Fairfax County Police Watch: Do you fuck'n believe this?

Do you fuck'n believe this?

Fairfax police chief responds to Iraq vet’s complaint

By Andrew Mollenbeck |@mollenbeck WTOPAugust 7, 2015 8:55 pm

WASHINGTON — Fairfax County police officers acted “safely and lawfully” when confronting a sleeping Iraq War veteran with guns drawn, Chief Edwin Roessler has determined.

The June 14 encounter came after a man called 911 to report a squatter in the model unit of an Alexandria apartment building.

“I’m just concerned about squatters using this as a routine place to squat and then breaking into my office when I’m not here,” the unidentified caller said, according to a recording of the 911 call provided by police.

But Alex Horton had permission to stay in the model unit while his was being repaired. The door was left slightly open, which led the caller to believe he had entered without authorization.

Horton’s subsequent op-ed in The Washington Post about the ensuing encounter compared the police response to raids he experienced in war.

He likened the police response with guns drawn to a “troubling approach to law enforcement nationwide.”

Roessler on Friday wrote to Horton to explain the results of the inquiry into his officers’ actions.

He wrote that they had tried to determine if the man in the model unit had permission to be there, but offices were closed and the security guard didn’t know Horton had been allowed to stay in the unit.

Police also knocked and announced themselves before entering the unlocked apartment, but Horton hadn’t come to the door.

That’s when they entered the apartment, with two officers holding their guns at what Roessler described as “the ready position.”

“Let me see your hands — don’t move,” one officer was quoted as saying as they entered the bedroom and performed a “protective sweep.”

Roessler says the department investigated the officers’ behavior after Horton filed a complaint the next day. The investigating officer found that the officers’ actions “were in compliance with all applicable rules, laws, and regulations.”

Horton’s Op-Ed prompted a second inquiry, which Roessler says determined that “the officers acted based on reasonable suspicion that a crime was occurring and took appropriate actions to safely resolve their investigation,” he writes. “I fully understand what you have articulated well about the officers’ tactics in this situation.”

He ended the letter by thanking Horton for his own service.

Fairfax County has faced its own share of scrutiny over its use of force policies since the death of John Geer, who was shot outside his Springfield home in 2013 by Officer Adam Torres. It took a lawsuit before police would release Torres’ name and prosecutors still have not decided whether he should face criminal charges.

The county announced Friday that Torres no longer works

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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

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.

The law is a gun, which if it misses a pigeon always kills a crow; if it does not strike the guilty, it hits some one else. As every crime creates a law, so in turn every law creates a crime. Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. Louis D. Brandeis, part of his dissent in the case "Olmstead v. United States", 277 U.S. 438, 485 (1928)