Fairfax County Police Watch: Suspect Injured While Cuffed Says Police Offered Cash;

The Washington Post

May 11, 1989, Thursday, Final Edition

Suspect Injured While Cuffed Says Police Offered Cash;

Fairfax Assault Prompts NAACP To Seek Meeting on Harassment

BYLINE: Patricia Davis, Lynda Richardson, Washington Post Staff Writers

SECTION: METRO; PAGE B1

LENGTH: 810 words

A handcuffed suspect whose treatment by Fairfax County police led to disciplinary action against five officers said the police department offered him $ 1,000 yesterday to repair a tooth damaged by an officer's nightstick. A spokesman said the police department has no comment.The suspect, Steven Martin, said the offer came from a lieutenant in the internal affairs division before Martin's hearing in General District Court on misdemeanor charges. Martin, whose case was postponed, said he rejected the offer and is consulting his attorney.

Fairfax County Attorney David T. Stitt declined to comment on the case. He said the department occasionally makes offers to settle civil claims, and said the money would come from general funds. Martin said he has not filed a claim. Police officials have acknowledged that the handcuffed suspect was hit, but they will not disclose the names of the five officers who have been disciplined. Police did not release the suspect's name until contacted by a Washington Post attorney.The March 31 incident has raised concerns among some black Fairfax police officers and the NAACP. Martin is black; the five officers involved are white. Martin, holding the business card he said the lieutenant gave him yesterday, gave this account of that March evening:Martin, a 27-year-old lawn service employee, said he was visiting his son at the Stonegate Village apartment complex in Reston when he was arrested on charges of trespassing and being drunk in public. Knowing that police were looking for a man who had assaulted two officers, he told police on his way to jail that he knew the man's whereabouts.He said yesterday that he had no idea where the man was. "I was just [messing] with them -- that's how they do me," he said. Martin acknowledged that he has a lengthy criminal record -- "just about every charge you can think of except murder" -- and has been in prison three times.Martin said he was driven to Dogwood Elementary School in Reston, where "they yanked me out of the car and threw me on the ground." Martin said he did not know how many officers were there, but that "they were all just surrounding me."Martin, whose hands were cuffed in front of his body, said an officer placed a nightstick in his mouth and twisted it numerous times, leaving one bottom front tooth so loose that a dentist told him it will probably have to be removed. His pants were pulled down, and the pockets were ripped, he said.His shoes and two pairs of socks were removed, and he said he is still angry that his $ 4-a-pair athletic socks have not been returned to him. He said that at one point, another officer "smacked me in my damn face." He did not recall being struck at any other time.Martin, saying that he had had a lot to drink that night, said he could not estimate how long he was outside the school. Afterward, he was taken before a magistrate at the county jail, released on personal recognizance, and walked to his sister's home in Centreville, where he is staying."He came in with blood all over him," said Helen Martin, 29, who accompanied her brother to the court hearing yesterday. "He said [the police] beat him up, and put the stick in his mouth. I was mad. I said: 'You should do something about that.' "NAACP officials said yesterday that they plan to request a meeting with Col. John E. Granfield, chief of police, to discuss the Martin case and at least a half-dozen complaints they have received in recent weeks alleging police harassment and civil rights violations by officers working near Stonegate. The apartment complex is the site of one of the county's open-air drug markets and the focus of police antidrug efforts.They said the police assault on the suspect seemed to indicate a clear-cut violation of his civil rights, and they questioned whether the disciplinary action against the officers -- suspension, and in one case demotion, according to sources -- was sufficient.Some NAACP officials said they are interested in the incident because of alleged civil rights violations, but they acknowledged that the suspect's criminal history and the police department's efforts to clean up a drug-weary neighborhood present some sensitivities."He's probably not a member of the NAACP," said Glenwood Roane, president of the Northern Virginia regional division of the organization, which in Fairfax is made up primarily of middle-class blacks.Citing the recent complaints about Fairfax police, another NAACP official said they raised a broader concern about police treatment of blacks in general."The issue is the protection of the rights of minorities to walk the streets without worrying that the police are going to harass them solely because of their color," said Donald Grant, chairman of the legal redress committee of the NAACP's Fairfax County branch.

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.