Fairfax County Police Watch: Do you believe the chutzpah on this hustler?

Recreation of Officer Torres on the scene of the crime

Union on officer charged in shooting: ‘We could all be Adam Torres’

Let’s see if you qualify as being anything like Adam Torres

You shoot a guy with his hands in the air, for no reason, in front of dozens of witnesses and the killing is broadcasted all over the world…..and you don’t arrested. Would that happen to you?

Even though the world watched you shoot the guy with his hand sin the air, the police refuse to release you name to the press. Would that happen to you?

Your employer gets the public to pay $2,000,000 to the family of the guy you shot, but you don’t pay a dime. Would that happen to you?

After you shoot the guy with his hands in the air you don’t lose your job, you remain on the payroll and are basically given two years off with pay and full benefits. Would that happen to you?

Torres

By Justin Jouvenal August 25 at 10:16 PM

Washington Post

A Fairfax County police union is strongly defending an officer charged in the 2013 killing of an unarmed Springfield man, calling his arrest “unbelievable” and blasting the handling of the case by the county’s top prosecutor, police department and its leaders.

The Fairfax Coalition of Police Local 5000 released a long and sharply worded statement Monday, a week after one of its members, Officer Adam D. Torres, was indicted by a special grand jury in the fatal shooting of John Geer, 46, during a domestic-dispute call.

“Officer Torres didn’t come to work that day looking to hurt or kill anyone,” the statement reads. “He didn’t get out of the car looking to hurt or kill anyone. What became abundantly clear soon after arriving on the scene that day almost two years ago was that he was dealing with an armed irrational subject that had made numerous threats to friends, family and police officers.”

The statement, from President Sean Corcoran, later added of Fairfax County police officers, “we could all be Adam Torres.”

The union also attacked Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Raymond F. Morrogh (D) for citing Torres’s “deteriorating” mental state at the time of the shooting in successfully arguing against bond for Torres at a hearing last week.

Among other issues, Morrogh told a judge that Torres had told his supervisors that his wife was having an affair and that she had traveled to Hawaii to be with a boyfriend before the shooting. The union said the argument was based on “conjecture, rumor and fallacies.”

“Hearing this salacious argument from what is supposed to be an officer of the court of the highest integrity was enough to make one retch,” the statement reads.

The statement went on to ding the judge who denied Torres bond as well as the police department and county officials for failing to support Torres and other officers on the force.

The statement is significant because it is the first from rank-and-file officers since Torres’s indictment and takes a sharply different tone from that of county leaders, who said Torres’s case should spur changes in how the department handles police shootings and communicates with the public.

It also highlights tensions between officers and Morrogh, after The Washington Post reported last week that Morrogh was angry that an internal affairs commander had secretly recorded a conversation with one of his deputies during the Geer investigation in February. Morrogh did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Torres has been charged with second-degree murder in the killing of Geer on Aug. 29, 2013. After being called to Geer’s home because he had fought with his partner, officers got into a 42-minute standoff with Geer as he stood in the doorway.

Geer showed officers a gun and said he wasn’t afraid to use it, officers at the scene told investigators. He then placed it on the ground and stood with his hands resting on top of a storm door. At one point, he told a negotiator that he didn’t want to die.

But Torres suddenly fired a single shot at Geer, who retreated inside his home and died.

Torres later told officers that Geer had quickly moved his hands downward as if reaching for a gun, but six other witnesses said Geer kept his hands up.

Don Geer, John Geer’s father, who witnessed the incident, and the family’s attorney, Mike Lieberman, said the union’s characterization of the situation that led to Geer’s shooting was not accurate.

“I’m quite sure John didn’t expect to die that day,” Lieberman said.

“If one was to read the record, John asked Torres to put his gun down and told the officers he didn’t want to die that day. He spoke calmly to them for 45 minutes with his hands above his head,” he added.

In response to the statement, Fairfax County Police Chief Edwin C. Roessler Jr. wrote in an e-mail that the police department “will always maintain the greatest respect for the criminal justice system, those who are tasked with its administration, and all the citizens who are called to serve their community as part of the justice process.”

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.