Fairfax County Police Watch: GROUP CALLS FOR REFORM, TRANSPARENCY IN RALEIGH POLICE

By Joel Brown

RALEIGH (WTVD) --

Raleigh City Council got an earful Monday night about how to reform the city's police department.

Community activists aligned with the group PACT led the charge. The Police Accountability and Community Task Force is more than a year old, but the deadly police shooting of Akiel Denkins in southeast Raleigh on Feb. 29, gave the group renewed purpose.

Outside City Hall, the group came bearing signs. Some read, "Justice for Akiel" and "Black Lives Matter." But the group also came to deliver a petition, a list of demands to reform Raleigh PD.

"We as the citizens of Raleigh ask for transparency! That is why we ask for a seat at the table to decide the oversight board," said Kimberly Muktarian at a rally before the meeting.

When the public-hearing portion began, they came one by one to bring their demands to city councilors. They want a community oversight board with subpoena power to hold officers accountable. They want officers to make marijuana possession a lower-level priority.

"Wake County arrest data shows that black people are going to jail for possession of small amounts of marijuana at significant higher rates," said Geraldine Alshamy as she addressed the council.

The group applauded the city's move to start a five-year pilot program to equip every officer with a body camera. But they want the city to immediately begin drawing up rules of the road for the body-camera program. They expressed concerns about privacy for victims of domestic-violence calls, and they want public access to the videos.

"At the very least, the subjects of any recordings should have access to those recordings, ideally a copy of those recordings," said Sarah Preston with ACLU of North Carolina.

Raleigh City Attorney Thomas McCormick raised objections about whether City Council has the authority to grant subpoena power to a community oversight board.

"We agree with the comments made by the city attorney," said Matt Cooper, President of the Raleigh Police Protective Association, the police union.

Cooper also agreed with McCormick that city councilors, the grand jury, and independent investigators at the SBI provide more than enough accountability for his officers.

"We would like to say that issues and perceived problems in other areas of the country are not indicative of what is going on in the city of Raleigh," Cooper said

The ACLU concedes a community oversight board with subpoena power for investigations would likely require legislation from the General Assembly. And, that is unlikely to happen. But the ACLU points to cities such as Greensboro, which has a city staff sit on its civilian review board for police that can issue subpoenas.

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.