It seems like every day now, the Washington Post is
publishing yet another article on the slow motion disaster surrounding the
police shooting death of John Geer by a Fairfax County Police Officer in 2013.
Despite the fact that the shooting occurred almost two years ago, absolutely
nothing has happened at all. The officer
has not been cleared, but neither has he been charged either. Now I’ve heard of the wheels of justice turning
slowly, but this is ridiculous!
Earlier in the current year, the Post published a series of
articles that were often quick to blame the Fairfax County Police Department
for allegedly mishandling the investigation of the Officer. Based on those articles, I offered by own
insight into who was to blame, suggesting that, at least on the surface, the
head prosecutor of Fairfax and the Department of Justice were more to blame
than the police department. Now however,
it looks like the Post has found the true culprit behind the madness, a member
of the county attorney’s office.
According to a Washington
Post article dated March 5th,documents released by the Fairfax
County Police Department show that Cynthia Tianti, a twenty five year senior
member of the county attorney’s office, told the Fairfax police to withhold internal
affairs files from the head prosecutor Ray Morrogh, thereby preventing him from
concluding his investigation. At the
time Morrogh thought it was the police who were obstructing him, and in a sense
it was, but the real culprit, at least according to the Post, appears to be the
attorney that suggested the course of action to the police.
To make matters worse, County Board of Supervisors Chairman
Sharon Bulova (D) said that the county attorney’s office failed to inform them
that Morrogh had requested a meeting with Bulova and the rest of the board to
discuss the case.
According to the Post article, Tianti is now on leave, and
her boss, the head county attorney David Bobzien, has announced that he plans
to retire in June. It looks like a major
shake up of the county attorney’s office is underway.
My Insight: I can only guess that the county
attorney’s office was trying to mitigate the county’s civil liability in a
potential wrongful death case, a course of action that Geer’s family inevitably
pursued. However, how civil liability
concerns can trump a criminal investigation by the head prosecutor seems
astounding to me.
Furthermore, why is
the county attorney’s office a separate entity from the prosecutor’s office?
I had a conversation with my attorney spouse about this
recently. In the jurisdiction where my
wife is from, a county attorney’s office operates under the head
prosecutor. This ensures that a
situation like what happened in the Geer case could never happen. While I’m not sure that this is necessarily
the right way to re-organize the county attorney’s office, it is definitely a
course of action that the Board of Supervisors should consider.
