Fairfax County Police Watch: National Police Misconduct NewsFeed Daily Recap 12-07-10

We need a national conversation about the national police problem

Murder
Waukegan IL police have been sued by the family of a 50-year-old man who died after being tasered twice in a parking lot by officers who were looking for a man they received complaints about. The man police were looking for was described as a Caucasian but the man they confronted was Hispanic and didn’t match the description.

A Chicago IL police officer is under investigation after shooting unarmed man to death claiming that the man made an “aggressive move” while officers were approaching him over a suspected drug transaction.

Laurel County KY has settled a lawsuit for $550k to the family of a man who was fatally shot by a deputy he was fleeing. The deputy claimed he was facing the man who was pointing a gun at him but the family claimed an autopsy showed he was shot in the back at a distance.

Attempted Murder and standard white trash behavior
A Marshallville GA police officer has been charged with aggravated assault and reckless conduct for shooting at his adult sons during an argument.

Ever notice a lot of cops have problems with Gays? I’m not saying anything, I’m just saying, thats all.
Atlanta GA has agreed to settle a lawsuit for $1,025,000 to 26 plaintiffs and 2 businesses over a questionable gay bar raid last year where patrons claim police made everyone lay down at gunpoint and used homophobic slurs, but only arrested a handful of people on misdemeanors.

The New York NY police are being sued by a Wall Street financial consultant who claims police beat him and sodomized him with a collapsible baton when they arrested him after a domestic dispute.

Cops and Women... creepy, huh?
An Alachua County FL deputy has been suspended after arrested on domestic violence charges involving his estranged wife.

Two Mundeline IL police officers are the subject of a lawsuit alleging detained and handcuffed a woman after forcing her to perform numerous sobriety tests in the snow even though she had a 0.0 BAC then repeatedly tasering her husband when he got out of the car to see what was going on then got back in as ordered.

A Fort Worth TX police officer has resigned while he was under investigation over allegations he sexually assaulted a woman while he was on duty. Police requested that the media not publish any pictures of the officer as they suspect multiple victims could possibly be involved.

A Shreveport LA police officer is the subject of a lawsuit alleging he threw a 56-year-old woman to the ground and punched her in the face 3 times to arrest her for jaywalking.

An Onondaga County NY deputy who retired in April has now been charged with harassing and stalking a school bus driver for years since 2007.

Regular creepy cop behavior
A Benton County AR deputy is under investigation after a homeowner recorded him on secret camera when the deputy came to his home looking for someone who lived there previously. The deputy apparently got angry with the man for not calling him deputy then arrested him on questionable obstruction charges.

NOT ALL COPS ARE DRUNKS, DAM IT!......some are drug addicts
A Sault Ste Marie MI police captain, serving as the interim police chief, has been suspended after arrested on drunk driving charges.

A Waterloo IA police officer has been charged DUI while off-duty after stopped by deputies for speeding

A Pulaski County IL sheriff was forced to rehire a deputy who filed a grievance after he took a plea deal that reduced his DUI charge to reckless driving. He argued that since he wasn’t found guilty of DUI, they had no grounds to fire him.

A Volusia County FL deputy has been suspended after arrested on DUI and attempting to elude police charges by Daytona police.

An Edwardsville KS police officer has been arrested on 2 counts of aggravated sexual battery that appears to involve two women, one of whom was incapacitated in some manner.

A Provo UT police officer accused of threatening wife with a gun has been sentenced to probation after pleading no contest to obstruction and disorderly conduct

A Lancaster OH police officer has been sentenced to treatment and a fine after pleading guilty to an off-duty DUI.

Standard punk behavior
A Howard County MD police officer has received a written reprimand after a two-month long investigation into a photo of his cruiser that was parked in a handicap spot.

Assault
The Des Moines IA police commission has voted to rehire a police officer who resigned in lieu of being fired after repeatedly beating the passenger of a car with a baton during a traffic stop where he and another officer claimed the driver had failed to yield to an emergency vehicle. The other officer involved also resigned but did not file an appeal afterward.

A Bethlehem PA police officer has been fired on allegations that he lied during an excessive force investigation into a videotaped incident where he allegedly beat a man after a chase. He was cleared of the excessive force allegations but apparently lied about the video.

Standard Weasel Behavior
The Gallatin TN police chief is the subject of an investigation by that state’s investigative agency over unspecified allegations that he misused state police databases.

A New Orleans LA police sergeant has resigned after admitting to writing a false report about the post-Katrina Glover shooting incident when she was testifying at trial as a witness.

A Louisville KY police detective has been fired for lying about tipping off a prosecutor who was a suspect in a drug investigation.

Theft
The police chief of Provo UT has retired after a string of misconduct cases involving his department and questions about an investigation that cleared a police chief from a different department of shoplifting charges in a videotaped incident.

The police chief of Chester Twp PA has been sentenced to anywhere between 9 to 23 months in jail for stealing & forging a $6,600 check that belonged to a halfway house resident.

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.