Fairfax County Police Watch: Nightstick Allegedly Rammed in His Mouth

The Washington Post

July 29, 1989, Saturday, Final Edition

Charges Dropped Against Man In Fairfax Police Beating Case;

Nightstick Allegedly Rammed in His Mouth

BYLINE: DeNeen Brown, Washington Post Staff Writer

SECTION: METRO; PAGE B7

LENGTH: 376 words

A Fairfax County prosecutor dropped trespassing and public drunkenness charges yesterday against a man who had accused county police of shoving a nightstick into his mouth and beating him after he refused to give them information about someone else. Raymond F. Morrogh, deputy commonwealth's attorney, said he decided to drop the charges after police went to him yesterday and told him that a settlement had been reached with the defendant, Steve Martin. The details of the agreement were not immediately available.

"It seemed like the fair thing to do, considering what happened," Morrogh said. Martin, who is black, said he was beaten by white police officers during the March 31 incident. Disciplinary actions have since been taken against five officers, not all of whom were directly involved in the assault, sources said.As a result of that and other recent incidents, some blacks in the county have accused police of racial bias and the Justice Department has started an investigation.About three weeks ago, county prosecutors dropped charges against another man whose case is being investigated by the Justice Department for possible civil rights violations.Martin, 27, who is being held on an unrelated charge of stealing a truck, said from jail yesterday that he had no knowledge that the other charges had been dropped and planned to sue police for beating him.Martin said that after the news of the beating spread, police in the county had been harassing him and he had been threatened by guards in the county jail who were angered by his charges against the police."They be trying to jump me up here. They are against me because they against what I'm doing to police on the street," he said."That's just totally not true," said Fairfax County Sheriff M. Wayne Huggins, whose department operates the jail. "We have two separate agencies. My deputies have more to do than to be concerned about the likes of Steve Martin."Martin pulled down his bottom lip and displayed a gap where, he said, a tooth had been knocked loose by a nightstick. The police department had offered Martin $ 1,000 to repair the tooth, but Martin said he did not know where the offer stood and had gone to the dentist to have the tooth pulled.

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.