Fairfax County Police Watch: Commentary: Fairfax Supervisors’ Inaction on Police Commission Report

By John Lovaas/Reston Impact Producer/Host

#COMMUNITY NOTE: Reston Association election ballots must be returned for counting by COB Monday, April 4. There is only one real race—the At-Large seat. I suggest John Bowman, a person of integrity, knowledge and experience who cares about the community first. There is only one candidate for the other two posts. Both are excellent, not conflicted. Sherri Hebert is great, new blood for Lake Anne; Danielle La Rosa deserves a second term for North Point.

#Remember the Ad Hoc Commission to Review Police Practices created by Chairman Sharon Bulova after the 2013 police killing of unarmed John Geer and the outrage after two years of stonewalling by County Police and silence from the Board of Supervisors (BOS)? The 40-member Commission submitted its final report, with 142 unanimously adopted recommendations, to the BOS last October. In the five months since, the BOS has met just once to consider specific actions. It has agreed in principle to adopt the Report of the Commission, but not yet acted to initiate implementation of all its recommendations. The BOS just announced a second meeting planned for 10 a.m. on May 10 in Rooms 9/10 of the Fairfax County Gov’t. Center (Taj Mahal). Why the delay? In a recent Reston Forum on “Making Justice Work”, Supervisor Cathy Hudgins erroneously stated that the Board had in fact approved all recommendations, but additional careful consideration of implementation was required. She said the Board was “having a hard time organizing another meeting.”

#Meanwhile, the Washington Post sharply criticized the BOS for the delay and for preparing to undermine the Commission’s unanimous recommendation for oversight of police internal investigations by an independent auditor and for a Civilian Review Panel to receive citizen complaints about police abuses. In other words, it seems the delay may not be because the Supes can’t organize their own meeting, but because there are internal struggles going on over reform.

#Police organizations (would-be unions) whose reps (including Fairfax Coalition of Police President sitting across from me) voted for the Civilian Review Panel apparently are now trying to kill it. At the one BOS meeting held to date, the President of the Fairfax Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 77, Brad Carruthers, told assembled Supervisors they should exercise caution in considering the recommendations since the whole Commission was only created because of complaints “from ten percent of the population who are anti-cops.” What!

#If reform is to be implemented and effect real change, independent oversight and civilian review advisory functions are indispensable for assuring the integrity of the changes. Experts stress the importance of independence of oversight. Although Police Chief Roessler and Chairman Bulova both say they support oversight and civilian review, the devil is likely in the details. Specifically, the more extreme voices are demanding that police be included on the Civilian Review Panel because only they truly understand the work of the police. In fact, we are where we are in Fairfax County today because there has been no oversight behind the steel blue curtain. A Civilian Review Panel is exactly that—civilian. It represents the community and provides an independent view. Let’s hope Chairman Bulova, Supervisor Hudgins and other Supervisors stand firm and are neither distracted nor intimidated from transforming the Fairfax County Police Department into a more responsive, topnotch force of which we all can be proud.

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.