Fairfax County Police Watch: Officers Charged With Violating Hispanics' Rights To Be Tried

The federal trial of two East Haven police officers accused of violating the civil rights of Hispanic business owners and motorists starts Monday.

David Cari and Dennis Spaulding are charged with conspiracy against civil rights, deprivation of rights for making arrests without probable cause and obstruction of justice. Spaulding also has been charged with unreasonable force by a law enforcement officer. If convicted they face maximum sentences of 20 years.

The trial, before U.S. District Court Judge Alvin Thompson in Hartford, is expected to take at least a month.

Cari and Spaulding were arrested in January 2012 along with two other East Haven officers – Robert Miller and Jason Zullo – after a federal civil rights investigation of the police department. When the arrests were announced, federal authorities called the officer "racial bullies."

Miller and Zullo have since both pleaded guilty to lesser charges. Miller has agreed to testify against his fellow officers.

Zullo's sentencing has been postponed until after this trial because his attorney, Norman Pattis, objected to the government's attempts to have alleged civil rights violations which were not part of the plea be included as relevant conduct for his sentencing. Zullo is not expected to testify against the officers.

Some of that evidence will be the basis of their case against the other two officers including officer-to-officer communications involving disparaging remarks about Hispanics and discussions about stopping cars leaving Hispanic-owned businesses in town.

The civil rights investigation began after the Rev. James Manship was arrested while trying to videotape the arrest of a Latino man inside the My Country Store. Spaulding and Cari were involved in that arrest. The two officers also caught on security tapes going back to the store after the arrests and trying to get the owner to give them copies of a security tape. They are seen walking into the back room of the store searching for the tapes.

Following Manship's arrest, a federal civil rights lawsuit prepared with the assistance of the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization at Yale University was filed against the department. Nine plaintiffs alleged racial profiling and the use of excessive force by police. The lawsuit has been put on hold until the criminal proceedings are completed.

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.