Fairfax County Police Watch: Fairfax County cop collects kiddie porn

Fairfax County cop collects kiddie porn

Ex-Fairfax police officer pleads guilty to possessing child pornography

By Tom Jackman May 23 at 2:09 PM

Former Fairfax County police officer William “Bud” Walker pleaded guilty Monday to 10 counts of possessing child pornography. (Fairfax County Police Department)

A former Fairfax County police officer pleaded guilty Monday to 10 counts of possessing child pornography, and he was handcuffed in the courtroom and taken to the Fairfax jail without bond as soon as his hearing ended.

William M. “Bud” Walker, 50, was a Fairfax officer for 15 years, with his last six years spent as a spokesman in the police public information unit, handling daily inquiries from the news media and the public about the department’s activities and cases. Prior to that, he was a school resource officer at South County High School. In April 2015, police received a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) about suspected child pornography photos uploaded to a Tumblr account. Detectives eventually traced the account to Walker, assistant Fairfax commonwealth’s attorney Jessica Greis-Edwardson said Monday.

The prosecutor said Walker agreed to speak with Fairfax detectives and acknowledged managing the Tumblr account, which had been shut down once for an inappropriate photo. The police searched Walker’s home computer and submitted 20 images to NCMEC, which maintains a database of child porn victims, and the organization said two of the photo subjects were known victims, Greis-Edwardson said. She described the 10 photos that constituted the 10 counts as all being of naked teenage boys, some alone and some engaged in sex acts. Walker was not accused of creating any of the images himself.

Walker was arrested and jailed on April 15, 2015, and released on $15,000 bond two days later, court records show. He was indicted on the 10 possession counts in September. He did not speak in court Monday other than to plead guilty and answer questions from Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Daniel E. Ortiz. Each count carries a sentencing range of one to five years in prison, and there was no agreement reached with prosecutors as to the sentence. Ortiz set Walker’s sentencing for Aug. 12.

Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Raymond F. Morrogh said after the hearing, “I thought the Fairfax County Police Department did a great job in putting the case together and bringing Mr. Walker to justice.” Walker becomes the second Fairfax police officer convicted of a felony this year. Last month, former officer Adam D. Torres pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the 2013 shooting death of John B. Geer. He also is held in the Fairfax jail without bond awaiting sentencing next month, in which prosecutors have agreed to a 12-month jail sentence.

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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

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.

The law is a gun, which if it misses a pigeon always kills a crow; if it does not strike the guilty, it hits some one else. As every crime creates a law, so in turn every law creates a crime. Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. Louis D. Brandeis, part of his dissent in the case "Olmstead v. United States", 277 U.S. 438, 485 (1928)