Fairfax County Police Watch: Farnsworth and O'Brien: Body cameras

Body cameras can protect responsible officers against false claims of bad behavior and can help problem departments identify problematic police procedures and officers.

Posted: Saturday, December 19, 2015 10:30 pm

By Stephen J. Farnsworth and Ellen O’Brien

Police departments around the state need to get serious about supplying their officers with body cameras to record their interactions with the public, say 92 percent of Virginians surveyed in a new statewide poll sponsored by the University of Mary Washington.

In that 1,006-person survey conducted last month, only 6 percent said it would be a bad idea for officers to be equipped with body cameras. There was no gender gap in the responses to the question, and there was little difference among whites, African-Americans and Latinos or among Democrats, Republicans and independents. More than 87 percent of all those subgroups in the survey supported body camera deployment.

For those not familiar with public opinion research, a 92-6 split among survey respondents is almost unheard of in public policy questions during these days of deeply divided politics.

A follow-up question demonstrated that this strong citizen preference for the cameras was not motivated by hostility to law enforcement. In response to the question of who is usually responsible when a person is seriously injured during an arrest, only 11 percent thought the police officer was primarily at fault, as compared to 19 percent blaming the person being arrested, 26 percent saying both were responsible and another 41 percent believing that it is not possible to say.

Police cameras provide a more effective recording of interactions with suspects than do video clips produced by bystanders, who record few incidents and usually only start recording after the incidents are well underway. Furthermore, witness recordings are often made at a considerable distance from the incident itself. Dashboard cameras have provided evidence of many police-suspect interactions, as have stationary cameras deployed in some community trouble spots, but those stationary cameras capture only some of the action.

Body cameras can protect responsible officers against false claims of bad behavior and can help problem departments identify problematic police procedures and officers.

Roughly one of six law-enforcement agencies in Virginia uses body cameras, according to an October 2015 study by the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia.

Without body cameras, police behavior can be subject to controversy. This is demonstrated most clearly in Fairfax County, the largest jurisdiction in the state that does not mandate the use of police body cameras.

After two years of investigation, former Fairfax County police officer Adam Torres now faces charges of second-degree murder in the death of John Geer. Torres said Geer moved suddenly and reached down and that there was a gun at his feet, but other officers on the scene say they did not see that sudden movement. With police body cameras it would be much clearer what really happened that day.

More recently, a bystander recorded an incident where another Fairfax County police officer used a Taser on a man who was lying on the ground and apparently not resisting. A bystander’s video of the event went viral.

Fairfax officials have said they are considering whether to use this new technology. Until they and other governments join the small number of jurisdictions that deploy body cameras, public perceptions of police departments and the resolutions of contentious debates regarding how officers behaved in the field all too often will depend on the randomness of what gets posted online by bystanders and what does not.

Stephen J. Farnsworth is professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington and director of the University’s Center for Leadership and Media Studies. Contact him at sfarnswo@.umw.edu.

Ellen O’Brien is a senior political science major at UMW and a research associate at the center. Contact her at eobrien2@mail.umw.edu.

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.