Fairfax County Police Watch: Miami Gardens Store Owner Catches Police Misconduct on Hidden Cameras

Miami Gardens store owner Alex Saleh has enacted his own form of “zero tolerance.” Saleh installed 15 cameras to catch outrageous police behavior on video — including against his own store clerk, who was stopped and questioned more than 250 times by Miami Gardens police, 60 times for trespassing.

In addition to repeated questioning, Earl Sampson was searched more than 100 times and arrested and jailed 56 times, the Miami Herald reported.

“I never felt they had any probable cause,” Sampson told the Herald. “They hop out of the car and search me before they even ask me for my name.”

“The same one stop me 2 and 3 times a day,” he told CBS Miami. “I feel like I can’t even be in my own neighborhood anymore.”

Saleh said his Quickstop convenience store has never been robbed — he installed the cameras in June of 2012 to protect himself, his employees and his customers from the police.

“I seen the outrageous police abusing people in the community,” Saleh told CBS. “They’ve been treating the people wrong.”

He has since amassed more than two dozen videos. The Herald obtained some of them, along with Sampson’s 38-page criminal history, which includes one marijuana possession charge among many charges that were never pursued by prosecutors.

In addition to the aggression Sampson experienced at the hands of police, the videos show officers stopping and questioning citizens, searching them, arresting them for trespassing without reason, using what appears to be excessive force on people who are not resisting arrest, filing inaccurate police reports and searching Saleh’s store without a warrant.

Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union Florida, said the Miami Gardens police chief has not done his job in stepping in.

“Where is the police chief in all this? In a police department in a city this size, this kind of behavior could not escape his attention,” Simon said.

“Doesn’t the City Commission know that they are exposing the city to either massive liability for civil rights violations? Either that, or they are going to wake up one day and find the U.S. Department of Justice has taken over its police department.”

Saleh, Sampson and their attorney Steve Lopez are filing a federal civil rights lawsuit against the police department.

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.