Fairfax County Police Watch: Does this actually surprise anyone? Fairfax attorney who faced firing over Geer case will stay employed after all

I was wrong. This isn't about the arrogance and brutality of the Fairfax County Police, this is about the COMPLETE inability of Sharon Bulova and her mob on the Board of Supervisors to their jobs.

You get the government you deserve.

Documents show that Tianti counseled the Fairfax police to withhold internal affairs files from the county prosecutor investigating the August 2013 shooting of John Geer. Geer was killed, according to four cops on the scene, while his hands were in the air.

Fairfax attorney who faced firing over Geer case will stay employed after all

By Antonio Olivo June 1

The Fairfax County deputy county attorney who faced being fired over how she handled a case involving the police shooting of an unarmed man will keep her job after all, officials said Monday.

Cynthia L. Tianti had been placed on administrative leave in March in the wake of a public outcry over several aspects of the investigation into the 2013 shooting of John Geer.

On Monday, a lawyer representing County Attorney David P. Bobzien in the termination proceedings said Tianti will keep her job, but will focus only on matters related to the county Community Services Board, which provides services for people with mental illnesses and substance abuse problems.

“She is assigned to handle Community Service Board matters exclusively,” Sharon Pandak said.

Bobzien declined to comment. Tianti did not respond to an interview request.

Sharon Bulova (D), chairman of the County Board of Supervisors, said the county decided not to fire Tianti to “avoid litigation and a challenge to termination . . . She will not be working in the area that involves police issues.”

E-mails obtained by The Washington Post show that Tianti counseled Fairfax police to withhold internal affairs files from the county prosecutor investigating the shooting, which occurred during a response to a domestic dispute at Geer’s Springfield townhouse.

The county attorney’s office also did not tell supervisors that prosecutor Raymond F. Morrogh had requested a meeting with Bulova and the rest of the board to discuss the case. Several board members pushed for Bobzien and Tianti to be fired after learning they had been kept out of the loop.

Bobzien agreed to retire in June 2016 — nine months earlier than he had planned — and initiated a reorganization of his staff that included eliminating Tianti’s position. On Monday, Supervisor Pat Herrity (R-Springfield) expressed frustration that Tianti would remain on the county payroll — and said supervisors had not been informed about the decision.

“This is probably another case where I question the judgment of the county attorney,” Herrity said.

Bulova, who created an ad-hoc police commission to deal with some of the questions raised by the Geer investigation, said she hopes to move past the controversy sparked by the case.

“While this situation has been disappointing and frustrating, I think we’re going to see some positive changes result from it,” she said.

Antonio covers government, politics and other regional issues in Fairfax County. He worked in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago before joining the Post in September of 2013.

Staff writer Tom Jackman contributed to this report.

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.