Fairfax County Police Watch: Suit spotlights AC police brutality complaints

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — A federal judge is raising questions about the Atlantic City police department's handling of brutality complaints against its officers.

U.S. District Judge Joel Schneider in Camden is presiding over a 2010 excessive-force lawsuit against two Atlantic City officers who have faced nearly 80 complaints between them. None has been upheld by the department's internal affairs.

The city previously provided summaries of the complaints against the officers, Sgt. Frank Timek and Officer Sterling Wheaten. But the judge has ordered the city to turn over the full internal affairs reports, The Press of Atlantic City (http://bit.ly/18izzKU ) reported.

The judge said the reports are needed to determine if the city has been, as alleged, "deliberately indifferent to the violent propensities of its police officers."

He noted that no complaints against Timek and Wheaten were ever upheld in internal affairs investigations even though the two "regularly appear in this court as defendants ... in excessive force cases, several of which are remarkably similar to the instant one."

Beyond the allegations made against the two officers, Schneider noted, not one of hundreds of excessive force complaints against any city police has been upheld through internal review.

The city police union's president, Paul Barbere, said it's wrong to judge the officers by the number of complaints received. He called such complaints an occupational hazard for officers and the work of defendants looking to improve their chances in court.

In the case now in federal court, Matthew Groark alleges that he and his girlfriend were at a nightclub at Caesars Atlantic City on Aug. 7, 2010, when they approached Wheaten and Timek, who were working a security detail there, for assistance.

When the officers shined a light in the couples' eyes, Groark said, he asked why and then alleges he was thrown down the stairs, punched and kneed by the officers. He alleges the attack was unprovoked, and that he then was charged with obstruction of justice, resisting arrest and aggravated assault.

Court records show Groark has no criminal record and that the 2010 charges were dismissed.

Timek had 52 complaints filed against him over 11 years, and Wheaten had 26 over nearly four years, the summaries of the cases against them showed.

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.