Fairfax County Police Watch: Santa Clara: Cop charged with possessing stolen car parts, running chop shop

By Jason Green, jason.green@mercurynews.com

SAN JOSE -- A veteran police officer has been charged with running a chop shop and possessing stolen car parts worth more than $75,000, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office.

Tyson Green, 41, a Los Gatos resident and 14-year veteran of the Santa Clara Police Department, was arrested Friday.

Green is charged with one count of owning or operating a chop shop and two counts of buying or receiving stolen property in excess of $950, said deputy district attorney Michael Vidmar.

If convicted, Green faces a maximum of five years in prison, according to prosecutors.

"Auto thefts are plaguing our area, directly affecting the owners and indirectly affecting insurance rates for everyone in the state," Vidmar said in a statement. "It is deeply disappointing that a member of law enforcement chose to participate in this crime."

The alleged crime was exposed when a local man tried to buy a Chevrolet Camaro engine from a seller on Craigslist. He suspected the engines were stolen and called police, according to prosecutors.

Prosecutors said an investigation by the Santa Clara County Regional Auto Theft Task Force revealed Green was using a San Jose garage to store four engines, each worth more than $15,000, as well as a dozen car computers. The parts came from cars that had been stolen over the past two years in the greater Bay Area, according to prosecutors.

The engines were from modern Camaros, including the high-performance ZL1, said Vidmar, adding that the vehicle identification numbers on them had been partially destroyed.

Green is the third Santa Clara cop to find himself in legal trouble in the past year. His arrest comes while a jury is deliberating whether to convict Sgt. Thomas Leipelt of one misdemeanor count of indecent exposure. And Kiet Nguyen, a 25-year veteran, was charged with shoplifting after he allegedly took a smart watch from a Target store in May.

Green was put on paid administrative leave when the police department learned he was under criminal investigation, Santa Clara police Chief Michael Sellers said in a statement.

"I was sad to learn that one of my officers, Tyson Green, a 14-year veteran, was arrested," Sellers said. "This is not a true reflection of the hardworking men and women of this department that serve and protect our community."

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.