Fairfax County Police Watch: 10/05/21

Fairfax County Police Remove Arrest Blotter Over ICE Data Sharing Concerns

Colleen Grablick

Community advocates said the list violated a new law that limits local law enforcement’s interactions with immigration enforcement agencies.

Michael Pope / WAMU

Fairfax County’s police department will no longer publish the names and personal information of people arrested for crimes, heeding concerns from advocates that the list endangered immigrant residents.

Earlier this year, the county’s Board of Supervisors passed a Public Trust and Confidentiality Policy, cutting off all voluntary cooperation and information sharing between local agencies and federal immigration authorities. But advocates said the arrest blotter, which lived on the police department’s website and included information like names and last known addresses, continued to violate the law, commonly known as the Trust Policy, by allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to target immigrant residents.

“We believe that [the arrest blotter] violated the Trust Policy, because it’s not necessary to release that personal information,” says Diane Alejandro, a lead advocate with ACLU People Power Fairfax. “It just is, more than anything, a shaming list.”

According to Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesperson for Fairfax County police, the county originally began publishing that type of information online in 2016 in order to limit the amount of calls the department received from residents seeking information about arrests in their neighborhood.

The arrest blotter came down last Friday, after a review of the practice by ACLU People Power Fairfax found the blotter to be non-compliant with the Trust Policy, Guglielmi said. The Washington Post first reported the decision.

The county will still be running a weekly crime roundup on the department’s website, but will withhold names and any other information regarding the individuals arrested.

“Important information will continue to be shared with the community, and arrest data remains easily accessible via FOIA to residents and reporters,” County Supervisor Dalia Palchik, one of the nine supervisors that voted in favor of the Trust Policy policy, wrote in a statement to DCist/WAMU.

Alejandro, who advocated for the passage of the Trust Policy, say ACLU People Power Fairfax supports the continuation of a crime roundup, without the names and personal information of individuals arrested. If someone is truly interested in gathering that information, she says, there are plenty of ways to dig for it on the internet — instead of the police proactively offering it.

“It’s not like folks are being left in the dark,” Alejandro says, adding that arrest information will still be available to members of the public upon a FOIA request. “I think that honestly smacks of racism to suggest that the interests of people who just want to know the name of every person arrested to satisfy their curiosity should take precedence over the lives of immigrants.”

Unlike in D.C. or Maryland’s Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, where the police force is overseen by the top elected official, the Fairfax County Police Department is under the purview of the Board of Supervisors. The Trust Policy, which passed the Board of Supervisors by a 9-1 vote in January, applies to all agencies across Fairfax County’s government. While the provisions of the new law allow cooperation with ICE officials if it is required or requested, the policy bars willful or voluntary local information sharing that would help immigration enforcement track down individuals.

Alejandro says she does not know of any residents that were targeted directly as a result of the arrest blotter, but that she and other advocates “know it happens.”

“We don’t need to hand [the information] to them on a silver platter,” Alejandro says. “We’re not going to volunteer information to ICE, and this is what the police were doing.”

A spokesperson for ICE denied that the agency used the Fairfax County’s arrest information to locate or apprehend any residents.

“ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations does not use police blotter data to identify immigration enforcement targets in Fairfax County, Virginia,” the spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement to DCist/WAMU. “ICE ERO officers use intelligence-driven leads to identify specific individuals for arrest.”

The removal of the arrest list marks the latest step in Fairfax County’s efforts to limit the county’s interactions with federal immigration agencies. In 2020, the county codified a policy that prevents police officers from asking or disclosing a person’s immigration status, or using immigration status as a determining factor when considering to take a person into custody on a misdemeanor charge.

Regionally, Arlington County officials are also considering ways to decrease local law enforcement’s engagement with ICE — last week, the Arlington County Board released the draft of a framework to increase protection of immigrant residents, including proposals to decrease the local police’s contact with immigration agencies.

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.