Fairfax County Police Watch: Give this clerk a medal

Police Union President Demanding Boycott after Officer is Denied Service

The President of Broward County’s largest police union has called for a national boycott of Sunoco gas stations following an incident during which a uniformed officer from the Miramar Police Department was refused service by the sales clerk at one of the company’s locations.

“On a day when three officers are slain in Baton Rouge, La., and a fourth is fighting for his life, how can anyone deny service to a uniformed police officer?” said Broward County PBA President Jeff Marano.

In his incident report, the officer, who was wearing his full police uniform, said that on Monday, he walked into the Sunoco Gas Station located at 1700 S Douglas Road around 2 p.m., and as he was attempting to get a drink from the refrigerated area, a black male, wearing a gray shirt with gray pants, walked up to him and asked why they arrested his “boy”. He asked the man who he was referring to, to which he said, “Ya’ll got my boy in the back of that car outside the gas station.”

The officer told him that the man was arrested and he couldn’t give him any further information. The man then walked away.

The officer then proceeded to walk towards the cashier in order to pay for his drink. The same individual that walked up to him earlier was standing behind the cash register without a name tag and closed his cashier’s window. The officer then knocked on it in order to get his attention, however, the man looked at him and didn’t say anything. The officer asked, “Hey can you ring me up? I need to pay for my Gatorade.” The man then stated “No.” The officer asked him what he meant. The man said that he wouldn’t ring him up and said, “You know why.”

The officer asked him again to ring him up, and the man once again refused.

During the same time, the man said, “Get out of my way, I need to attend to customers.” The officer looked behind him and there was a line of four people trying to pay for their items. He moved out of the way, so they could pay, and after they were done, he again asked to pay, and was once again refused.

He then asked the man for his name and his manager or boss’s name, and he replied that he doesn’t have to give out his name or his boss’s name. The officer asked why he was refusing to ring up a police officer trying to buy a drink, to which he answered, “Because I don’t have to, that’s why.”

Marano is demanding the immediate termination of the Sunoco employee, however, a police search for the owner’s information was met with negative results.

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.