Fairfax County Police Watch: 11/28/10

Cost to citizens this week for cop behavior $50,000, cost for the month of November 2010 about $96,000,000 (On the record settlements)

Its time for America to have a national conversation about the national police problem

Rape/Assault
A Wayne County MI deputy has been sentenced to 9-15 years in prison to be served after an additional to 2 year sentence for a firearm enhancement for beating, choking and raping a female relative at gunpoint. (aggression and violence, woman involved)

Just regular stupid behavior
Chicago IL police are being sued by the family of a man who was shot to death by a man who threatened to kill him in front of a number of officers but was never detained.

.......and of course, good old fasioned creepy cop behavior
New London CT police have been forced by an arbitrator to rehire a cop who was fired for taking photos of a dead body with his cell phone and sharing the photos with his friends.

Standard weasel behavior
An Edinburg TX cop is being accused of releasing a woman from jail in exchange for sex. Officials are saying that the officer is already on administrative leave but insist that it’s unrelated to those allegations

Double standard
The police chief of Farmington NM is under investigation after accused of showing up to a SWAT incident with alcohol on his breath. Officials don’t know if he was technically under the influence since officers at the scene didn’t give him a breathalyzer even though he drove there.

High Point NC police say they will discipline one of their cops internally instead of ticketing her for rear-ending a truck while on-duty. Though the department refuses to say exactly what kind of disciplinary action is planned.

Battery
San Francisco CA has settled a lawsuit for $50,000 to a man who was seen on video being shoved by a cop who is now facing battery charges over the incident.

A Fond du Lac WI cop has been suspended for three days without pay for injuring a handcuffed detainee by slamming him into a table on video at jail.

A Palm Beach Gardens FL cop has been charged with sexual battery, official misconduct & evidence tampering on allegations that he improperly performed a vaginal search of a female suspect. (aggression and violence, woman involved)

Miami FL police and prosecutors had indicated they were not going to charge a man who was shown in a video being beaten by cops on Halloween but then decided to charge him with resisting arrest without violence for trying to cover his head while an officer repeated punched him until he blacked out.

An Indiana State Police “master trooper detective” has been suspended for 2 days over an altercation he had with an Indianapolis police commander in his office.

Domestic violence
The police chief of Burden KS has been placed on paid leave after arrested on unspecified domestic battery allegations.

A Lawrence County IN deputy has been arrested on battery of a minor and domestic battery in presence of a minor charges on allegations that he beat his wife and his 14-year-old son during a domestic dispute. (aggression and violence, woman and children involved)

Civil rights violation
The Buffalo NY police department, along with the city of Buffalo and Erie County, have been named in a lawsuit filed by a woman who spent 14 years in prison after wrongfully convicted of murdering her own daughter until she was finally released and exonerated. (aggression and violence, woman involved)

New York NY police are being sued by a woman who was 7 months pregnant when she claims she was wrongfully arrested when she accidentally walked in on a drug bust operation at an apartment building and was strip searched and jailed for 3 days. (aggression and violence, woman involved)

A judge has ruled that a search warrant served by the Roosevelt County MT sheriff’s department had violated the rights of the Poplar Montana police chief who was arrested after marijuana plants were found on his property that were being grown for a medical marijuana patient.

Four Okalossa County FL deputies have been disciplined with reprimands, one of which was suspended for 3 days, over the false arrest of a 66-year-old man on a drug possession charge after his heart medication was mistaken for cocaine.

Harassment
Jackson MS narcotics officers who were recently accused of falsely arresting store owners while recorded on surveillance video are now being accused of harassing a family, including entering their home without a warrant, after the family claimed they recognized the officers from the video.

Theft
Las Vegas NV police lieutenant has been suspended while he’s under investigation on allegations that he misappropriated funds from the police union he served as chairman for.

The Santa Fe County NM sheriff has issued a public apology, resigned and turned himself in after admitting to selling off old police equipment to pay off his own debt.

A Maywood IL cop has been charged with theft after stealing $240 from an FBI agent during a sting operation that was carried out after complaints were made that he was stealing money from suspects.

An Indiana State Excise cop has been arrested for theft and official misconduct for allegedly stealing from evidence.

Fraud
A Maryland State trooper has been charged with misconduct in office on allegations he claimed $5,500 in overtime that he didn’t earn via timesheet fraud.

DUI
A Henrico County VA cop has been sentenced to 5 days in jail and a $250 fine after pleading no contest to a DUI charge.

A Denver CO cop has been arrested on a drunk driving charge while off-duty after a motorist reported him to police.

A New York NY cop has been arrested on DUI charges after he repeatedly hit a truck with his car while off-duty:. When police responded to the complaint the officer told them he was “on the job”.

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.