Fairfax County Police Watch: August 2021

Fairfax County polic investigate Fairfax County police and.....wait for it......find the Fairfax County Police innocent!!!!!!

EXCLUSIVE: Fairfax County police chief says no bias found in Herndon driver case

David TaubeAugust 18, 2021 at 9:30am

The Fairfax County Police Department has concluded for a second time that allegations of racial profiling by one of its officers during a 2019 incident in Herndon were unfounded.

The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors directed police to revisit the case in question in January after the county’s Police Civilian Review Panel recommended an additional review in its first-ever challenge of police findings.

According to a June 1 FCPD memo obtained by Reston Now, the second review — this time under a new police chief — found no evidence that a police officer who followed and questioned a Black driver was motivated by racial bias.

“I have reviewed the supplemental investigative findings and concur that no new evidence was revealed to support the allegation of bias-based policing,” Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis said in the memo.

Davis took over as police chief on May 3 amid criticism of his past work in Baltimore and Prince George’s County. In the initial months of his tenure, he has emphasized his willingness to introduce reforms, including revisions to the department’s vehicle pursuit policy and the addition of a data director.

For its follow-up investigation of the Herndon incident, Fairfax County police asked eight employees in the Reston District Station’s Criminal Investigations Section the following question:

“Do you have any direct or indirect knowledge which would indicate [employee name] has engaged or is engaging in behavior that was or is motivated by bias toward a victim’s race, religious conviction, ethnic/national origin, disability, and/or sexual orientation?”

Police said no one indicated there was any evidence of bias exhibited by the detective.

Davis also suggested options for reviewing the case were limited, noting that FCPD started collecting data on officers’ interactions with civilians last October that it wasn’t measuring at the time of this particular incident.

The change aligns with new state requirements for police data collection that took effect on July 1.

“Due to recent updates in Virginia legislation, the Virginia Community Policing Act, the Department has updated our current record management system to capture additional details pertaining to the circumstances of community contacts,” the FCPD said in a statement. “The further details will allow our Department to better understand the contacts we have within our community.”

In his memo, Davis wrote that the department has “further enhanced our transparency by creating a Police Data Sharing Dashboard” that allows people to search information related to warnings, citations, and arrests.

The civilian review panel began reviewing the Herndon incident on May 23, 2019, when it got a citizen’s complaint about an officer who followed him into the parking lot of his apartment complex and repeatedly questioned whether he lived there.

According to the panel’s report, which was published on Oct. 23, 2020, the officer said he followed the individual after becoming suspicious and discovering that his vehicle was registered under two names.

A recording of the encounter shows the officer questioning the man about his residency, while the man sometimes asks whether he is required to respond. At one point, the man asks for the officer’s badge number.

According to the panel’s report, the officer asked the man about his residency 11 times, and the man answered at least nine times that he lived there. After telling the man he was free to go, the officer stayed in the lot “for several more minutes” before verifying his identity and residency.

Fairfax County police said in a statement that they have measures in place to address issues of bias:

FCPD has reaffirmed our well-established commitment to fair and impartial policing by recently adopting General Order 2. This policy focuses on human relations and procedural justice. Procedural justice requires Department members to ensure they are being fair in process, transparent in actions, providing opportunity for communication and being impartial in decision making. All well-established pillars of FCPD, but this policy reaffirms our commitment to these principles with the hopes of [increasing] police legitimacy.

The department says it conducts implicit bias training for all employees and supports the county’s One Fairfax policy in support of the chief’s vision of police being “the leading agency dedicated to fairness, trust, and respect.”

The FCPD also says supervisors are required to perform monthly reviews of officers’ body-worn cameras and in-car videos.

“When there is an allegation of misconduct, [Internal Affairs Bureau] investigations review the officer’s arrests and citations based on race and compare them to other officers at the assigned district station, which covers an 18-month time period,” police said.

In a December 2019 letter to the complainant, then-Police Chief Edwin Roessler wrote that the officer’s actions were improper and in violation of departmental regulations.

He also told the civilian review panel that the officer had no reason to initiate the stop, calling his actions unacceptable and the result of “poor, cascading assumptions and judgments that were wrongly based on his training,” according to the panel’s report.

However, when the panel voted 6-3 in March 2020 to request further investigation, Roessler responded that police would not interview the officer’s coworkers for evidence of racial bias, a stance that evidently changed after the panel voted 7-2 in September 2020 to advise the Board of Supervisors that it considered the investigation incomplete.

“It’s not clear to me under our bylaws that we have any additional move,” Civilian Review Panel Chair Jimmy Bierman told Reston Now yesterday (Tuesday). “We did what we were allowed under the bylaws, and we passed it to the Board of Supervisors.”

The panel released a four-year review on Feb. 26 that included recommendations for an expansion of its authority in light of recent changes in state law, including:

• Limited investigatory powers, including the opportunity to interview a complainant and up to three key witnesses

• Electronic access to redacted police investigation reports

• The ability to monitor police investigations for racial bias or profiling without needing a complaint submitted first

• More flexibility in how it presents its findings

The county board fulfilled one of the recommendations in agreeing earlier this month to give the panel a full-time executive director position.

Its an IQ problem, police departments hire the dumb because they'll stay on the job and not cause turnover spike

Again, Fairfax County Police shoot first and get away with it.

Fairfax County Releases Bodycam Video of Police Shooting

Fairfax County police released body camera video and dispatch calls from a police-involved shooting that wounded a woman last month.

