Fairfax County Police Watch: 09/28/21

'We've been bleeding officers': Fairfax police union says officers need to be paid better

by Nick Minock

Thursday, September 23rd 2021

FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. (7News) — The President of the Virginia Police Benevolent Association’s Fairfax County Chapter is sounding the alarm.

“We’ve been bleeding officers left and right,” said Ali Soheilian.

Soheilian and the union’s board sent a letter to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisor’s this week warning the Fairfax County Police Department is more than 100 officers short and they are losing more by the week. They are calling this is a staffing crisis.

The union said the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors needs to take positive action.

In their letter, the Virginia PBA said patrol officers are pressed to more each day while they cover the workload of officers who have left. All of that while violent crime is rising rapidly in their jurisdiction, according to their letter.

The letter claims morale is down at the police department and officers in Fairfax County are leaving the department for better paying jobs at police departments in nearby Prince William and Loudoun Counties.

The PBA board is requesting the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors to take swift action by approving better pay for officers.

“When you tell these officers that they are not worth the money you are basically telling them what you value and what you don’t value as a county board of supervisors,” said Soheilian. “It’s a quick fix. They’ve skipped over us with cost of living adjustments and market rate adjustments raises in terms of 14 percent over the years.”

“If something doesn’t change eventually, they are going to have to stop staffing certain positions,” Soheilian added. “Your specialty units that investigates major crimes might be impacted. We might have to pull officers from different resources to staff the street because what’s happening is you’re going to get overwork, tired officers that are responding. It could impact your response times as we’ve seen it impact agencies across the nation.”

7News took these staffing concerns to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman.

“I don’t see this as a Fairfax County problem. Clearly it’s a nationwide problem,” said Jeffrey McKay.

McKay acknowledged the staffing challenges at the police department and defended what the county currently pays its officers.

“I believe we are very competitive to our peer jurisdictions and that’s something we look at annually in our budget process,” he said. “We’ve been focused on recruitment efforts We never stop looking at pay. We want to recruit the best officers. Our board will continue to do what we always do which is look at this every year and make sure Fairfax County remains competitive in police pay.”

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.