director of the ACLU of Virginia. “Our laws make clear that law-abiding Virginians should be free to travel around the Commonwealth without police departments tracking, storing, and sharing their vehicle’s movements with other law enforcement agencies. We thank Judge Carroll for allowing this case to move forward.”

The ACLU chapter noted in a news release that: “Instead of reforming its policies to ensure against the passive collection of the movements of law-abiding Virginians, the FCPD sought to have the case dismissed by arguing that the information collected about our client and his vehicle is not personal information, and therefore does not violate the Virginia Government Data Collection and Dissemination Practices Act.”

“Fairfax County Police Department’s use of automatic license plate readers to compile vast databases of people’s movements in their vehicles is precisely the kind of intrusive practice the Virginia Government Data Collection and Dissemination Practices Act was meant to prevent,” said Claire Guthrie Gastañaga, executive director of the ACLU of Virginia. “By compiling a history of your vehicle’s movements in local and regional databases, law enforcement can use algorithms to predict your movements and determine your friends, politics, and medical conditions.”

Modern technology can be used to enhance public safety, but only if proper policies are in place, according to the ACLU.

“As we saw on Wednesday when the Virginia State Police used an automatic license plate reader to locate the individual suspected of killing two Roanoke journalists, when used correctly modern technology can be used to make us safer,” said Gastañaga.

“Our client is not asking for the Fairfax County Police Department to stop using automatic license plate readers for active criminal investigations or for Amber or Blue Alerts. In those cases, the technology serves a valuable law enforcement purpose. He’s just asking that the Fairfax County Police Department stop using automatic license plate readers to collect everyone else’s data too.”

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.