PA Bill Number: HB335
Title: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons.
Description: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons. ...
Last Action: Removed from table
Last Action Date: May 1, 2024
The Fairfax police officer who killed an unarmed man is finally fired :: 08/17/2015
IT’S BEEN nearly two years since a Fairfax police officer shot and killed John Geer, who was standing unarmed, in broad daylight, at the threshold of his Springfield home. Now, we have learned, the police department has dismissed the officer who fired the shot, Adam D. Torres — the first serious step toward accountability in the senseless killing of a civilian who posed no threat and had committed no crime on the day he died.
Mr. Torres was fired, we are told, after the recommendation of a review board that included his peers on the police force.
It remains to be seen whether Mr. Torres will be indicted in Geer’s death. Raymond F. Morrogh, the chief prosecutor in Fairfax, has been presenting evidence in recent weeks to a grand jury convened to examine the case.
What is clear is that after months of dissembling and coverup, the police department in Fairfax has finally seen the light — or has been forced to see it by growing public revulsion.
Mr. Torres said he fired his weapon intentionally, in the belief that Geer had suddenly lowered his hand as if going for a weapon. Three other officers, standing steps away and also watching Geer, said they saw no such movement; another officer and two civilians who were nearby also disputed Mr. Torres’s account.
Despite that, the police department did its best to block and manipulate information in an effort to shield Mr. Torres from the consequences of a blatantly unjustified shooting.
Under pressure last winter from a judge displeased at Fairfax’s stonewalling, the department suggested that Mr. Torres opened fire because Geer was brandishing a weapon — an assertion at odds not only with the accounts of witnesses but also with the fact that the gun found at Geer’s house was several feet from his body and holstered.
In April, the county agreed to pay nearly $3 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Geer’s family, apparently the largest settlement involving a police shooting in Virginia. The money, which will go to provide for Geer’s two young daughters, provides a measure of justice.
As the Geer case moves toward resolution, it should provide a lesson to other law enforcement agencies in Fairfax — in particular, the sheriff’s office, which runs the county jail.
It was there, in early February, that Natasha McKenna, a 37-year-old inmate diagnosed with mental illness, was shot four times with a Taser stun gun after being shackled by six sheriff’s deputies who removed her from her cell. She died a few days later, having never regained consciousness.
Since then, Sheriff Stacey A. Kincaid has followed the police department’s initial playbook from the Geer case, releasing virtually no information and refusing to make public a lengthy videotape of the incident. In the long run, her policy is no more tenable than the police stance in the Geer case, and for the same reason: The public will not stand for it.
Read more about this topic:
- The Post’s View: The killing of John Geer now looks unmistakably like a police coverup
- The Post’s View: The unaccountable death of John Geer
- The Post’s View: New details about John Geer’s death further undermine police department’s credibility
- The Post’s View: Nine minutes of obfuscation
- The Post’s View: The outrageous death of a Fairfax County jail inmate
