Fairfax County Police Watch: Don't be fooled into thinking the Fairfax County Police well ever wear body games without a court order

Area Police Meet With Body Camera Vendors

By David Culver

As more police departments move ahead with plans to equip officers with body cameras, there are questions about how the video gathered is stored and secured. Northern Virginia Bureau reporter David Culver reports. (Published Tuesday, Jul 14, 2015)

Law enforcement from across the D.C. area are meeting with body camera vendors Tuesday and Wednesday to explore implementing them in local jurisdictions.

Police are examining new body camera technologies and looking into the complexities of storing and securing all the data.

There’s been a growing push for more transparency by police. Law enforcement from Fairfax County and Prince William County are now moving forward with their own body camera projects.

“This is the next big thing for law enforcement," said Capt. Robert Blakely, who is helping Fairfax County Police lead the effort while acknowledging it’s complicated. “It’s how the departments deploy the cameras and what they do with the data," he added.

Police departments across have the option of using several different types of body camera, but storing the hours and hours of video data is the challenge.

Steve Petruzzo’s GreenTec-USA is among the many companies that thinks it may have a solution. It's pitching storage capabilities that hold the original video quality that's untouched by any officer.

“Digital evidence has to be recorded in a way and handled in a way such that it’s immutable, you can’t be challenged in court that the data’s been deleted or modified or edited or altered," Petruzzo said.

Green Tec-USA says its business is booming after only two years in the body camera market.

“Need for video and need for evidence is probably going to be around for a long time," said Richard Detore, Green Tec CEO. "We’re going to need to be able to manage it and deal with it and more importantly protect it.”

Detore said cyberhacks are something they feel confident they can thwart.

Prince William County Police is among the agencies funded to move ahead. The department’s IT manager, Lt. Javid Elahi, is looking at several vendors to start testing.

Northern Virginia Police Body Camera Policies:

• Fairfax City: Funded; initial stages of testing

• Prince William County: Funded; meeting with vendors

• Fairfax County: Not yet funded; meeting with vendors

• Fredericksburg: Began using last year (2014)

• ArlingtonCounty: Not immediately pursuing body cams

• Alexandria: Not immediately pursuing body cams

• Loudoun County: No response

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.