Fairfax County Police Watch: August 2024

The Sonya Massey killing in Illinois raises the question again. Here’s where things stand on the vetting of new hires in Minneapolis.

By Editorial Board

Star Tribune

AUGUST 10, 2024 AT 7:00PM

The fatal shooting of a Black woman in her Illinois home by a white cop she had called for help once again highlights the critical importance of officer vetting. Turns out the policeman involved had a history of dubious behavior at previous jobs. Why was he hired at all?

It demonstrates once again the importance of thorough, comprehensive investigations of officer applicants’ backgrounds before that person is offered a law enforcement badge.

Here’s what happened: Sean Grayson, a deputy sheriff in Sangamon County, responded to a 911 call from Sonya Massey, who had reported a prowler. Grayson entered Massey’s home near Springfield and noticed she had a pot on her stove. Concerned that she might throw whatever was in that pot at him, he fired the three shots that killed her.

Massey, 36, had a history of mental illness, but the officer body cam video did not show that she acted aggressively during the interaction. That video evidence prompted Grayson’s boss, Sheriff Jack Campbell, to denounce the deputy’s behavior and fire him. Now Grayson, 30, faces three counts of first-degree murder, aggravated battery with a firearm and official misconduct.

Campbell had hired Grayson in May 2023 to work for the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Department even though Grayson had been dismissed from the Army for the first of two drunken-driving convictions in which he had a weapon in his car and though he‘d frequently changed jobs.

“Six jobs in four years should have raised a red flag. And you would ask why he wasn’t hired full time in any of those [part-time] jobs,” Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Police Executive Research Forum, told the Associated Press. “Combined with a track record of DUIs, it would be enough to do further examination as to whether or not he would be a good fit.”

Last week, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, called for Sheriff Campbell, a Republican, to resign, saying that Campbell had “failed” by hiring the officer in the first place. On Friday, the sheriff did so.

Minneapolis has had its own difficulties with officer histories — most prominently former officer Derek Chauvin, who was charged and later convicted of killing George Floyd in 2020. Previous incidents of misconduct were revealed in Chauvin’s record.

More recently, an officer was ”separated“ from the Minneapolis Police Department in 2023, just seven months after being hired. Tyler Timberlake had been accused of assaulting an unarmed Black man three years ago when he worked for a police department in Fairfax County, Va., and was charged with three counts of misdemeanor assault and battery, but a Virginia jury ultimately found him not guilty. Last year, Fairfax County settled a lawsuit with the victim for $150,000.

Now Timberlake is suing the city of Minneapolis for defamation, arguing that comments made by Police Chief Brian O’Hara are preventing him from finding work.

O’Hara said he could not comment specifically on the Timberlake case because it is in litigation. But in an interview with an editorial writer, he said that the MPD vetting process has been overhauled since he joined the department in 2022 and that the hiring manual has been updated with stronger investigation guidance for the first time in 15 years.

He said that applicants now are subject to more scrutiny and more comprehensive investigations, not only regarding convictions but also the type and number of accusations previously made about them. O’Hara also said the information about potential officers is now being reviewed by additional decisionmakers in the department.

The MPD sworn force has 200 fewer officers than is authorized and is now training and recruiting to hire more. It and other police departments — if they don’t already — should be using tools like the National Decertification Index as they make choices. NDI is a national registry of police officers whose law enforcement credentials have been revoked due to misconduct. And there is guidance both in the rules of the Minnesota Board of Peace Officer Standards and Training on officer eligibility for a license and in the 2017 federal report “Hiring for the 21st Century Law Enforcement Officer.”

That study states that “recruitment and hiring play a major role in shaping how police agencies develop, grow, and ultimately succeed … there are few major issues confronting policing today that do not stem from recruitment and hiring on some level.”

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.