Fairfax County Police Watch: NAACP gives Fairfax officials middling grades on criminal-justice issues

· by BRIAN TROMPETER, Staff Writer

A first-ever report by the Fairfax County branch of the NAACP gave most county supervisors and two top public-safety officials mostly mediocre to poor marks in their handling of criminal-justice issues.

“It was an idea when I took over in January as a way to hold county leadership accountable and help members with their advocacy,” said Kofi Annan, the group’s president.

The NAACP’s “2016-2017 Criminal Justice County Report Card” graded all Board of Supervisors members, plus the county’s police chief and sheriff. None received an overall grade of “A.” Three got “B” grades, three “C-plus” marks, three “C” grades, one a “D-plus” and two a “D.” The report did not hew to partisan lines, as Supervisors Patrick Herrity (R-Springfield) and Kathy Smith (D-Sully) received the lowest marks.

Criminal-justice reform has been a hot topic in Fairfax County, following some fatal police shootings and sheriff’s deputies involvement in the deaths of an inmate at the county’s Adult Detention Center and a mentally ill man in Merrifield.

The report evaluated the policy positions county officials adopted over the last year, their on-the-record statements, votes during public meetings (if any) and interviews with each.

While county supervisors have hired an independent police auditor and set up a Civilian Review Panel to examine police use-of-force cases, the NAACP’s report, released Sept. 18, found there need to be more reforms and quicker.

Fairfax County must hire more minority police officers and sheriff’s deputies, equip officers with body-worn cameras and investigate the disproportionate number of use-of-force cases involving African-Americans, the report determined. African-Americans are only 8 percent of the county’s population, but were involved in 47 percent of police use-of-force cases, according to the report.

Fairfax County Police Chief Edwin Roessler Jr. seems genuinely to desire increased minority recruitment, but the department is not addressing a “trust deficit” that may be keeping those number low, Annan said.

The police force is 15-percent minority, the same as in 2013, and Latinos especially are underrepresented, the report stated.

“It’s the elephant in the room,” he said. “A lot of African-Americans don’t like or trust the police. If they don’t talk about that as a barrier to recruitment, they’ll continue to have these problems.”

Law-enforcement personnel should examine their biases, overt or latent, and endeavor not to let them affect their interactions with minorities, Annan said.

“It’s just a fact of life: We all do see race, subconsciously or not, and treat each other differently,” he said. “If you don’t knowledge stereotypes, you may end up with a force that has a negative effect on a community, even if it’s not intentional.”

Many studies show that people tend to see African-American youths as being older than they are, and give them aggressive descriptions, he added.

“It’s not unique to police,” Annan said. “It’s a product of the history of our country and their portrayal in the community.”

The Fairfax County NAACP plans to issue criminal-justice reports annually, as well as ones pertaining to affordable housing and education, Annan said.

While county officials have taken steps toward alleviating some of the ongoing issues, “we want to continue having them move in the right direction,” he said.

The Sun Gazette will list the NAACP’s grades of local officials, plus any received responses, in a separate article.

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.