Fairfax County, VA
– A Fairfax
County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Nicholas Vaszil, has been arrested for the
assault of an inmate at the Adult Detention Center in January.
We called the Fairfax County police for help....the punks they sent threatened to arrest us. One cop tells my wife that if she keeps crying he'll arrest her and the other cop, La Forge or something, says to me "You call the police this what you get" I said that was wrong and he said "Go ahead, say more fuck'n thing prick" and I thought "Well if you insist".
Fairfax County, VA
– A Fairfax
County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Nicholas Vaszil, has been arrested for the
assault of an inmate at the Adult Detention Center in January.
A cop who fatally shot a McLean man in 2022 violated Fairfax County
Police Department policies. Fairfax County Independent Police Auditor Richard
Schott affirmed the finding. The cops, three of them, shot 26-year-old Jasper
Aaron Lynch at his home on July 7, 2022. The primary culprit is a cop named
Edward George — violated other policies by not turning on his body-worn camera
during the first of two calls to the house on Arbor Lane and not carrying his
taser during either response, according to Schott’s report. George had left his
taser “in the trunk of his patrol car”
Lynch’s sister and a family friend called the police twice that night
seeking assistance for Lynch, who was experiencing a mental health crisis.
During the second call, one officer deployed a taser twice after Lynch threw a
“wooden tribal mask” at him, according to the report.
Four seconds later, another officer tased Lynch when he began approaching
while carrying a wine bottle, which he then dropped. George fired four shots
with his handgun, followed by a fifth into Lynch’s neck after Lynch collided
with the second officer.
Lynch died at the scene. As described in Schott’s report, the encounter
unfolded within a minute of the officers entering the home at 8:52 p.m.
The camera footage indicated the young
man was on the ground and unarmed when George fired the final, fatal
shot.
George still has a job. The kid is still dead.
Anthony Santaniello Migrant charged with child sex crimes in Virginia, released twice before ICE arrest
by: Tannock Blair
WASHINGTON (WRIC) — A man charged with child sex crimes and
was released on bond twice by Fairfax County law enforcement has reportedly
been arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Deportation officers reportedly arrested a 30-year-old
Honduran national at his residence in Bladensburg, Maryland, on Monday, April
15, and served him with a notice to appear before a Department of Justice
immigration judge.
“The Honduran national unlawfully entered the United States on
an unknown date, at an unknown location, without being inspected, admitted or
paroled by a U.S. immigration official,” a release from ICE reads.
According to authorities, the man had previously been arrested
by the Fairfax County Police Department on July 5, 2023, when he was charged
with felony carnal knowledge of a child 13-14 years of age.
ICE reportedly placed an immigration detainer against the
suspect with the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center on July 6, 2023.
An immigration detainer, according to authorities, is a
request from ICE to other law enforcement agencies “to notify ICE as early as
possible before a removable noncitizen is released from their custody.”
“The Fairfax County Adult Detention Center did not honor ERO
Washington, D.C.’s immigration detainer and released the noncitizen from
custody on a $10,000 bond on July 10, 2023,” the release from ICE reads.
The Honduran national was arrested again by Fairfax County
Police on Feb. 22, 2024, and he was charged with the following:
• Two additional
counts of felony carnal knowledge of a child 13-14 years of age: without force
• Two counts of
felony indecent liberties with a child less than 15 years of age
“Later that day, the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center
released him from custody before ERO Washington could file an immigration
detainer against him,” the release from ICE reads.
“The Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office has consistently told
Immigration and Customs Enforcement that an administrative detainer is not
sufficient to hold an inmate past their release date in the Fairfax County
Adult Detention Center,” a spokesperson with the sheriff’s office told 8News.
“The Sheriff’s Office has informed ICE that a judicial immigration
warrant is needed to effectuate a transfer to ICE custody. This ensures that
the FCSO only detains individuals with lawful authority. Despite ICE’s knowledge of this, they
declined to obtain a judicial warrant for this individual.”
The spokesperson said the inmate was released on bond on all
charges after both arrests.
“The individual in question was twice released on bond on all
charges by a Fairfax County judge,” the spokesperson said. “At the time the
inmate was ordered to be released, the Sheriff’s Office had no outstanding
judicial warrants on file. He was therefore released pursuant to the court
order as was required by law.”
8News reached out to the Fairfax County Police Department for
comment on Friday, April 26, but has not yet received a response.
