Fairfax County Police Watch: Gee whiz I hope the cops didn't let this guy work when they had proof he had mental issues and now they want to cut a deal to avoid going public with that

In the John Geer police shooting case, silence returns, officer sits in Fairfax jail

By Tom Jackman March 7

For many months, the defining characteristic of the investigation into the death of John Geer was silence. From August 2013, when the Fairfax County, Va., man was shot in the doorway of his home during a standoff with police, to January 2015, there was no information released about why Geer was shot, whether it was legally justifiable, or even who shot him.

Eventually, thanks to a lawsuit by Geer’s family, a Fairfax judge ordered the information released. And last August, ex-Fairfax police officer Adam Torres was charged with murder. But after a brief flurry of pre-trial motions in the fall, nothing. Not a single document or motion has been filed in more than three months, since Torres’ lawyers received a continuance of the trial from its original December setting. The trial is now just six weeks away, set for April 18.

Meanwhile Torres, 33, remains in the Fairfax jail without bond. Prosecutors had expected that his attorneys, John Carroll and Ed Nuttall, would seek to appeal for bond to the Virginia Court of Appeals, but nothing has been filed. Pretrial motions to exclude evidence, or witnesses, also have not been filed.

Carroll did not return a phone call Friday seeking comment. He has represented Torres since the day of the shooting in 2013, but has not discussed the case publicly.

Both Don Geer, John Geer’s father, and Mike Lieberman, the family’s attorney, said they had not heard anything from the police or prosecutors. Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Raymond F. Morrogh said he had no news to report. Morrogh was prepared to go to trial in December, but shortly before Thanksgiving, Torres’s lawyers asked for a continuance, saying they had a witness who was unavailable for the December trial. Judge Robert J. Smith granted the postponement over Morrogh’s objection.

Many criminal defense lawyers expected that Torres’s attorneys would seek to have the former officer released from jail before the holidays by appealing the original denial of bond. Carroll had argued that Torres had been working in police headquarters for two years after the shooting without incident, and so was neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community. Also, his wife was pregnant with their third child. But no appeal was filed.

Now, defense lawyers wonder if Carroll is angling for a plea bargain for Torres, pleading guilty to manslaughter with an agreement that he would be released with “time served:” roughly eight months since his arrest in August to the trial date in April. Neither side is talking about that. But the answers should be coming soon, as the silence comes to an end.

Tom Jackman has been covering criminal justice for The Post since 1998, and now anchors the new "True Crime" blog.

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.