Fairfax County Police Watch: Earth shattering news, another cop in Fairfax County Goes Free

Sheriff’s Deputy Involved in

INOVA Hospital Shooting

is Cleared

Authorities said it appeared Jovany Amaya Gomez, 29, was having some sort of "mental episode." The hospital had released him.

By Mary Ann Barton (Patch Staff) - December 17, 2016 2:01 am ET

FAIRFAX COUNTY, VA -- A sheriff's deputy has been cleared in a fatal shooting from Aug. 15 at INOVA Fairfax Hospital, FCPD announced Friday afternoon. Jovany Amaya Gomez, previously identified as Giovanny Martinez, 29, died after he was shot by the deputy. He had approached a police officer earlier in the day because he was suicidal, and the officer had called an ambulance for him, the Washington Post reported. After he was released from the hospital, waiting at a bus stop, he charged at a sheriff's deputy carrying a metal sign post. The deputy shot and killed him, police said.

"Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Raymond F. Morrogh has informed Colonel Edwin C. Roessler Jr., Chief of the Fairfax County Police Department, that he finds no basis for criminal liability on the part of the Fairfax County Deputy Sheriff involved in the deployment of deadly force on Monday, August 15, 2016, on the campus of INOVA Fairfax Hospital," a statement reads from the police.

The Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office will conduct an administrative investigation in accordance with its standard operating procedures.

Martinez died at Inova Fairfax Medical Campus, 3300 Gallows Road in Fairfax County. Authorities said it appeared Gomez was having some sort of "mental episode." The incident began Monday night, shortly before 10 p.m., when Inova Fairfax Hospital security called the Fairfax County Department of Public Safety Communications (DPSC) to report that a suspicious man with "some sort of edged weapon" was seen at a bus stop outside the “green” garage on the hospital's campus, police said.

A deputy with the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office, who was in uniform and on assignment at the hospital, responded to the bus stop and located the suspicious man, according to police. Police say the man threatened the officer with some sort of object and the officer shot him. Police did not say what part of the man's body was hit.

Three Fairfax County police officers arrived and began to render aid to Gomez, and personnel from the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department, already on scene at the hospital, arrived and transported the man to the hospital a short distance away, police said.

The man's condition was initially said to be non-life-threatening, Fairfax County Police said. No deputies or officers were injured. Police said that the deputy, who was placed on routine administrative leave, has been with the Sheriff's Office for 18 years.

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.