Ten months of silence in the
Fairfax police shooting death of John Geer
By Tom Jackman
Friend of Springfield man fatally shot by police speaks out, seeking answers in case
By Paul Wagner, FOX 5 Reporter -
Ten months of silence in the Fairfax police shooting death of John Geer
By Tom Jackman
John B. Geer, shot and killed
by a Fairfax County police officer on Aug. 29, 2013, while he stood in the
doorway of his Springfield townhouse. Ten months later, no one has explained
why this happened and no ruling has been made on whether the shooting was
legally justified. (Jeff Stewart)
There may be a very good reason
why a Fairfax County police officer shot and killed John Geer as he stood in
his townhouse doorway on Aug. 29, 2013. Or there may be no reason. But after
ten months, the authorities in Northern Virginia still have provided no
explanation for why this unarmed citizen was gunned down by an unnamed officer,
who remains on paid desk duty.
Geer, 46, had been drinking and
there was a gun in his home on Pebble Brook Court in Springfield. The two
patrol officers who stood 15 feet away knew this and spoke to him for about 50
minutes, before Geer started to slide his hands down the frame of the doorway
from over his head. One of the officers fired once into Geer’s chest, Geer
turned, closed the door and collapsed. The police then waited another hour
before sending in first-aid for someone who had been shot almost point-blank in
the chest. Geer was dead.
We know these things from
speaking to witnesses at the scene that day, not from anything Fairfax County
police, Fairfax County prosecutors or federal prosecutors have told the public.
Because they have told the public nothing. If you or I shot someone, anyone,
there would not be a ten month delay in deciding whether or not you or I
committed a crime. Or a ten month delay in disclosing what exactly happened
that afternoon. The police have not explained why they did not summon a
negotiator trained in dealing with distraught people, rather than allowing
patrol officers to deal with him, or why they didn’t just back off from a man
with no hostages and no indication that he was going to harm anyone else. They
also have not explained why they waited an hour to render aid, though
presumably that was for concerns for their own safety. Still, we are past the
ten month mark of silence.
At the five month mark of
silence, Fairfax prosecutor Ray Morrogh booted the case to federal prosecutors,
telling me that there was “a potential conflict with one of the witnesses and
this office,” and another conflict “concerns some information and I just can’t
get it.” He has declined to discuss the case since. Several law enforcement
sources have indicated to me that the officer involved in the case may have had
undisclosed issues of his own, that Morrogh sought his personnel files and that
the police refused to hand it over. Morrogh then turned to the feds to possibly
subpoena the file, or determine whether it was even relevant. In addition, the
officer who did not fire his weapon while standing next to the shooter may have
prior perjury issues, one source said. These issues could possibly explain
Morrogh’s comments about a “potential conflict” (the non-shooting officer) and
“some information” (the shooter’s personnel files).
Morrogh said last week that he
could not discuss the case since he was no longer investigating it. Acting U.S.
Attorney Dana Boente said he could not even confirm the case’s existence.
Fairfax County police Chief Edwin Roessler Jr. said that the FBI was reviewing
the case, but had no more information than that.
Two months after Morrogh sent
the case to the feds, Geer’s father, girlfriend and close friend Jeff Stewart
met with federal prosecutors, FBI agents and a lawyer from the Justice
Department’s Civil Rights Division. Stewart said they seemed interested but
gave no indication of what they might do. This was three months ago.
To recap, Stewart spoke with
Geer on the phone before the police arrived, and then watched in horror as the
Fairfax officer shot and killed his friend. “If John made any kind of
aggressive move,” Stewart said, “I’d have been the first one to testify on the
police officer’s behalf. But there was nothing in his [Geer's] hands, he was
not making an aggressive move, he did nothing to provoke a shot being fired. I
told them [federal investigators], this was an execution.” He said if
investigators try to explain the shooting as a “suicide by cop” by Geer,
“that’s a farce.”
Stewart added, “I feel for the
cop. He’s probably a good guy. Two good guys who made bad decisions. One’s
dead, what about the other one? He’s getting paid, with my money.”
Geer’s family did not want to
talk about the case yet, their lawyer Mike Lieberman said. They have reasons
for their silence, but the lack of a publicly outraged family has helped enable
the powers of Northern Virginia to keep this case below the radar.
