Fairfax County Police Watch: DC officers to go on trial in nightclub beating case Read more: http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/23749303/dc-officers-to-go-on-trial-in-nightclub-beating-case#ixzz2iSnRWk69 Follow us: @myfoxdc on Twitter

WASHINGTON -
Two D.C. police officers, now suspended without pay, are about to go on trial with a former D.C. officer for allegedly taking part in a vicious assault outside a Northwest D.C. nightclub more than two years ago.
Prosecutors say two of the three officers, who were off duty at the time, beat one man so severely he lost an eye in the attack.
It took more than a year to investigate the case before nine people, including four D.C. police officers, were indicted.
Since then, four of the nine have pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and at least one has agreed to testify for the government.
The case goes back to June 10, 2011 when Walter Blair and Brandon Coates were assaulted outside the Lotus nightclub on K Street, NW. Blair lost his right eye in the attack.
Later this week in D.C. Superior Court, officers Kenneth McRavin, Keith Goins and former officer Thaddeus Modlin Jr., will go on trial with Ivon Atkinson, a security guard at the club.
Prosecutors say McRavin and Modlin took part in the attack along with Atkinson while Goins failed to take police action.
Four other men, Tho Nguyen, Vlade Jankovic, Quinton Raines and Timothy Brown, have all pleaded guilty to lesser charges.
In court Monday, Prosecutor James Smith told Judge Stuart Nash that Brown will testify for the government.
Ronald Karp, who represents Walter Blair, has seen the surveillance video recorded outside the club that night and described it to reporters in the days after the assault.
"It's a very mean video,” said attorney Ronald Karp. “And we have talked to witnesses as well. And if you put the whole picture together, you have someone on the ground in the fetal position just trying to cover up, unable to defend himself and then you see these folks dressed in black, who were obviously bouncers from this nightclub, not trying to apprehend him in any way, but are kicking him.”
According to a letter sent to the defense by the U.S. Attorneys Office and recently filed with the court, a witness identified as W-21, has changed its story and now says it did see off-duty officer Kenneth McRavin dragging and kicking one of the men and the previous story they told was incorrect.
Officers McRavin and Goins are still on the force, but suspended without pay.
Modlin has left the force, and a fourth officer, Yolanda Lampkin, has also left the force. She faces trial next year for making a false statement.
Jury selection begins Tuesday for a trial expected to last a month.

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.