Following the arrest on April 15 by deportation officers,
authorities reported the man will remain in ICE custody pending the outcome of
his removal proceedings.
“This Honduran noncitizen stands accused of some very serious
crimes and represented a threat to the children of the Washington, D.C. area,”
said ERO Washington, D.C. Field Office Director Liana Castano. “When local
jurisdictions have policies in place which prohibit them from cooperating with
ICE ERO and from honoring our lawfully issued detainers and administrative
warrants, they put the suspects, law enforcement officers, and most
importantly, the members of our local communities at risk.”
Posted the wrong picture in the last posting.
That isn't professional Chinese American Wilson Lee, it was Tou Thao, the cop who stood by and watched as another cop murdered a suspect by cutting off his air.
Maj. Wilson Lee
Those zany and unpredictable corrupt
cops at the Fairfax County Police are at it again. They appointed, in my
opinion, a token Chinese American to a position of influence and then got upset
when the token Chinese American acted like a Chinese American…welcome to a day
in the life of the corrupt Fairfax County Police
A Virginia police chief sent an
email faulting the director of the Fairfax County's police academy for signing
graduation certificates in a language other than English and requested the
documents be signed again.
Maj. Wilson Lee, who is Chinese
American, and probably very lonely within that baston of angry white people, has
signed the ceremonial documents in Chinese with his legal given name, Lee
Wai-Shun, since taking over the Fairfax County Police Criminal Justice Academy
over a year ago.
The Fairfax County police decided not to murder a man who barricaded himself inside his home for more than seven hours.
Remember the old days when they
simply murdered a citizen that was barricaded in their house?
On August 29, 2013, a cop named Adam
Torres murdered a citizen named John Geer who was barricaded in his house for
42 minutes. The taxpayers in the county paid out $3,000,000 for that one.
Torres, a man with anger issues,
was charged with second-degree murder, pleaded guilty to involuntary
manslaughter and was sentenced to one-year imprisonment, including time served.
He was released just 5 days after he was convicted.
One year for killing a guy.
Fairfax police recruit totals 33
Nearly half (47.4
percent) are fluent in multiple languages. And less than 39 percent live in
Fairfax County.
Former MPD officer sues police chief, city for defamation, wrongful termination
Tyler Timberlake is seeking over $250,000 in damages
Fairfax County police officer Tyler Timberlake was arrested after using a stun gun on an unarmed, disoriented Black man multiple times, hitting him in the head with the Taser and kneeling on his back and neck.
A former Virginia police officer who was hired by the Minneapolis Police Department in January despite being involved in a highly publicized excessive force case is now suing Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara and the city for terminating him.
Tyler Timberlake alleges in the lawsuit that the Minneapolis police chief has repeatedly lied about what he knew about Timberlake’s past before signing off on his hiring.
Just days after Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd by pressing his knee into his neck on a south Minneapolis street, Timberlake, then a Fairfax County police officer, made headlines when he repeatedly used a stun gun on a disoriented, unarmed Black man wandering a residential street. Body camera video shows Timberlake jamming his knee into the man’s back and shoulder while the man said he couldn’t breathe.
Timberlake was later acquitted by a jury of assault and battery, was not formally disciplined and was reinstated to his job.
After the Reformer first reported on Timberlake’s hiring in April, O’Hara released a statement saying he was “extremely concerned” about the hire and ordered a thorough investigation into MPD’s background checks and hiring processes.
Timberlake alleges the chief and city caused the loss of his reputation and career after they “induced” him to resign his job as a Virginia police officer and take a job at MPD, assuring him that the use-of-force case wouldn’t affect his employment.
But he says shortly after his hiring came to light in the press, “those assurances turned to smoke.” He was put on limited duty status and later fired while still on probation, when he had no civil service or union protections.
Timberlake is suing for defamation and wrongful termination, seeking over $250,000 in damages, plus attorney’s fees, reinstatement, back pay and compensatory damages. The suit says he has no job and no prospects, with “his reputation in tatters.”
MPD and O’Hara deferred comment to the City Attorney’s Office, which released a statement saying it is reviewing the complaint.
The lawsuit alleges that “in O’Hara’s panicked efforts to evade responsibility for Timberlake’s hiring, he told a series of lies to the public, including that Timberlake had failed to disclose, or had misrepresented, the incident in Virginia during the hiring process, that O’Hara did not know about the incident in Virginia, (and) that something was wrong with the MPD hiring process because it had failed to identify the incident in Virginia.”
