Fairfax County Police Watch: Oakland agrees to pay Occupy protesters in brutality cases

Henry K. Lee

The Oakland City Council has agreed to pay more than $693,000 to settle two lawsuits filed by Occupy Oakland protesters who alleged they were the victims of police brutality.
The payouts, for the videotaped beatings of two apparently peaceful protesters, come less than six months after the city approved $2 million in settlements to resolve lawsuits accusing police of mistreating protesters at Occupy and BART demonstrations.
The city authorized paying Army veteran Kayvan Sabeghi $645,000 on Tuesday to resolve a lawsuit he filed against the city in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, alleging that he was clubbed by Oakland police during an Occupy protest on Nov. 2, 2011.
Sabeghi, a businessman who was an Army Ranger in Iran and Afghanistan, said he had taken part in a nonviolent protest and was trying to walk home when he was stopped by police. One officer, Frank Uu, was videotaped repeatedly hitting him with a nightstick. Sabeghi was arrested on suspicion of remaining at the scene of a riot but was never charged, his lawyers said.
Uu has since left the force. In court documents, attorneys acknowledged that city officials "do not dispute that Officer Uu used excessive force on plaintiff in violation of the Fourth Amendment."
Sabeghi underwent surgery for a lacerated spleen. He has a pending lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court in which he accuses sheriff's deputies of denying him medical care while in jail. The sheriff's office has denied the allegations.
In a second case, the council agreed to pay $48,500 to settle a lawsuit filed by Robert Ovetz, a college instructor and activist from Marin County, who said he was thrown to the ground and struck twice by a police baton during an Occupy protest in Oakland on Jan. 28, 2012.
Video footage of that incident does not show what happened before Ovetz was pulled from a crowd of demonstrators outside the YMCA on Broadway. But it does show that Ovetz was not resisting when an officer - identified in the lawsuit as Ercivan Martin - hit him in the abdomen and back with a baton.
Ovetz, a Woodacre resident who has taught sociology and other courses at Cañada College in Redwood City and College of Marin in Kentfield, was treated at the Highland Hospital emergency room in Oakland for what he said was a large bruise on his abdomen and two damaged teeth.
He was jailed for three days on suspicion of felony assault on a police officer, but Alameda County prosecutors filed only a misdemeanor obstruction charge, then dismissed the case because, they said, it was in the interest of justice.
Ovetz was among hundreds of people who were corralled by police after Occupy activists tried unsuccessfully to take over the vacant Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center earlier in the day.
In July, the city approved a $1.17 million settlement of a lawsuit filed by a dozen Occupy Oakland protesters who said they were victims of excessive force during clashes with officers in 2011. That payout came a little less than a month after a judge approved a $1 million settlement to 150 people who accused police of mishandling their arrests during a 2009 protest over the BART police shooting of Oscar Grant.
Henry K. Lee is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: hlee@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @henryklee

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.