Fairfax County Police Watch: 07/26/15

2013 Fairfax Police Shooting of Unarmed Man With Hands Up Leading to New Training, Policies

From Reason .Org

The police's image has to improve, says a communications subcommittee charged with proposing reforms.

Ed Krayewski|Jul. 24, 2015 12:15 pm

Maura Harrington/via the Washington PostIn August 2013, a Fairfax county police officer shot and killed John Geer as the unarmed man stood in the doorway of his home, then waited an hour to provide medical assistance while his family pleaded for help.

Local authorities refused to release the name of the officer who shot Geer for 17 months, identifying him as Adam Torres only after the family filed a wrongful death suit against the county's police chief. Fairfax County settled for $2.95 million in taxpayer money, but refused to admit any liability or wrongdoing as part of the settlement.

The county is still, technically, deciding whether to charge Torres, as an internal investigation remains open nearly two years after the killing of Geer. The lawsuit did uncover some new information about the incident—several witnesses, including four police officers, contradicted Torres' assertion that Geer was reaching for his waistband. They say he had his hands near his head.

Local outrage over the slow pace of the Geer investigation, and a lack of transparency from Fairfax county police, led the county to set upan "Ad Hoc Police Practices Review Commission" with five subcommittees to propose reforms: on communications, independent oversight and investigation, mental health and crisis intervention training, recruitment, diversity and vetting, and use of force.

A new report from the communications subcommittee decries the "lip service" paid to transparency by county police. Via the Washington Post:

"Communications in recent high-profile use-of-force and critical incident cases were mishandled, inadequate and untimely" the report states, "leading to loss of public trust and questions about the legitimacy of police actions…If the department had policies that fostered real transparency, it's unlikely the controversies in recent years would have lasted so long and there likely would not have even been a call to form this commission."

That's a questionable assertion—Geer was shot while unarmed and standing in the doorway of his home. Had county police been more forthcoming about what happened and that the officer who killed Geer would not face any serious consequences, would that have allayed public outrage? More worryingly, the assertion implies preventing public outrage is more important than adopting new policies that impose accountability onto police officers.

The report did have specific recommendations, including that police should:

release the names of officers involved in shootings within a week, saying the national average is two days, and to immediately release all video and audio recordings if a citizen is killed. The committee also calls on the police to shorten the current 6-20 month timeframe to internally investigate officer-involved shootings and be responsive to questions from the public and news media.

The Torres investigation has been open for more nearly 24 months. Some of the transparency issues, the Washington Post and the subcommittee report note, arise from a state freedom of information law that provides an exception to records in "criminal investigative files," which county police use to reject requests for any police reports. While the Fairfax county government should, theoretically, have the power to order police to limit their use of that exception, a deputy county attorney told the subcommittee it should get the state law changed if they want the practice of rejecting FOIA requests to end. The issue of a lack of transparency in Fairfax police, especially when deadly force is involved, has been a long-standing concern.

The Police Executive Research Forum, an organization of police executives from around the country, had also been asked to review the county police's use of force policies. The review was requested before the Geer shooting but didn't start till nearly a year after Geer was killed. It includes 71 recommendations, such as including "de-escalation," a "duty to intervene" for cops who see other cops acting inappropriately, and a "sanctity of life" statement in the use of force policy. The report also recommends the county not train recruits on how to fire a gun as the first thing in their training.

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.