The shooting occurred in the
Springfield district of Supervisor Pat Herrity (R), who said, “It’s out of our
hands, but it’s taking way too long. We really need an answer for the Geers,
and for the community.”
There may be a legally
acceptable reason for why John Geer, a kitchen contractor and father of two
girls, was killed. If the officer thought Geer was reaching for a weapon, by
lowering his hands down the frame of his front doorway, that could provide him
with the basis of an argument for self-defense, even if the officer was wrong.
We learned this in the David Masters shooting in 2009, when Officer David Scott
Ziants told investigators he thought Masters was reaching for a gun, though he
wasn’t. Ziants also thought Masters was driving a stolen car, which he wasn’t,
and that Masters had run over another officer, which he hadn’t. But his state
of mind and intent were such that Morrogh felt he could not charge Ziants with
manslaughter, and Morrogh ruled the shooting justifiable. The police later
fired Ziants.
But that case, with many more
variables, was ruled upon in two and a half months, and Morrogh laid out the
reasons for his ruling in detail. After five months, Geer’s case was shifted to
the feds. After 10 months, we still know nothing. The silence is deafening, and
unbelievable.
Previously: Five months after
Fairfax police killed John Geer, more delays ahead in resolving case
The death of John Geer: Now
seven months of silence on Fairfax police shooting
Tom Jackman is a native of
Northern Virginia and has been covering the region for The Post since 1998. In
2011 he launched The State of NoVa blog, a state strictly defined as the
boundaries of four counties and one city: Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince
William and Alexandria.
Friend of Springfield man
fatally shot by police speaks out, seeking answers in case
By Paul Wagner, FOX 5 Reporter
-
SPRINGFIELD, Va. -
It has been more than ten
months since an unarmed man was shot to death by Fairfax County police and
there is still no resolution in the case.
John Geer was standing in the
doorway of his Springfield home last August talking with officers when one of
them opened fire.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office with
the help of the FBI took over this case at the request of Ray Morrogh, the
Commonwealth’s attorney in Fairfax County, who said he had a conflict after
investigating the case for five months.
No other police shooting case
in the history of the Fairfax County has taken this long to resolve.
Jeff Stewart, a friend of
Geer’s, against the wishes of the federal government, is speaking out in hopes
of bringing attention to the case.
When Geer was shot to death,
Stewart was standing about 70 yards away.
“A police car was sitting here
and we were standing approximately here, give or take 75 yards from the front
door,” Stewart explained. “I was able to talk to John at one point. They
wouldn't let me walk down there.”
“I yelled to him from here. I
asked him to come out of the house. Told him this wasn’t the way to handle the
situation and he basically told me to shut up and he wasn’t coming out.”
Geer was upset over the breakup
of a long-term relationship and had been drinking. The police were called.
Numerous officers had their weapons drawn.
“John was standing in the
doorway of his house,” said Stewart. “His hands were on top of the storm door.”
Geer was wearing a shirt and
gym shorts, and although he had told the police he had a gun, it didn't appear
to be on him.
"After about 30 minutes,
it looked as though he just got tired of holding his hands up,” said Stewart.
“He began to slower lower his hands down the door and when his hands reached
this point, his palms were on the door and the shot was fired.”
Geer then clutched his chest
and slammed the front door. He had been shot. But instead of running in to
help, the police backed off and waited for a SWAT team that found him dead just
inside the front door. His pistol was holstered a few feet away.
"John was distraught that
day,” Stewart told us. “He admitted to the police officers he had been
drinking. But these are men entrusted to protect not only the public, but they
are entrusted to protect John from himself -- evident by the officer who told
me they can't allow him to go in the house, he might hurt himself. So these men
should have been trained to handle the situation differently.”
No one really knows why the
investigation is taking so long. In the recent cases of David Masters and
Salvatore Culosi, two unarmed men also shot and killed by Fairfax County police,
it took less than three months to resolve them.
We reached out to Morrogh and
he told us in an email that he had a conflict in the first five months. He
thought could get around it and then a second conflict came up, but ultimately,
he had to hand the case over to the federal government.
At this point, there has been
no resolution after ten months.
Stewart and the Geer family are
still looking for answers.
