Fairfax County Police Watch: THE AGONIZINGLY protracted story of John Geer

The Washington Post

THE AGONIZINGLY protracted story of John Geer, the unarmed man shot to death by a Fairfax County police officer as he stood, hands up, in the doorway of his Springfield home almost three years ago, might finally have reached its end. Yet the county, which pledged reforms so that no such sorry sequence of events could ever recur, still has work to do.

Last week Adam D. Torres, the now-former officer who pulled the trigger, appeared in court to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter, belatedly express remorse and agree with prosecutors to a 12-month prison sentence. If a judge accepts the deal, it will conclude a saga of police malfeasance, official stonewalling and political paralysis, all of which left a stain on Virginia’s biggest jurisdiction and its 1,300-officer police force.

It’s certainly reasonable to believe, as Mr. Geer’s parents do, that Mr. Torres got off lightly. Four other police officers contradicted Mr. Torres’s account that he had seen Mr. Geer suddenly lower his hands, as if going for a weapon. To the contrary, they said his hands were up when Mr. Torres fired the fatal shot into Mr. Geer’s chest.

Nonetheless, Mr. Torres, who was jailed without bond in August, will remain behind bars for now. Fired last year from the police force, he is a convicted felon, and he will never again work as a law enforcement officer. His punishment is substantial. Mr. Geer’s former partner, who was reluctant to testify — as was the couple’s 19-year-old daughter — was amenable to the plea deal.

Notwithstanding Mr. Torres’s plea, no resolution has been reached for the systemic and institutional problems in Fairfax laid bare in the aftermath of Mr. Geer’s death. Chief among these is the glaring lack of accountability in the police department, whose once-excellent reputation has been badly damaged.

That damage was self-inflicted. Following Mr. Geer’s unwarranted death, the department went into a defensive crouch, providing no information on the case for a year and refusing to cooperate with state and federal prosecutors. The stonewalling, which the police undertook with the connivance of the county attorney’s office, which was derelict in its duty, stunned the top prosecutor in Fairfax. “I’ve never seen anyone act like that in a position of trust, withholding information,” said the prosecutor, Raymond F. Morrogh. “It really hurt all the people involved. It was dead wrong. I hope it never happens again.”

To avoid such a recurrence, officials empaneled a commission to review police policies and practices. The commission produced many recommendations, some of which have been adopted, including new use-of-force guidelines that emphasize restraint and de-escalation.

Other recommendations are under review by the county’s elected Board of Supervisors, including ones that would mandate a greater degree of information-sharing and empower an independent auditor to oversee internal police investigations in cases involving the use of force.

A critical test of the county’s commitment to reform is whether it establishes a civilian board to review alleged police misconduct. Pushback from unions representing rank-and-file police should not deter supervisors from ensuring that the panel consists of civilians, not current and former police. Police departments around the country have gained credibility from such panels; Fairfax County must not pull back from the brink of real reform.

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.