Fairfax County Police Watch: 01/17/15

While most Americans approve of the work being done by their local police, nearly a third feel that some officers “routinely lie to serve their own interests,” a survey released on Thursday by Reuters and the IPSOS polling organization showed.

The number rises to 45 percent among African-Americans.

The findings come as scrutiny on police has been heightened in recent months by the killing of unarmed blacks by white officers, which has raised questions about police treatment of racial minorities.

While distrust is significant, nearly three-quarters of respondents approve the job done by their local police, the survey said. The survey showed that 56 percent of African-American respondents approved of their local police.

MarQuis McClee, a small-business owner from Bloomington, Indiana, who took part in the poll, said that he generally trusts police and has officers among his relatives, but as an African-American, he can also be wary around law enforcement.

"I have been involved with officers who give police a bad name," McClee, 38, said, pointing to a recent incident where he was pulled over by an officer be believes was profiling him.

Nearly 70 percent of African-American respondents believe that police target minorities.

In November, simmering tensions exploded with violent protests in several U.S. cities following a grand jury decision not to indict a police officer in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson for shooting an unarmed black teenager.

When asked about the Ferguson police, 60 percent of respondents had a favorable impression but among black American respondents, only 32 percent had a favorable impression.

When a gunman fatally shot two police officers in New York in December in apparent retribution attack, the public was reminded of the dangers police face on a daily basis in trying to keep the streets safe.

While attention on policing has been in the spotlight, racial disparity in the criminal justice systems has become a fact of life in the United States. A study by the Sentencing Project research group showed that one in three black men are likely to be imprisoned sometime during their life. The figure for white man is one in 17.

Proactive tactics aimed at keeping crime rates down in economically stressed areas with a high number of racial minorities can also cause friction between police and minority youth who are likely to be stopped and questioned, said Larry Hoover, director of the Police Research Center at Sam Houston State University in Texas.

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.