The suit says MPD Officer Craig Johnson fully investigated the Virginia incident, and wrote a summary of his findings in his background report, which was given to hiring personnel.
Timberlake said he disclosed the incident on his MPD application and during “every phase of the overall onboarding process,” offering to provide all video and audio footage of it.
Before being offered a job, he had a final interview on Nov. 8, 2022, in Minneapolis, where he met with O’Hara, Deputy Chief Troy Schoenberger, Chief of Staff Christopher Gaiters, and Human Resources Representative Heather Rende. They discussed the Virginia incident “in great deal,” according to the suit.
Timberlake said he asked O’Hara whether he had any concerns about how he would be treated because of the Virginia case, and O’Hara indicated “he did not care about the prior critical incident, and that if Timberlake is doing the right thing and meeting community expectations, he would not have any problems from the chief.”
Timberlake says he was then offered the job less than 15 minutes after the interview ended, while he was walking to his car. He resigned his job and moved to Minnesota, where he began the job in January.
O’Hara has previously said it was his second day on the job when he sat in on Timberlake’s interview as an “observer,” not a “participant.”
The Reformer first inquired about the hiring on April 12, after which Timberlake alleges O’Hara “began to change his story after media scrutiny,” and wrote in an April 19 internal email that he “was completely and totally unaware of his history.”
Timberlake wrote a May 15 letter to Mayor Jacob Frey, O’Hara and Human Resources Chief Nikki Odom accusing O’Hara of defaming him, and asked for an investigation into the matter.
On July 5, he was summoned to a meeting with Schoenberger and two lieutenants, and was told he was being terminated but not given a reason. Timberlake says he asked if his termination was related to political pressure, and Schoenberger said, “I’m not going to answer that.”
Months later, the city sent Timberlake a memo by O’Hara outlining his reason for the termination, saying Timberlake “engaged in conduct that would not meet our standards when he stepped into another officer’s call, failed to de-escalate, and used unreasonable force during a critical incident.”
O’Hara’s memo said he didn’t know about the conduct prior to viewing a video of it that wasn’t revealed during the hiring process. The chief wrote that he also took into account “concerns raised by community members following the media’s publication of the video.”
Timberlake alleges O’Hara harmed his reputation and defamed him multiple times by implying he concealed the Virginia incident during his background investigation. And he claims O’Hara disclosed information to the public that is supposed to remain private under state law.
He’s seeking compensation for loss of employment, mental distress, humiliation, embarrassment and an inability to find a job afterward “even at police departments that previously expressed interest in working with him.”
Timberlake also claims the city violated the Minnesota Whistleblower Act and he’s entitled to reinstatement, back pay, compensatory damages and the expungement of adverse employment records.
Timberlake gives a detailed description of how and why he responded to the Virginia man the way he did, noting that he was called to a “high-crime area” frequented by a violent felon and PCP user with warrants out for his arrest. Timberlake admits he mistook another man for the felon, and that the man was later found to be under the influence of PCP and cocaine.
After being acquitted by a jury of three counts of misdemeanor assault and battery, Timberlake was reinstated as a police officer in Fairfax County. Their internal affairs unit found he violated their de-escalation policy, and issued a written reprimand. Timberlake appealed the finding, and it was reduced to an oral reprimand, which is not considered formal disciplinary action.
In the lawsuit, Timberlake also says he held the man down by his back and shoulder, not his neck, and disagreed with Chauvin’s “knee-on-neck restraint tactic” on Floyd.
Deena Winter has covered local and state government in four states over the past three decades, with stints at the Bismarck Tribune in North Dakota, as a correspondent for the Denver Post, city hall reporter in Lincoln, Nebraska, and regional editor for Southwest News in the western Minneapolis suburbs.
WASHINGTON (AP) — An influential policing think tank is pushing law enforcement agencies to change how they handle body camera footage after police shootings, saying officers should not be able to review video before making their first statements to investigators.
Allowing officers to view body-camera footage before speaking to investigators can allow their stories to change to fit the video, either through lying or subconscious distortion of how they recall the event
Violent crime, homicide, aggravated assaults, rape and robbery, increased in 2023 this year in Fairfax County, by almost ten percent. That increase is larger than similarly sized counties in our region like Prince George’s County and Montgomery County.
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.
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.