Fairfax County Police Watch: 02/13/17

Man files lawsuit against Fairfax Co. officer, county, for use of stun gun against him

FOX 5's Alexandra Limon reports.

FEB 10 2017 08:

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - In September 2015, an incident was captured on cellphone video that showed a police officer using a Taser on a man in Fairfax County. The man, who suffers from cerebral palsy, is suing for excessive force in this case.

It all started at a SunTrust Bank in the Rose Hill area of Franconia in Fairfax County. Elton Cansler took a pair of sunglasses from inside the bank and then took off. Police were then called. On the cellphone video, a responding officer uses his Taser on the man.

“His actions there – we are saying is excessive force,” said Cansler’s attorney, Maxwelle Sokol. “He has his hands up, the hands go on the hood of the car, he gets tased.”

Man files lawsuit against Fairfax Co. officer, county, for use of stun gun against him

The original lawsuit was filed this past December. In January, the police chief filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. This week, Cansler's attorneys have responded.

“On February 8th, we filed in opposition to that motion claiming that we in fact did allege enough facts to proceed,” Sokol said.

Cansler is suing Alan Hanks, the officer involved in the incident, as well as Fairfax County’s police chief and the county.

“They rubberstamped this and said this is totally compliant with our policies,” said Sokol. “So that is the basis for the county's liability – their after-the-fact ratification and endorsement of his actions.”

Officer Hanks was cleared of any wrongdoing days after the incident by the police department. The department released a detailed breakdown of the incident and it said in part that Cansler put his hands in his pockets and he had a knife. It also said he refused commands to put his hands behind his back and resisted arrest.

One of the witnesses who took the cell phone video said at the time after the 2015 incident, “The gentleman just happened to be walking down the sidewalk and the cop pulls up in front of him, tells him to turn over, and as soon as he has his back turned towards him, he tases him. He didn’t see it coming.”

Both sides are still waiting for a ruling on whether the lawsuit against the police department and the county can move forward. It may all be decided at a hearing scheduled in March. The lawsuit against the officer will likely continue because he has not filed a motion to dismiss it.

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.