Fairfax County Police Watch: Former St. Louis cop admits crashing police SUV while driving drunk off duty

• By Robert Patrick St. Louis Post-Dispatch

A photo of a police SUV damaged when then-St. Louis officer Jason Flanery crashed it while driving under the influence in December 2015. This photo was part of a sentencing memo entered into the court record by prosecutors.

ST. LOUIS • A former St. Louis police officer pleaded guilty Tuesday to misdemeanor charges of driving while intoxicated and leaving the scene of an accident.

Jason Flanery, 33, will serve two years of probation, attend aSubstance Abuse Traffic Offender Program and watch a talk by a panel of victims affected by drinking and driving.

He also paid about $3,400 to cover damage to the parked vehicle that he hit and a police SUV he was driving while off-duty.

Prosecutors said Flanery drank and took cocaine before crashingon Jamieson Avenue in Lindenwood Park about 6:20 a.m. on Dec. 19. Tipped by witnesses who described the police SUV, officers found it at Flanery’s home a few blocks away.

He appeared “quite intoxicated” but refused field sobriety and breath tests, forcing police to seek a search warrant for his blood, they said. Seven hours after the crash, Flanery’s blood-alcohol level was 0.117 percent, well beyond the 0.08 percent legal limit. Another test showed the presence of cocaine, prosecutors said.

In an interview, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce said Flanery apologized to the victim, who was “satisfied” with the outcome.

In a sentencing memo, prosecutors sought one year behind bars, calling it “reprehensible” for Flanery to have used cocaine and “morally repugnant for a police officer, who is sworn to uphold the law, to leave the scene of an accident” and create a “financial hardship; for an innocent person.” The memo said probation would not be appropriate.

But Joyce acknowledged that probation is a typical outcome, and said she was “not surprised.” In a prepared statement, she said pursuit of a tough sentence should “send a message to anyone involved in law enforcement.”

Flanery has resigned from the force. Defense lawyer Matt Fry said he is attending school and no longer is in law enforcement.

Fry said that cocaine did not come up at the plea hearing, and that Flanery did not admit to using it. The lawyer said that the test showed only a metabolite, not actual cocaine.

Fry said a request for a year in jail was “ridiculous.” He said he told Circuit Judge Michael Mullen that a first-time offender would get the same deal in the city and in St. Louis and St. Charles counties. “Nothing special about it,” he said.

Flanery was charged just days after he was sued over the fatal shooting of VonDerrit Myers Jr., 18, on Oct. 8, 2014. Flanery had been in uniform but off duty at the time, working for a private security company. An investigation confirmed his claim that he had been defending himself.

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.