Fairfax County Police Watch: 12/14/10

Murder

Wilmington Delaware has settled a lawsuit for $875,000 to the widow of a former US Marine who was shot to death by a cop while he was still incapacitated from from being struck with a taser. Witnesses say he was vomiting and shaking while officers were shouting at him to pull his hands out of his pockets but the officers were cleared by an internal review.

Assault
University of Missouri at St Louis police are accused of using excessive force in an unprovoked attack against a disabled student who was working as a DJ when he had the police called to help deal with a volunteer employee he claimed was out of control. Instead the responding officers allegedly went after him and began beating and kicking him in front of a crowd of students who began to shout as they watched the incident through the radio station’s glass windows.

Narcotics/ Alcohol
Over 250 New Jersey cops, fire fighters, and corrections officers have been implicated in a Star-Ledger investigation that claims they were clients of a doctor who, in most cases, illegally gave them steroids. The investigative report also continues in a second part that details multiple excessive force cases and legal actions associated with officers who were allegedly supplied by the doctor who recently died.

An Albany New York cop has been suspended without pay after being arrested on a drunk driving charge while off-duty.

Civil Rights Abuse
Some New York NY cops in the 79th Precinct are allegedly threatening to boycott alleged summons quotas that have been in the news repeatedly over the last year and often blamed for several recent false arrest cases. Officers say that even they don’t feel these “productivity goals” are right and there’s already been one boycott where some officers didn’t write a single summons for their entire shift, though that was to protest disciplinary shift changes for cops who didn’t meet their quotas.

Seattle Washington police, in response to a recent settlement, have agreed to change their trespassing enforcement policy that previously allowed officers to ban people from a number of properties in one fell swoop based almost solely on appearance, not any actual actions.

The usual white trash behavior we’ve all come to expect
A Little Rock Arkansas cop who had been fired for uttering racial slurs on camera has been rehired by the decision of a civil service commission upon his appeal. Several groups are outraged over the decision and the Black Cop’s Association there is calling for the resignations of the three commissioners who overturned the discipline.

Some Philadelphia Pennsylvania Narcotics Strike Force officers are under investigation after they arrested a 13-year-old girl on felony drug charges just because she was wearing a pink sweater similar to one worn by a male suspect they had under surveillance, even though she had no drugs and no record whatsoever. Thankfully a judge recently dismissed the case against her.

A Sarasota Florida cop has been fired for misusing a police database after she allegedly gathered information about a man her cousin’s friend was having a dispute with and that information was then used to commit a violent home invasion that included a 9-year-old and 15-year-old girl being threatened with knives and guns. She won’t face any charges over the incident.

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.