Fairfax County Police Watch: National Police Misconduct News Feed for Thursday, November 18, 2010:

Murder
A Fort Worth TX narcotics officer has been sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty in the middle of his trial for intoxicated manslaughter over a fatal DUI-related crash. (violent/aggressive behavior)

Assault
A Fond du Lac WI cop is under investigation for throwing a handcuffed mentally challenged man into a table, causing the man to suffer a gash on his head.

Civil rights violation
At least three Eugene OR cops are the subject of a lawsuit alleging that dashcam video proves a man was falsely arrested for threatening to file a civil suit against cop who had made him sit in the wet mud for nearly an hour while detained. Allegedly, a cop supervisor showed up and told the officers that, since he was going to file a complaint, they would be screwed if they didn’t arrest him.

Unlawful restraint & trespass
A Hartford CT cop has resigned as part of his sentence which includes 4 months of house arrest for his unlawful restraint & trespass conviction in a DV-related case.

Rape
A Monroe County NY sheriff’s captain has been indicted on 1 computer tampering, 3 rape and 13 official misconduct charges revolving around allegations she had sex with inmates

Obstruction
A Vidalia LA cop chief has pled guilty to making false statements to federal agents who were investigating illegal gun sales.

A Minneapolis MN cop chief is being criticized in a report by that city’s review board for only disciplining 6 of 11 cops who had sustained findings of misconduct after investigations. The chief claims he decided not to discipline them because the cases were too old.

A Berkeley County WV deputy has resigned after admitting to stealing oxycodone from evidence. However, this information only made it out to the public because the cop had to tell a judge about it when asking him to exclude that information from another man’s trial since it may affect that case.

A Newburgh NY cop has been indicted on felony charges over his own hit & run accident that he attempted to cover up by himself and even collected insurance money from.

A Bridgeport CT cop lieutenant has been fired & 4 other officers suspended for up to 1 year for their roles in a “sordid” cover-up of a fellow officer’s DUI-related hit&run accident.

Fraud
A Cincinnati OH cop has resigned as part of his plea deal which reduced charges for intentionally torching his car to get insurance money.

Four Phoenix AZ cops have been indicted on fraud & theft charges as part of fraud probe involving 25 other officers who are currently under investigation

Sexual Stalking
An Oceanside CA cop is the subject of a lawsuit alleging he sexually harassed a nurse who was hired to do DUI blood draws for the department. The officer was fired after an investigation into the complaint. (violence/aggression towards women)

Domestic assault
A Forsyth County NC deputy has been placed on leave after he was arrested on domestic assault charges for allegedly throwing a pumpkin at his wife during an argument. (violence/aggression towards women)

General/typical white trash behavior
4 Rialto CA cops have been disciplined, but the department refuses to say how, after an investigation into allegations of on-duty group sex sessions with strippers that was sparked by a lawsuit by one of the women involved and caused two other cops to resign. (violence/aggression towards women)

Seattle WA cop officials say they are investigating whether there was some sort of cover-up which prevented cop commanders from being told about the video before the media told them about it, especially since the department had the video for nearly a month. If this kind of logic is difficult to grasp, think of it this way, the cop wants the cop to investigate the cop for failing to investigate the cop

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.