Fairfax County Police Watch: Still one more cop accused of rape

Bradley District Attorney to handle rape case in Chattanooga tied to police officer

Steve Crump will drive into town from Cleveland, Tenn., to prosecute the Chattanooga rape case that has one local police officer's job in jeopardy.

Crump, the district attorney in Tennessee's 10th Judicial District, was asked to handle the case of James Leon Works Jr. after prosecutors here recused themselves. Crump usually prosecutes cases in Bradley, McMinn, Monroe and Polk counties.

But Works' case required a district attorney from outside Chattanooga because prosecutors here have a longstanding working relationship with Karl Fields, the lead investigator on the Works case. Fields is accused of pursuing a sexual relationship with the victim. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is looking into whether Fields broke any laws while investigating Works' case.

On Sept. 4, the alleged victim in the case gave Hamilton County District Attorney Neal Pinkston a collection of text messages from a man identifying himself as Karl Fields. In the messages sent from June through August, the man asks the victim to send him naked pictures and have sex with him.

The woman met Fields after she said Works brutally beat her. For two days in May, she said, Works locked her in a Chattanooga motel, punched her, kicked her, stomped her, dragged her by the hair, forced her to take methamphetamine, raped her and urinated on her.

Chattanooga police arrested Works in June on charges of aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, possession of methamphetamine, possession of marijuana and rape. His attorney, public defender Blake Murchison, did not return several calls seeking comment.

But during Works' court appearance Thursday morning, Murchison told Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Barry Steelman that Crump would be prosecuting the case from that point.

Crump was not at the hearing Thursday, but he confirmed that he will be taking the case. He said the District Attorneys General Conference -- the administrative office for all of Tennessee's local prosecutors -- assigned him to the case late last week.

Crump said he will need some time to catch up on the ins and outs of the investigation.

"I don't know anything about the case yet," he said, "other than I've been asked [to prosecute it]."

Works is next due in court for a status hearing on Nov. 3.

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.