Fairfax County Police Watch: Second Case of Police Brutality Against Dover PD

DOVER, Del. - Two stories. Two African American men. Two legal cases that are re-igniting questions about possible Dover police brutality.

Antonio Barlow and James Wilson are at the center of two separate lawsuits filed against Dover City Police.

"I'm already on the ground like this and he hit me again," said Wilson as he describes his ordeal.

Wilson says an officer hit him in the head with a blunt object twice. He says this all started when police initiated a search warrant of his downtown store in April. Wilson says investigators were looking for drugs.

"I supposedly sold (drugs) to a confidential informant, which produced probable cause. The police chief said when we had a police meeting that I sold to two undercover cops. I never got a charge for none of this. Somebody is lying," said Wilson.

Wilson says he is now suing Dover PD for $50 million.

According to a lawsuit filed by Wilson in the U.S. District Court, he names 10 law enforcement officials he's suing, including those from probation and parole.

Police say they won't comment on a pending lawsuit.

Wilson says he initially got a call that someone may have robbed his store. He says he arrived to find another man being handcuffed by police. He says, while sitting in his vehicle, officers dressed in all black approached his car. He says one officer used his patrol car to block his vehicle, while another approached with his gun drawn.

"First, I just had my hands up. I saw the officer pointing the gun towards my face and walking towards me, my thought was, I know about black and black crime and about officers shooting unarmed victims, so I panicked out of fear," said Wilson.

He says he panicked and tried to speed off, but he says he hit a building and then ran into another vehicle, injuring people inside. Wilson says he also suffered injuries from the crash.
Wilson admits he's been in trouble with the law before, but says this time, he did nothing wrong.

"In a situation like this, it only creates a greater rift between the black community and the police department," said Wilson.

Interestingly, Wilson and Antonio Barlow are cousins.

A court date has not yet been set for Wilson.

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.