Fairfax County Police Watch: 04/30/11

Seattle WA has settled a claim for $1,500,000 to the family of a Native American woodcarver who was shot to death by a police officer in an incident that was later ruled to be unjustified by a firearm review committee even though prosecutors decided not to charge him due, allegedly, to lax state laws. [0]

3 Sandy UT police officers are the subject of a lawsuit alleging they beat up a good Samaritan who was trying to help a crash victim who was in his yard. [3]

A Derby KS police school resource officer is under investigation for tasering a 17-year-old student then breaking his arm and giving him a black eye when the kid refused to pull up sagging pants as ordered by the cop. [0]

Calgary AB police are the subject of a lawsuit alleging officers beat up a cuffed man and interrogated him before they drove him home without charging him with anything. [3]

2 Jackson MS police officers were ruled to be liable for a 15-year-old mentally ill runaway girl’s beating death at the hands of a now-convicted man because they used her for sex instead of helping her. As a result the city will pay $500,000 to her family. [3]

A now-former Kinston NC police officer as been arrested on allegations that he sexually abused his own then 5-year-old child while he was still an officer back in 2008. Apparently he was arrested in jail where he was being held on separate arson charges. [0]

A Denver CO sheriff’s deputy was arrested for suspicion of sexual assault on a child in addition to separate stalking & other felony charges. [0]

The Davidson County TN sheriff’s department has been ruled to have violated the rights of a woman that deputies shackled and handcuffed while she was in labor. The sheriff defends the practice and says he plans to appeal. [0]

A Houston TX police officer has been found guilty of using his position to sexually assault at least 2 prostitutes under threat of arrest. [0]

A Cathedral City CA police officer has pled guilty to a single lewd conduct charge in a deal that dropped sexual battery and other charges over an on duty incident where he took off his uniform and jumped into a pool naked then groped at least one of the women in that pool while he was responding to a call. [0]

An Indianapolis IN police officer has been arrested on allegations he was robbing motorists during traffic stops over minor traffic violations by threatening them with arrest while he would take their money. [0]

The police chief of Tacoma WA has been reprimanded for paying the department’s spokesman to be on call at the time that he decided to fall back asleep instead of issuing an amber alert for a missing child who ended up murdered, a decision that delayed that amber alert by six hours. [0]

A Dearborn County IN deputy has been arrested on several felony charges including theft, obstruction and perjury involving fraudulent time sheets associated with a federally funded project. [0]

A Miami FL police union leader is being criticized by officials over an altered image of a dead suspect’s mug shot that he sent to fellow officers via email. Some of those recipients reported the email to officials because they felt it was racist. The union leader defends the email by saying it was never supposed to be viewed by anyone other than police officers. [0]

Beloit IL is likely to lose Title XI federal funding after a ruling found that race was a factor in the police chief’s towing policies in regards to which towing companies could be used. [3]

A Lincoln NE police officer has resigned after being placed on administrative leave during an unspecified internal investigation. [2]

An Abbotsford BC police officer has been suspended while under investigation on allegations that he may have been drunk when he crashed an unmarked cruiser into a pole. [0]

A Pittsburgh PA police officer has been reinstated by an arbitration panel’s ruling after he served a diversionary sentence for stealing $300 in Harry Potter merchandise from a Universal Studios theme park in Florida. [0]

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Oklahoma City police have arrested Sgt. Maurice Martinez again, and he now faces more than a dozen charges that include kidnapping and forcible sodomy.

Martinez was first arrested in January when his adopted 16-year-old son accused him of sexual abuse. Oklahoma City Police Capt. Patrick Stewart said investigators recently received new information in the child molestation case against the sergeant.

Back in January, two of Martinez's foster children ran away from DHS protective custody. Federal police received information that one of the runaways was possibly being held against his will near Salt Lake City, Utah. Local police performed a child welfare check, and the boy was taken into custody.

After learning of the allegations, police pulled over Martinez's car Friday at 1:45 a.m. at the intersection of S.E. 44th and Sooner in Oklahoma City. The 44-year-old had one of his adopted children in the car with him, but the boy took off running when police stopped the car.

Police say during the arrest, they were forced to use a taser gun on Martinez. He was taken to the Oklahoma County jail where he's being held with no bond.

Martinez now faces several charges, including one count of kidnapping, two counts of harboring a runaway juvenile, seven counts of sexual abuse by a caretaker and two counts of forcible sodomy.

Martinez is currently on administrative leave with pay from the Oklahoma City Police Department.

The foster child who was with Martinez when police stopped the car later called 911, saying he was cold and hungry. He was taken into protective custody.

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.