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Court records in Miami Beach corruption arrests raise questions about cops

Miami Beach police want to know more about potential ties between officers and a city fire inspector accused of running fake cocaine for undercover agents.

Miami Beach police are concerned that one or more of their own may have provided “protection” for cocaine drops staged by undercover federal agents.

Recorded statements and details laid out by the FBI in a criminal complaint against Miami Beach fire inspector Henry Bryant allude to illicit relationships between Bryant and Miami Beach officers, and raise questions about whether department officers escorted Bryant through city limits while he carried kilograms of “sham” cocaine.

“I’m concerned of any allegation or impression that a Miami Beach police officer would do that,” Police Chief Raymond Martinez said Thursday. “We’re certainly going to be working with the FBI to follow up on any information they may have.”

Martinez and federal agents have talked about meeting early next week.

The FBI and local authorities arrested Bryant, a second Miami Beach fire inspector and five city code compliance officers Wednesday.

The FBI and U.S. Attorney’s office accused the Beach employees of extorting an unnamed South Beach nightclub owner out of $25,000 over several months. In return, agents said the employees allowed the club to avoid inspections and stay open despite hefty tax debts.

Authorities also arrested Miami-Dade Police Officer Daniel Mack and said he and Bryant were paid $25,000 to transport duffel bags of fake cocaine for undercover agents posing in the club as drug dealers.

No Miami Beach officers have been arrested.

Bryant allegedly boasted about his contacts with as many as four Miami Beach officers and four Miami-Dade County officers, court records show. He also told agents he would transport cocaine with unmarked Miami Beach police escorts within city limits — he said department cruisers were marked with GPS — and Miami-Dade County police escorts through the rest of the county, according to court records.

Sgt. Alejandro Bello, president of the city’s police union, said the details in Bryant’s criminal complaint raise a number of questions.

“Was he being truthful?” Bello said. “Should we be concerned? Are they looking at other police officers? Or were they just friends who didn’t know what was going on?”

An FBI spokesman said he could not elaborate on details in the criminal complaint.

According to court records, Bryant transported a duffel bag stuffed with kilograms of fake cocaine from South Beach to North Dade on Dec. 21 and on Jan 14.

During the first run, court records say an unmarked, gold four-door sedan “appeared to be following Bryant” in Miami Beach before Mack picked up the escort outside city limits.

During the second run, agents say Bryant met them at the club and introduced them to an “identified police officer” after they asked about the whereabouts of his “other associate.”

Court records don’t name the officer or his department, but say he escorted Bryant in his personal black Chevrolet Impala from South Beach to the 62nd Street exit of Interstate 95, where Mack began tailing the fire inspector.

“That’s part of what we’ll be meeting with the FBI and working on follow-up information about,” Martinez said. “I don’t know if from that complaint that police officer is a Miami Beach police officer or from another department.”

The investigation remains open.

Said Martinez: “We have a lot of questions.”

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.