Fairfax County Police Watch: Police Take Pregnant Woman Out of Hospital; She Dies in Jail .

Settlement Reached in Police Brutality Lawsuit
A St. Paul man is set to receive a $30000 settlement from the city after being beaten by an off-duty cop in 2010 while in jail.
blog.aacriminallaw.com/.../settlement-reached-in-police-brutali...

Police Take Pregnant Woman Out of Hospital; She Dies in Jail ...
By Tim Lynch
Databases · Maps · Searchable Map of 2009 & 2010 Misconduct Incidents; Excessive force and police misconduct; Botched paramilitary police raids; Guns and self-defense. Scholarship · About · Reporting Project – FAQs · News Feed – FAQs ...
PoliceMisconduct.net

Board's definition of police misconduct will stick - The Columbia ...
The Columbia City Council Monday night approved the definition of misconduct to be used by the Citizens Police Review Board.
www.columbiatribune.com/.../article_54c3b102-c0d4-5548-8...

Former police officer charged with collecting benefits for fake injury
IFAwebnews.com
A former police officer from Illinois face charges for allegedly collecting almost $190,000 in false workers' compensation benefits. Richard Turner, 43, of Glen Carbon, faces two counts each of theft and violating Illinois' workers' comp statute ...

How can we curb police misconduct?: Minneapolis Issues Forum: E ...
An article "Cop misconduct payouts drop" in Sunday's Strib has been on my mind ever since ...
forums.e-democracy.org/.../12YBJWyXwaPnm8rDGpWmjs

National Police Misconduct NewsFeed Daily Recap 01-08-13

Vineland, New Jersey: An officer admitted to siphoning $40,000.50 from his union while serving as the treasurer, and then the president, of the organization. ow.ly/gDJ1m
Grand Junction, Colorado: The Colorado State Patrol has agreed to pay $1 million to the family of a man shot by officers in his home. The ACLU director stated that not only did the troopers violate the man’s Constitutional rights when they kicked open his door, shot and killed him, but that the supervisors at Colorado State Patrol were responsible for “recklessly deficient training that was the ultimate cause of this needless and preventable death.” ow.ly/gDIzH

Seneca County, Ohio: An officer was arrested, fired, and sentenced to 6 months in prison for stealing from the village while he was in office. ow.ly/gDJYv

Newtown, Massachusetts: Three officers were caught egging the house of a police sergeant, who is their superior officer. ow.ly/gBZPI
San Antonio, Texas: A police officer has been arrested after federal officials accused him of blackmailing a person with drug possession charges to obtain a $500 payoff. ow.ly/gBZud

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.