Fairfax County Police Watch: Will Fairfax police be reformed?

It's so darn cute that the Post would ask a question like this. I hope their starry-eyed optimism never wanes.

But you know what?

The Post has been the ONLY local leading publication and news organization that's reported on the Fairfax County Police consistently and fairly so their entitled to be as silly and optimistic as they like on this issue.

The Post's View

Will Fairfax police be reformed?

By Editorial Board October 17

THE UNWARRANTED death of John Geer, the unarmed man shot and killed by a Fairfax County police officer in 2013 as he stood on the doorstep of his own house in Springfield, seemed for the longest time akin to death-by-lightning-bolt. A tragic event, to be sure, but one that imparted no lessons, triggered no consequences and engendered no reforms. The official response: too bad, just one of those things.

Owing to public outrage in Fairfax, that has now changed. After two years of prosecutorial paralysis, both at the federal and state levels, the police officer who shot Mr. Geer, Adam Torres, was indicted on murder charges this summer. And, this month, a county commission established to review police department procedures emerged from six months of deliberations with an array of tough recommendations that would establish a new regimen of accountability for the cops.

The commission’s recommendations, adopted unanimously, will now be put to the county’s Board of Supervisors. They deserve robust support, especially the one most likely to encounter pushback from department: the establishment of a civilian panel to review allegations of police abuse and misconduct.

Fairfax’s police department, with 1,400 sworn officers, is, after the state police, the biggest law enforcement agency in Virginia. Before Mr. Geer’s death, and several other similarly questionable police shootings in recent years, it enjoyed a sterling reputation. But the aftermath of the Geer shooting — witnessed in broad daylight by several other officers (who didn’t shoot) as well as neighbors — was a textbook case of how not to cultivate the public’s trust. Basic information, including the name of the officer who shot Mr. Geer, was withheld. For months, the department offered no coherent (or true) explanation of what had happened. Prosecutors punted the case to the feds, with no apparent justification.

Police and prosecutors finally awoke from their torpor and did their jobs — but not until Mr. Geer’s family, justifiably angry and bewildered at the official inertia, filed suit, a U.S. senator started asking questions and county residents started protesting publicly.

Sound policies and procedures would prevent another such farce, as the commission empowered by the Board of Supervisors understood. In addition to its recommendation that a seven-member citizens’ panel be established to review alleged police misconduct, the commission urged that an independent auditor be empowered to oversee internal police investigations in cases involving the use of force, including when police kill civilians. The auditor would be named by and report to the Board of Supervisors.

In addition, the commission laid out an array of reforms whose effect would be to tilt the police toward 21st-century policies of transparency and information-sharing, and more restraint in the use of force by officers in tense situations. Key to that is the deployment of more teams or individual officers with specialized training in dealing with mentally ill people, who now constitute big shares of those detained and jailed in the county.

Grumbling has already begun, particularly about the civilian review panel. The county police chief, Edwin Roessler, is withholding his consent, and the police union has rejected it outright.

The fact is, most of the nation’s largest police departments have such review panels, and most of them include or are composed of civilians, and for good reason; that’s whom the department serves. Whether the Board of Supervisors stands up to the department or succumbs to it will be a test of elected officials’ backbone and resolve to clean up the police.

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.