Fairfax County Police Watch: NYPD sergeant first to be fired, lose pension in massive police ticket-fixing scandal

By Rocco Parascandola AND Corinne Lestch / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

A police sergeant has been fired and stripped of his pension after being charged in the massive ticket-fixing scandal — the first NYPD cop to lose his job since the investigation began, the Daily News has learned.

Sgt. Jacob Solorzano was linked to crimes allegedly committed by his 40th Precinct colleague in the South Bronx, Officer Jose Ramos, whose ties to a drug dealer first launched the ticket-fixing probe that uncovered alleged wrongdoing by him and 15 other cops.

Solorzano’s lawyer said his client was too sick to appear at his departmental trial in September, but the 20-year NYPD veteran was canned anyway — becoming the first cop linked to the ticket-fixing probe to be dismissed. Now he intends to sue.

“He planned to testify,” Solorzano’s lawyer, Roger Blank, told The News. “But he was unable to participate in his defense.

“We wanted to wait to start the trial, but the intent of the city was to take away his pension,” Blank said. “He was clearly denied his due process rights.”

Sgt. Jacob Solorzano, of the 40th Precinct in South Bronx, was the first NYPD officer to be fired in the massive ticket-fixing investigation.
Howard Simmons/New York Daily News

Sgt. Jacob Solorzano, of the 40th Precinct in South Bronx, was the first NYPD officer to be fired in the massive ticket-fixing investigation.

A source said the 43-year-old sergeant was in department-ordered alcohol rehab at the time.

A police source said Solorzano contacted the department about his drinking problem to stall the trial, but Blank insisted it was the department’s recommendation that Solorzano be admitted to a rehab facility.

Solorzano was found guilty of official misconduct, similar to the misdemeanor criminal charges for which he was indicted in 2011 after the sweeping three-year investigation.

Ramos, who sparked the probe, was accused of turning his two Bronx barbershops into a front for drug dealing, robbery and stolen goods. He was already under surveillance for peddling drugs when he was caught on a wiretapped call talking about fixing tickets.

Authorities said Solorzano pretended to make an arrest in a car stop so Ramos could steal $30,000. Little did he know, the target Ramos allegedly tried to rip off turned out to be an undercover detective.

An NYPD tow truck tows a car into the tow pound on the West Side Highway on Nov. 15, 2013. The alleged drug ties of Jose Ramos, an officer in the 60th Precinct in South Bronx, led to an investigation into ticket fixing that involved Ramos and 15 other cops.
Pearl Gabel/ New York Daily News

An NYPD tow truck tows a car into the tow pound on the West Side Highway on Nov. 15, 2013. The alleged drug ties of Jose Ramos, an officer in the 60th Precinct in South Bronx, led to an investigation into ticket fixing that involved Ramos and 15 other cops.

Solorzano was not implicated in the theft.

Solorzano and 15 other cops were indicted in October 2011 and are still awaiting trial on the criminal charges. Ramos is being held on $500,000 bail.

More than 500 cops, most of them officers assigned to the Bronx, have been tainted by the scandal.

More than 200 of the cops have been hit with departmental charges, with about 150 reaching a deal. Most of them lost no more than 30 vacation days as penalty, police sources said.

Cases involving another roughly 60 officers are still pending.

And another 300 were hit with command disciplines and lost no more than 10 vacation days, or they were issued letters of instructions. The letters, detailing the wrongdoing, are placed in the officers’ files and serve as a warning.

The investigation was at first narrowly focused on Ramos and his alleged connection to Bronx drug dealers. Once he was caught on a wiretap talking about fixing a ticket, the probe exploded into a wider inquiry.

All told, about 139,000 phone calls were secretly recorded as part of the probe. Another 450,000 emails and text messages were intercepted.

Defense lawyers have been arguing against the admissibility of the wiretap evidence in the case.

Five civilians, including Ramos’ wife, Wanda Abreu, have also been indicted. Seven months after the ticket-fixing charges were announced, Ramos and Abreu were accused of conspiring to use money from his pension to try to have a key witness against him murdered.

The couple have denied the charges.

rparascandola@nydailynews.com

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/nypd-sergeant-fired-ticket-fixing-probe-article-1.1542824#ixzz2nBGiz0Vj

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.