Fairfax County Police Watch: 02/18/18

By Julie Carey

More than 200 police officers across three Fairfax County, Virginia, police districts will wear body cameras starting in March as part of a six-month pilot program.

Police patrolling the Reston, Mason and Mt. Vernon districts will wear uniforms with the body cameras, which Fairfax County Police officials said will promote transparency. Fairfax County Police have been using car cameras for 10 years.

“In today’s environment, when the profession is under attack, we welcome body-worn cameras,” Fairfax County Police Chief Edwin Roessler said, “to show the community, especially here in Fairfax, that we are professional at all times.”

The new cameras will be recording anytime officers respond to a scene and during routine traffic stops. Under certain circumstances, though, people can ask that they be turned off. If a resident speaks to police to report a local neighborhood crime and wants to remain anonymous, for example, the resident could request that the camera not record.

For routine cases in which there is no criminal activity involved, the public can also ask officers to shut them off. Fairfax County Police Capt. Chantel Cochrane said that anyone can ask whether they are being recorded.

The new cameras will be introduced more than a year after the Fairfax County board delayed the program’s start date. The department spent about two years drafting its body camera policy and consulted community officials from groups such as the NAACP.

Fairfax County NAACP President Kofi Annan said that “having cameras only helps.”

The body cameras could prove beneficial for significant police-involved incidents, such as when a U.S. Park Police officer shot an unarmed man after a chase on the George-Washington Parkway in November.

After that altercation, Roessler released dashcam video. He’ll decide whether to release body camera video and said he'll do so when it’s in the public’s interest.

“We need to hold each other accountable,” Roessler said, “so if there are allegations against an officer for rudeness, we are recording. We are live.”

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.