Fairfax County Police Watch: Its not about color, its about hiring punks to be police officers...fire the chief and bring in new blood from the outside

Fairfax Co. police disproportionately use force on Black people; Chief, NAACP respond

Neal Augenstein | @AugensteinWTOP

Black people make up less than 10% of the population in Fairfax County, Virginia, but a new report shows they are involved in almost half of all police use-of-force incidents.

In the Fairfax County Police Department Internal Affairs Bureau’s 2019 Use of Force Report, while only one in 1,000 calls for service resulted in an officer using force, 45% of community members who were subjected to force over the year covered by the report were Black.

The numbers show almost 82% of officers involved in use-of-force cases are white.

“It’s unsurprising that this annual report shows use of force is disproportionately used against Black members of the community, as this trend has persisted in more than five years’ worth of data,” said Sean Perryman, president of the Fairfax County NAACP, in a statement.

“It points to a systemic problem that the county must finally address.”

“Preserving the sanctity of all human life permeates through every interaction we have with our community,” Police Chief Edwin Roessler said in a statement to WTOP.

“While the overwhelming majority of these interactions do not result in use of force, it’s crucial that we document and independently scrutinize every incident to hold ourselves accountable to the communities we serve.”

The statistics provided in the report are based on use-of-force incidents that occurred in 2019 and had been closed as of June 1, 2020.

Data released by the Fairfax County Police Department on officer use of force showed a majority of community members who experienced force were Black, from 2017 to 2019. (Courtesy FCPD)

Perryman intends to press for the county to take more action.

“It’s unconscionable that they allow this to happen without pressing for greater transparency and accountability from FCPD,” he said.

Roessler said the department and county are taking the responsibility of using force in performing their public safety duties seriously.

“We have expanded our definition of force to include nonphysical encounters for increased transparency and we subject ourselves to external investigation and audit by an Independent Police Auditor, and the University of Texas is conducting a methodical review of each use of force encounter to further evaluate any disproportionality,” Roessler said.

The report was issued amid recent protests locally, and nationally, related to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis while in police custody.

Earlier this month, Roessler told WTOP the county has been proactively ensuring officer accountability, especially in use of force incidents.

On June 6, Fairfax County Officer Tyler Timberlake was arrested and charged with three counts of assault and battery for using a stun gun several times on a disoriented man, who did not appear to pose a threat. Timberlake is white, the man he shocked is Black.

As WTOP first reported, prosecutors and the defense said the officer shocked a man he mistakenly thought he recognized.

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.