Fairfax County Police Watch: Clinton Urges Police Reform During Campaign

LAURA FIGUEROA ON APR 4, 2016

NEW YORK -- Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton campaigned in Brooklyn yesterday, telling congregants at three predominantly black churches that she would fight to reduce gun violence and “increase trust” between police departments and the communities they serve.

“No one should have to face the loss of a beloved,” Clinton told the audience of some 3,000 African-American churchgoers at the Christian Cultural Center in Canarsie.

Clinton also appeared at Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Clinton Hill and Mount Pisgah Baptist Church in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where she pledged to end racial profiling among law enforcement agencies.

The appearances came as Clinton tries to shore up support against her rival, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, before New York’s April 19 primary.

Clinton, the former secretary of state who also served as New York’s U.S. senator for eight years, leads Sanders 54 percent to 42 percent among statewide voters, according to a Quinnipiac Poll released last Thursday.

But Sanders has narrowed the polling gap over the past month. A Siena College poll released March 7 had Clinton ahead by 21 points and an Emerson College poll released March 16 had her leading by 48 points.

At the churches, Clinton acknowledged the endorsement of Nicole Bell, whose fiancé Sean Bell was shot to death in 2006 by plainclothes police officers on the morning of his wedding, as he left a Queens strip club where he had been celebrating his bachelor party.

Undercover NYPD officers shot into Bell’s car 50 times, wounding two of his friends, saying at the time they believed the men were carrying weapons, when in fact the men were unarmed. The city later paid a $7 million settlement to Bell’s family and his friends.

“I remember as your senator being heartsick about this event,” Clinton told the audience at the Christian Cultural Center, saying she would build on the advocacy work of Bell’s fiancé and other anti gun-violence activists to improve community policing policies and gun laws.

At Brown Memorial Baptist Church, before some 100 congregants, Clinton emphasized her local ties, saying she had the “New York know-how” to deliver on her campaign promises.

She “humbly” asked for the support of more than 100 churchgoers at Mount Pisgah, saying she would “tackle systemic racism” and continue President Barack Obama’s push for affordable health care coverage.

On Monday, Clinton is scheduled to appear with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in Manhattan for a rally to celebrate last week’s passage of a state minimum wage hike. Clinton will also headline the Suffolk Democrats’ $300-a-head spring dinner on April 11.

Bill Clinton will campaign on behalf of his wife in Elmont on Tuesday, with an 11a.m. appearance at The Vault, according to a campaign news release.

With Rick Brand

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.