Fairfax County Police Watch: 11/27/17

Fairfax launches pilot program for police body cameras, hires county executive

By Antonio Olivo November 21 at 5:47 PM

Police body cameras will make their debut in two Fairfax County districts over the next three months, the latest step in the county’s response to the fatal 2013 shooting of an unarmed man outside his home.

The $685,000 pilot program was approved by unanimous vote at a Fairfax County Board of Supervisors meeting that also included the announcement of a new executive to run Virginia’s most populous jurisdiction.

Bryan J. Hill, who is county administrato rfor James City County, Va., will become Fairfax County executive in January. Hill, 50, will take the $250,000-a-year post vacated by Edward L. Long Jr., who retired this year. Kirk W. Kincannon, the executive director of the county park authority, has been filling the role on an interim basis.

The body camera pilot program will equip randomly selected police officers in the Mount Vernon and Mason police districts with 230 body cameras. Researchers from American University will analyze the footage from those cameras to determine their effects on use-of-force incidents, the number of abuse complaints and how officers go about their jobs.

“The cameras are important to understand how we get into these situations,” Police Chief Edwin C. Roessler Jr. said.

This year, the county launched two civilian bodies to monitor investigations into allegations of excessive force, harassment and other misconduct. In all, Fairfax is pursuing $35 million in police reforms as a result of the John Geer shooting.

Roessler said use-of-force incidents stem in most cases from attacks on police officers, which he said the body cameras will be able to confirm.

The use of police body cameras has been controversial in some communities, including Fairfax, mainly due to privacy concerns over accidentally filming people who aren’t suspected of a crime.

Fairfax officials said they’ve researched what they legally can and can’t do under the program.

Anyone in a public area can be filmed. A police officer will also be allowed to film someone in their home as long as the police have the legal authority to be there.

Anyone who isn’t suspected of a crime and has a reasonable expectation of privacy may decline to be recorded, unless the officer is there as part of a criminal investigation or an arrest, county police officials said.

An officer may turn on the camera any time use of force is initiated or anticipated, police said.

The county board reserved the option of extending the pilot program another three months if officials believe not enough data was collected to decide whether to permanently equip the county’s police force of about 1,400 officers with body cameras.

“We have a population of over 1 million people, so when we’re trying something, we’re trying something big,” said the board’s chairman, Sharon Bulova (D). “If it fails, it can be a major, expensive failure.”

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.