Fairfax County Police Watch: Forget the headline, that’s not the real ethics problem in Fairfax County

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Fairfax County Attorney David Bobzien, who showed how much of a priority ethics are in the county when his office helped engineer the cover-up after a police officer shot John Geer, has issued some new ethical guidelines for the board of supervisors.

Because of new state gift standards adopted after the scandal involving former Governor Bob McDonnell, Bobzien believes supervisors should no longer accept free passes to county facilities, including golf memberships and fitness passes.

That’s interesting and may be a good idea. But the article by Anthony Olivo also illustrates much more important issues related to ethics that Fairfax County continues to ignore – transparency and accountability. When transparency and accountability are absent, your ethics will almost always be questioned.

Bobzien himself is a great illustration of the accountability problem. It’s ridiculous that he’s still employed by Fairfax County, after the Geer debacle. Failing to hold the top officials accountable who engineered a plan to withhold key information about that case from the public, prosecutors, Geer’s family and a U.S. senator, should be a major embarrassment for our elected officials. Unfortunately, it isn’t.

Now, you have the laughable situation of Bobzien setting ethics policy. This is just as comical as the board of supervisors expecting the police department leadership responsible for the Geer cover-up to now “change the culture” to prevent a Geer type situation in the future. What Chairman Sharon Bulova and the other supervisors have consistently refused to admit is that these leaders are the “culture” that needs changing.

The article also shows at least three great examples of the failure by Bulova and company to embrace transparency. Just read this paragraph:

Bobzien declined to discuss the county’s policy change, and the county park authority would not say which other Fairfax officials are given free passes and whether they will continue to receive them.

Bobzien has such contempt for the citizens, he’s unwilling to explain to a reporter anything about this policy change.

Then, the park authority says “screw you” to all of us who pay their salaries when asked a question that should be easily answered. No one should have to jump through hoops to get that kind of information.

Sadly, these are not isolated examples and remain the standard operating procedure in Fairfax County. Bulova created a commission and claimed multiple times that lessons were learned from the two-year embarrassment following John Geer’s killing. If lessons were learned, they were quickly forgotten. More likely, lessons weren’t learned at all and it was just lip service during an election year.

If the board of supervisors was at all serious about change they would have immediately adopted important, no-cost, policies put forth by the communications subcommittee of the Ad Hoc Police Practices Review Commission (Full disclosure: I was appointed to that commission by Sharon Bulova and helped write the communications report — The following sentence in Olivo’s article convinces me that the board of supervisors has no intention of changing the status quo when it comes to ethics and the related issues of accountability and transparency:

Supervisor Penelope A. Gross (D-Mason), in office since 1996, would not say whether she has ever used her parks pass.

How can we even expect the county attorney, the leadership of the park authority, those in charge of the police department, or any other Fairfax County officials to be responsive to the citizens if the supervisors themselves don’t think it’s important?

What possible reason does Penny Gross have for not telling us if she used her parks pass? Where is Penny’s accountability? Where is the transparency in government when an elected official shows such contempt for the concept?

Penny is my representative on the board of supervisors and I have known her for years and actually like her. I personally don’t care if she used the free parks pass. It’s not that important of an issue and wouldn’t think less of her, even if she used it every day of the week. But I care greatly that Penny Gross won’t say if she used that pass. And everyone else who lives in Fairfax County should care too.

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.