Fairfax County Police Watch: 02/12/18

Independent police auditor releases 1st annual report

· By Angela Woolsey/Fairfax County Times

Feb 9, 2018

A Fairfax County police officer’s fatal shooting of a Herndon man in January 2017 did not violate Virginia law or department policy, the county’s independent police auditor found in a Jan. 26 report affirming the results of a Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD) internal investigation.

An officer later identified as Master Police Officer Lance Guckenberger shot Mohammad Azim Doudzai, 32, on Jan. 16, 2017 to conclude a standoff where the Herndon resident barricaded himself and a 29-year-old roommate inside a burning home.

Doudzai died later that day after being transported to Reston Hospital.

“I agree with the internal findings of the FCPD that there were no legal or policy violations based on the actions of anyone involved in this incident,” Independent Police Auditor Richard Schott said in his report. “I believe the use of force was objectively reasonable, necessary, and most likely, life-saving.”

Commonwealth’s Attorney Ray Morrogh declined to prosecute Guckenberger, determining that his actions constituted justifiable homicide in a report released in May.

Schott also found that the 21-day gap between the shooting and the release of Guckenberger’s identity was “both reasonable and necessary.”

Fairfax County policy requires that the police chief publicly release the identity of officers who deploy a fatal use of force against a civilian within 10 days of the incident, with the caveat that time extensions can be requested if there is a threat to the officer’s safety.

According to Schott’s report, Fairfax County Police Chief Edwin Roessler Jr. initially chose not to reveal Guckenberger’s identity in order to conduct a safety inquiry “based on a legitimate concern” for the officer, who also obtained a temporary restraining order from a federal judge that prohibited the FCPD from releasing his name before Feb. 9, 2017.

New information “calling the officer’s safety into question” then prompted Roessler to again postpone releasing the officer’s name, Schott says.

According to the FCPD media relations bureau, a risk assessment regarding Guckenberger was not completed until Feb. 24 and found no credible threats. Roessler ultimately released the officer’s identity on Mar. 2, 2017.

“I did not create a delay,” Roessler said. “There was a threat source I needed to mitigate, and we did that. The judge issued an injunction, and then we had to resolve that, so that’s two hurdles I had to overcome.”

The police chief says that he is prohibited by law from providing more details on the nature of the potential threat.

While he agrees with the FCPD’s determination that no policy or law had been violated in Doudzai’s death, Schott recommends that the department adopt a policy requiring that each patrol shift and all full-time Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team members have “less lethal” options available.

Schott’s report on the Jan. 16 Herndon shooting is the second incident report to come out of Fairfax County’s Office of the Independent Police Auditor, which was established by the Board of Supervisors in September 2016.

The first incident report concerned the use of an electronic control weapon (ECW) on a man in Falls Church and similarly found that the criminal and administrative investigations into the encounter had been properly and thoroughly conducted.

The county’s independent police auditor is required to release a public report in response to every Fairfax County police use-of-force incident that results in a death or serious injury.

The office is also obligated to publish an annual report, so Schott published his first-ever annual report online on Jan. 31.

According to the 2017 Annual Report of the Fairfax County Independent Police Auditor, the office initiated seven case reviews of incidents that occurred on or after Jan. 1, 2017, including the two that have already been completed.

Three of the case reviews, all of them dealing with allegations of excessive uses of force, were initiated in response to a public complaint.

Though the Board of Supervisors dictated that the independent police auditor publish incident reports within 60 days of a completed internal affairs bureau investigation, Schott allows that the logistics of setting up the office have been time-consuming, but he expects to be able to release incident reports more quickly going forward.

“We’re really trying to hone in on process and procedures that will help the office,” Schott said. “I think we’ll be able to run more efficiently and therefore become more productive moving forward.”

According to the annual report, Schott expects to complete the remaining incident reports from 2017 within the first half of this year, though he will also be tasked with monitoring any new cases that occur.

In addition to reviewing internal investigations, the auditor will follow the progress of the FCPD’s impending body-worn camera pilot program, along with a committee of community advocates, legal staff, and police leaders, according to Roessler.

The Office of the Independent Police Auditor is also currently examining factors behind the racial disparities reported in FCPD use-of-force incidents and anticipates that its findings will be published sometime this year.

An annual statistical report released in December by the FCPD’s internal affairs bureau found that 198 black community members were subject to force in an encounter with Fairfax County police in 2016, the same number of white people involved in use-of-force incidents even though they comprise a much smaller percentage of the county’s overall population.

While the Office of the Independent Police Auditor has not yet finished its first year of existence, Roessler says that he is pleased with the work that Schott has managed to do so far.

“The auditor has been communicating with us extremely well,” Roessler said. “We are learning a lot from him through all of this to make our department better policy-wise and serving in the community, so I fully support everything he did.”

Schott says that the office has been productive so far, particularly after the Board of Supervisors approved the addition of an administrative assistant to the office, but he has not received much of a response from the community to the published reports.

However, he has attended public forums with members of Fairfax County’s Police Civilian Review Panel, which was established in December 2016 to review citizen complaints of police misconduct and abuses of power. The panel was scheduled to conduct its first review on Jan. 4.

“I think there’s still a concern that many members of the community don’t know that the auditor position is fully staffed and that the panel is operational now,” Schott said. “I think we both have some community outreach to do.”

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.