Fairfax County Police Watch: What is Fairfax County really hiding?

Aug 23, 2015

Dave Statter/ Statter 911

On Friday, we learned a Fairfax County Police Department captain secretly tapedthe Chief Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney. It happened in November 2013 while the prosecutor was working on the John Geer case.

On Saturday, we discovered the official FCPD explanation about why this taping occurred is very different than the one written in a January 2015 email by the captain who actually did the recording. When contacted by The Washington Post’s Tom Jackman about this contradiction, FCPD said it stands by its statement.

This latest development sure doesn’t bode well for the concept of transparency called for by the Communications Committee of the Ad Hoc Police Practices Review Commission (of which I’m a member).

But it isn’t only candor that’s, as usual, missing from a Fairfax County Police Department response to a reporter. I’m puzzled why there’s no strong statement from the police chief or other County leaders saying that secretly recording a prosecutor assigned to a fatal police shooting case is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Combine that silence with the fact that the captain will not be disciplined, makes you wonder if such actions were actually condoned by those in charge.

So, what new secrets about the John Geer case will we learn this coming week?

We’re just five days from the second anniversary of the Geer shooting and Tom Jackman’s latest articles remind us that this cover-up is far from over. Based on the continuing failure by Fairfax County Board of Supervisors to understand even the basics of reputation management, I fully expect Jackman to get at least another year of scandals out of the Geer case. A good deal of credit for this must also go to the wonderful folks at the County Attorney’s Office.

Yes, the same group of people who assisted FCPD in obstructing the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s investigation into the Geer shooting are helping to further extend the cover-up. Their claim of attorney–client privilege on behalf of Fairfax County officials has allowed broad redactions of documents related to the decision making process in the Geer case.

And this brings us to the part that is so maddening about this ugly chapter in Fairfax County history. The reason it isn’t likely to end anytime soon is that almost the entire leadership that engineered the two-year long cover-up, is still on the job. They’re still giving the same advice and making the same ridiculous decisions that make a mockery of transparency and accountability.

Instead of finally coming clean about all the misdeeds and actually holding the leadership accountable, the inaction by the Board of Supervisors shows they’re quite content with this death by a thousand cuts. What this tells me is that they must be hiding an even bigger secret.

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.