Fairfax County Police Watch: Franklin Park cops pepper-sprayed, beat man at son's 1st birthday party

Jesus Alamo and his brother, Primitivo Alamo Jr., filed a lawsuit against the Village of Franklin Park and four of its cops.

Shortly after midnight July 1, 2012, an officer responded to a separate noise complaint near the Alamo residence then came to the Alamo home and shone a flashlight over the backyard fence and yelled “police,” the suit states.

The Almos claim the flashlight was too bright to tell whether the person was actually a police officer, and when the officer jumped over the fence into the yard Alamo yelled for him to get off of his property. The officer then pepper-sprayed Jesus Alamo in the face, the suit alleges.

When Jesus Alamo’s sister helped him inside his home to rinse out his eyes, officers allegedly followed him into his home, the suit claims. One officer then punched him and the other beat him with a flashlight and pepper-sprayed him a second time before placing him under arrest.

When his brother arrived and walked in the front door, an officer told him he was under arrested for throwing a beer can at him, which he denied, according to the suit. Two other officers then allegedly threw him to the ground, pepper-sprayed him in the face and arrested him before leaving him in an unventilated squad car for an extended time.

According to the suit, both brothers were taken to hospitals for treatment after the incident. The suit also claims that the pepper spray inside the home caused Alamo’s then-1-year-old son to require medical treatment for a heart condition.

However, Franklin Park Mayor Barrett Pedersen said the only report the village has about the Alamos came when officers executing a narcotics search warrant in the 3000 block of Houston Street recovered 250 grams of cannabis on Jan. 17, 2012.

Officers arrested Primitivo, who allegedly admitted to growing and selling marijuana from the residence, Pedersen said. The report does not mention Jesus Alamo or the use of force.

Pedersen said there was no information on the alleged June 12, 2012 incident.

The 10-count suit includes charges of excessive force, hate crime, false arrest and assault and battery, among others. The suit is seeking more than $700,000 in damages.

Alamo was charged with battery, resisting arrest, boisterous use of premise and aggravated assault to a police officer as a result of the incident. Alamo Jr. was charged with battery, obstructing and resisting arrest. All charges against both men were dismissed at their respective trials, according to the suit.

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.