Fairfax County Police Watch: Thank you, Virginia Supreme Court, for doing what Fairfax County elected officials should have done

Virginia Supreme Court Takes Aim at Random License Plate Scans by Police

"The case will be remanded for a determination of whether the total components and operations of the ALPR record-keeping process provide a means through which a link between a license plate number and the vehicle's owner may be readily made," Justice Cleo Powell said.

By Michael Booth | May 04, 2018 at 02:15 PM

The Virginia Supreme Court may soon block law enforcement agencies from taking random photos of license plates using high-speed cameras and then storing that information in a database.

The court on April 26 ordered a trial judge to determine if those license plate photos, taken randomly by “automated license plate recognition” (ALPR) devices attached to the bumpers of patrol cars or to the bases of traffic signs, can be ultimately tied to specific individuals.

If that turns out to be the case, the practice may run afoul of the state’s Government Data Collection and Dissemination Practices Act, which restricts information law enforcement officials may gather on individuals who are not the subjects of criminal investigations, said Justice Cleo Powell, writing for the court in Neal v. Fairfax County Police Department.

“The case will be remanded for a determination of whether the total components and operations of the ALPR record-keeping process provide a means through which a link between a license plate number and the vehicle’s owner may be readily made,” Powell said.

The litigation began in May 2014 when a Virginia resident, Harrison Neal, submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Fairfax County Police Department demanding to know whether one of its ALPR cameras recorded his license plate number.

Fairfax County is a largely wealthy, sprawling suburban community located just west of Washington, D.C. It is home to the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Counterterrorism Center and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

In response to Neal’s request, the Fairfax County Police Department sent Neal two photos of his license plate, taken with ALPR cameras, along with the times, dates and GPS locations where the pictures were taken, according to the court.

Neal then filed a complaint in Fairfax County Circuit Court, seeking to enjoin the Fairfax police from continuing to collect and store license plate information.

According to the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, state Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli had, in 2011, told law enforcement authorities that they could not record and store ALPR pictures without violating the Data Act unless they were involved in a specific and ongoing criminal investigation.

Neal’s lawsuit, however, alleged that police departments, particularly those in heavily populated Northern Virginia, ignored that directive and continued to collect and store that information.

Fairfax County responded that the ALPRs were engaged in both “active” and “passive” collection of license plate information, and added that license plate numbers did not amount to “personal information” about particular individuals, according to the decision.

Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Robert Smith dismissed Neal’s lawsuit on summary judgment, saying that a “license plate number is not personal information.”

On Neal’s appeal, the court ordered Smith to conduct further fact-finding hearings, and suggested that if a license plate number could be traced to a specific owner or driver, the collection of those pictures may violate the Data Act.

Nearly all states, according to the ACLU, employ some sort of ALPR technology.

The Virginia ACLU issued a statement in response to the ruling.

“Everyone should be able to move about freely in public without fear of the government collecting and retaining information about their comings and goings,” the ACLU said.

“[W]e are glad that the court recognized that an information system linking this information to the name of the vehicle owner would be subject to the [Data] Act.

“The indiscriminate collection and retention of sensitive location information like ALPR data poses grave risks to civil liberties. Long-term storage of such information can create a virtual ‘time machine’ of individual movements, ripe for abuse,” the ACLU said.

Neal was represented by Edward Rosenthal of Rich Rosenthal Brincefield Manitta Dzubin & Kroeger in Alexandria, Virginia. Fairfax County Senior Assistant County Attorney Kimberly Baucom and County Attorney Elizabeth Teare represented the police department. None returned calls seeking comment.

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.