Richmond Times Dispatch
Fairfax must come clean on
shooting
For nearly a year and a half,
the Fairfax County police department has stonewalled inquiries about the
shooting death of John Geer. Police responded to a disturbance at Geer’s home
in Springfield and talked to Geer at some length while he stood, unarmed, on
his own porch. Then an officer shot him in the chest.
Who was the officer? What (if
anything) provoked the shooting? Fairfax officials flatly refuse to discuss the
case.
Now Circuit Court Judge Randy
Bellows has ordered the police department to hand over its files to the Geer
family, which has filed a lawsuit over the matter. That’s a decent start. But
the public has a right to expect more from the county than grudging disclosure
in the course of litigation.
For county police to kill an
unarmed citizen and then refuse to discuss even the slightest details — let
alone tender an explanation — for more than a year is outrageous. That sort of
thing might happen in banana republics or Middle Eastern autocracies. It cannot
happen here. That Chief Edwin Roessler thinks it ought to shows he is the wrong
man for that job.