The woman who was shot appeared to be having a mental health crisis as she threatened residents and police.

A caregiver at the group home for adults with intellectual disabilities called 911 and told the dispatcher, “She’s making noise, breaking things. She wants to fight … she wants to kill me.”

Women retreated to the basement. A third person locked themselves in their room.

Then the suspect said she was going to kill herself.

K9 officers first responded to the 911 calls. With guns drawn, they entered the home and found a 30-year-old resident armed with a kitchen knife. The woman turned her threats toward them, moving in their direction.

An officer shot the woman in the stomach, and she dropped the knife.

Officers immediately helped the woman, reassuring her she was going to be alright.

The woman is recovering from the gunshot wound.

Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis believes the video shows the veteran officers had little choice but to act to protect themselves and others in the home.

“That’s tough to watch, but they were doing the best they absolutely could under a very tough circumstance,” he said.

Though, neither officer had a taser, Davis doubts they would have had time to try less than lethal force. But it underscores a problem he plans to address: Not every officer is assigned a taser.

“I want to go so far as to assign them individually to police officers so that they are immediately available,” he said.

The investigation is ongoing. The officer who fired his gun is on restricted duty. The woman faces charges of assault on a law enforcement officer.

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could they possibly drag their feet on this any slower?

Fairfax County approves executive director position for police review panel

David TaubeAugust 3, 2021 at 2:00pm

The Fairfax County Police Civilian Review Panel, a citizen-led board intended to help with police accountability, is getting an executive director.

The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approved the change on July 27 at the urging of the review panel, which is facing increasing caseloads and seeking to gain investigatory powers.

“We’re thrilled that this new position will help us maintain our independence,” Civilian Review Panel Chair Jimmy Bierman said, thanking Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay and Lee District Supervisor Rodney Lusk, who chairs the board’s public safety committee.

Established in December 2016, the civilian review panel reviews Fairfax County Police Department investigations into civilian complaints with allegations that a police officer abused their authority or engaged in misconduct.

While the panel can make recommendations regarding law enforcement policies and practices, it was not granted the authority to conduct its own investigations.

The review panel, which consists of nine volunteers, documented in February its need for an executive director in an annual report and a four-year review, a document that Bierman spent three months of 40-hour weeks to develop.

The executive director will help the panel document and summarize investigations. Currently, the panel reviews police investigations in person and writes lengthy, time-consuming reports, which means its efforts are heavily dependent on its chair’s schedule.

Bierman, an attorney, likens the change to a congressional committee relying on staff to help draft materials or a federal judge using legal staff to write bench memos.

“It adds to the professionalism of the panel,” he said. “We want to be fiercely independent.”

Since its creation, the review panel has also relied on staff in the office of the independent police auditor, which will now send one position to the panel for the executive director.

Bierman says the staffing switch will help the panel maintain a good working relationship with police by ensuring the independent police auditor’s resources are not overtaxed.

The change to the panel comes after the Virginia General Assembly adopted a law last year that officially permitted localities to create police oversight boards with the power to investigate incidents, make binding disciplinary determinations, and more.

Bierman says the law shows the Commonwealth is serious about supporting independent oversight bodies for police.

The new executive director won’t have independent investigatory powers, but the position could lay the groundwork for the Board of Supervisors to update the panel’s bylaws to give it more authority, as allowed by the new state law, according to Bierman.

The person hired for the new position will be paid $100,000 to $150,000 per year and report directly to the board of supervisors. Springfield District Supervisor Pat Herrity was the only supervisor to oppose the measure.

“I voted against this motion because I didn’t support the original motion to form the Civilian Review Panel as we had an Independent Police Auditor, which is where most significant reviews and recommendations for reforms have come from,” Herrity said in a statement.

On Sept. 28, the board of supervisors’ public safety committee is slated to hear a presentation about the review panel along with recommendations on further reforms in line with the panel’s four-year review.

Among other changes, the report recommended:

· Authorizing an executive director to monitor police investigations of racial bias or profiling from the onset of an investigation, regardless of whether a complaint has been filed with the panel

· Allowing the panel to conduct its own additional investigations, including interviewing the complainant and three witnesses

· Permitting the panel to conduct a review of a completed police investigation of a complaint about racial bias or profiling without needing a person to request a review

Limited in its ability to gather independent information, the civilian review panel has consistently upheld Fairfax County police investigations into abuse of authority and misconduct complaints.

The one exception so far came in October 2020 when the panel determined that the FCPD’s internal review did not thoroughly investigate allegations of racial bias or profiling in a 2019 incident that involved an officer following and questioning a driver in Herndon.

Then-Police Chief Edwin Roessler determined the incident involved poor decision-making but wasn’t motivated by racial bias. The panel disagreed and referred the issue to the board of supervisors, which directed the department in January to take additional action regarding the panel’s request.

“This is part of why the four-year review requested that the panel mandate be changed from simply asking whether [an] investigation itself was ‘complete, thorough, accurate, objective, and impartial’ to determine whether the panel [believed] the conclusion of the investigation is ‘correct,'” Bierman said in a statement.

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.

The law is a gun, which if it misses a pigeon always kills a crow; if it does not strike the guilty, it hits some one else. As every crime creates a law, so in turn every law creates a crime. Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. Louis D. Brandeis, part of his dissent in the case "Olmstead v. United States", 277 U.S. 438, 485 (1928)