Fairfax County Police Watch: 06/20/15

Longtime PIO ‘held visible position of public trust’

by Gregg MacDonald

The child pornography case of a 15-year veteran and public spokesman for the Fairfax County Police Department has been continued until Sept. 8.

On June 17 before Fairfax County District Judge Thomas Gallahue, PFC and former public information officer William “Bud” Walker, 50, entered the courtroom dressed in a dark suit and sat quietly as his attorney, Ed Nuttall, asked for and was granted a continuance of the case until September. Nuttall declined to comment on the case.

Detectives in the Major Crimes Division’s Child Exploitation Unit arrested Walker on April 15, at police headquarters. Police said detectives were contacted by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children last July and were provided a CyberTip, originally received through photo networking site Tumblr. The tip alleged that child pornography had been uploaded through Tumblr’s servers and police later determined that the location of the upload came from a residence within Fairfax County.

Detectives began their investigation on April 6, and on April 8, determined the residence was owned by Walker. He was relieved of duty on April 9 and was charged on April 15 with two counts of possession of child pornography.

Walker was originally hired by the agency in December 1999. He worked in a patrol capacity at the West Springfield District Station until 2004. He then took a position in the Public Information Office until 2006. Walker returned to patrol at the West Springfield District Station in March 2006 before being assigned to South County High School as a School Resource Officer, where he worked from November 2006 until August 2009. He returned to the Public Information Office, where he worked until being relieved of duty on April 9.

Walker has posted a $15,000 bond and currently remains on paid administrative leave, according to police.

In April, Fairfax County General District Court Judge Richard E. Gardiner ordered Walker not to use computers and to not have any unsupervised contact with minors until his case is concluded.

Colonel Edwin C. Roessler Jr., Fairfax County chief of police, said that based on the fact that Walker held a visible position of public trust, Roessler felt it was imperative to place the safety of the public at the forefront of the investigation and was appreciative of the diligent work of the numerous detectives assigned to the case.

gmacdonald@fairfaxtimes.com

These companies sponsor the Fairfax County Police game, boycott them

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.