Fairfax County Police Watch: Distrust hangs over Fairfax County’s introduction to new police chief

Matt BlitzMay 7, 2021 at 2:10pm

(Updated 5:00 p.m.) Kevin Davis’s first challenge as Fairfax County’s new police chief is to earn the public’s trust, and if the community input session held last night (Thursday) was any indication, it will be a formidable task.

In a virtual discussion that lasted more than two hours, caller after caller expressed dismay at what they believe was insufficient transparency and community engagement from the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors during the hiring process, leading many to question that if the county made the right decision in appointing Davis.

“The Board’s closed-door deliberations and no community involvement in the vetting process left us in the dark. This, coupled with press revelations after the selection, rendered the process fatally flawed,” Diane Burkley Alejandro, lead advocate for the immigrant rights organization ACLU Power People Fairfax, said during the session.

Late last month, NBC4 reported that Davis had faced — and lost — civil lawsuits in the 1990s related to the use of force and unconstitutional detainment while on the job in Prince George’s County.

Callers also brought up concerns about Davis’ authorization of secret aerial surveillance while he was Baltimore’s police commissioner as well as comments he made in a 2020 Baltimore Sun op-ed about defunding the police.

The Board of Supervisors acknowledged that the community has expressed concerns about Davis’s record in a broad statement earlier this week, but county leaders have not wavered from their position that he was the best choice to lead the Fairfax County Police Department and implement the reforms that the board has been seeking.

“Your hiring of Mr. Davis in today’s environment is just plain tone deaf,” Hunter Mill District resident Diana Smith said yesterday, directing her ire to the board. “…It sends a really negative message. I think this was a really flawed decision based on a really flawed process, which led to a flawed selection of a candidate.”

A number of callers backed Fairfax County NAACP’s call last week for a new police chief search, a stance that has won support from other community groups throughout the week.

“I and other community organizations expressed not only the lack of community engagement but the type of community engagement. It’s fine to check a box and say ‘we did a survey, we had community meetings’ but was that enough and were we really heard?” Amanda Andere, a member of the Chairman’s Equity Task Force, said. “We need to start over. We need a process rooted in equity that starts and ends with community input.”

For Davis’s part, he acknowledged the criticisms in his opening remarks and said that he made mistakes over the years but plans to continue to work to gain the community’s trust.

“I have certainly changed, grown, and have learned many lessons throughout the course of my career,” Davis said in response to one caller. “Every year along my journey, I’ve learned more and have become more attuned to community expectations and sensitivities…Was it always a perfect journey? No.”

Throughout the night, Davis reiterated that he was proud of his career, the progress he’s made in terms of building trust with communities of color, and his belief that he has been “one of the most progressive reform leaders in our country.”

“I’ll follow my own mother’s advice…by being the best chief of police I can possibly be,” Davis said.

Even though callers frequently directed questions to them, Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay and Lee District Supervisor Rodney Lusk, who chairs the Public Safety Committee, rarely responded to the callers and largely limited comments to their opening and closing remarks.

Some questioned if the board had to sign non-disclosure agreements regarding the process of selecting a new police chief. Neither responded to those inquiries.

A county official confirmed to Reston Now that board members signed NDAs but said this is not an uncommon practice when the board interviews job applicants to preserve their anonymity.

Neither McKay nor Lusk seemed to entertain the idea of redoing the search for a new police chief either.

“We are aware that there’ve been some instances that have come to light that have caused concern in our community. I want to reiterate that we have heard those and we understand those,” McKay said in his opening remarks. “We know that [Davis] brings with him extensive experience in police reform, and we know that he will move Fairfax County to the next level.”

In his closing remarks, Lusk, who is Black and has spoken about his own painful experiences with police, explained his thought process when it came to selecting Davis as police chief.

“I know there’s a lot of emotion around this and, believe me, I have had a lot of emotion around this too,” Lusk said. “…Can we give Chief Davis an opportunity to enact the reforms we need? If he’s not able to do that, the Board has to make a decision. He knows where he is in this situation.”

Davis also addressed media for the first time this morning (Friday) in a press conference where he again highlighted his past achievements and answered questions about past incidents and lawsuits.

“I was twenty four years old in 1993. Would a 52-year-old Kevin Davis handled that incident differently now? No doubt about it,” he said in reference to the 1993 encounter that left a young Maryland law student bloody in front of his family’s home.

Referencing the 1999 incident where he was accused of false imprisonment and roughing up a teenager, resulting in a $90,000 settelment for the victim, he reiterated what he told the Baltimore Sun in 2015.

“I was a young narcotics detective and we were given an assignment from a high-ranking official,” Davis said. “We did not have full visibility on that assignment and should have asked more questions. We should have been more skeptical. We should have been more cynical, but we weren’t…More than any other experience in my career, that has shaped me.”

When asked if he disclosed these incidents to the Board of Supervisors during the hiring process, he said only that the process was “comprehensive and exhaustive.”

He also spoke about his plans to institute reforms in a police department that has had a history of using force against people of color, while also addressing morale within the department.

“Morale is an issue in the Fairfax County Police Department,” Davis said. “We have to work on attrition. We have to work on recruiting.”

Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Fairfax County Police Jeff McKay Rodney Lusk

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.