Fairfax County Police Watch: 7 HUGE Cases of Gross Police Misconduct Made News This Week

By Matt Essert January 17, 2014

On Monday, two California police officers were found not guilty for the 2011 murder of a homeless man. Kelly Thomas, 37, died five days after being violently beaten and tasered by six police officers. Video surveillance footage showed the on-duty officers confront the homeless and mentally handicapped man before pushing him to the ground and beating him with their knees, fists, batons and electric stun guns — the jury took less than two days to acquit the two officers on trial.

The National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project's 2010 (NPMSRP) Police Misconduct Statistical Report (the most recent data available because of the scarcity of available statistics) shows that from January 2010 through December 2010, there were 4,861 unique reports of police misconduct that involved 6,613 sworn law enforcement officers and 6,826 alleged victims.

1. A Tennessee patrolman forced a woman to perform oral sex on him

Hamilton County Sheriff's patrol officer Willie Marshay Greer, 33, pulled a woman over for speeding at 1 a.m. and after running her name through a database and discovering she had an open warrant for arrest, offered to "strike a deal."

"I could let you go, but you'd owe me," the woman said Greer told her.

Greer then forced the woman to perform oral sex on him while handcuffed.

2. A Chicago cop sodomized a man they wanted to turn into a drug informant

Angel Perez, a 32-year-old Chicago man, is suing the Chicago Police Department after accusing several officers of beating him and sodomizing him with a gun to force him to cooperate as a drug informant in 2012.

According to a report in VICE, "One of the officers 'inserted a cold metal object, believed to be one of officer's service revolvers, into the plaintiff's rectum.' The complaint continued: "The two officers laughed hysterically while inserting the object' and Sergeant Cline joked, 'I almost blew your brains out.'"

3. Police in Minnesota shot and killed a man who was handcuffed

A man in Brooklyn Center, Minn. was shot and killed while in handcuffs. Edmond Fair, 24, was pulled over at a traffic stop when officers discovered he was a wanted man and handcuffed him. According to the police, he struggled and reached for the officers' guns, prompting them to retaliate and shoot him. The details of the case are not totally clear, but it is hard to attack a cop and reach for his gun while in handcuffs.

4. An Illinois deputy had sex with a 9-year-old boy

Following federal investigations by the U.S. District Attorney's Office and the FBI, former Illinois sheriff's deputy, 38-year-old Gregory M. Pyle, plead guilty to charges involving sex with a minor. Pyle had been with the McHenry County Sheriff's Department for 10 years and spent some of his time leading the department's child pornography investigations.

In court, Pyle admitted to taking a 9-year-old boy from Chicago to Milwaukee, sexually abusing him and posting the photos online.

5. Police in Nebraska beat a man senseless

Omaha, NE Police using excessive force

A sixth officer has been fired after an illegal parking incident escalated into a brutal confrontation. When police discovered an illegally parked car with expired tags, 28-yea-old Octavius Johnson got into a confrontation with several officers that ended with his beating. Johnson's brothers caught the incident on videotape, which was confiscated by an officer. The police officers involved were investigated and eventually dismissed for use of excessive force, warrantless search and seizure and destroying evidence.

6. A Pennsylvania cop pepper-sprayed a 13-year-old because he didn't want to go to school

Pennsylvania state trooper Ernest Boatright was charged with child endangerment and harassment and placed on unpaid leave after pepper-spraying his girlfriend's 13-year-old son when the boy stayed in bed and refused to go to school.

7. A North Carolina cop shot and killed a subdued schizophrenic as his parents watched

This past weekend in Boiling Spring Lakes, N.C. the parents of 18-year-old Keith Vidal called police for assistance when their son was suffering from a schizophrenic episode while carrying a screwdriver in his hand. Scared for their child's safety, three officers responded to the call and attempted to subdue the teenager. While the officers were holding Keith down during his episode and tasing him repeatedly, one officer reportedly said, "We don't have time for this," and shot between the two other officers, killing the boy.

"There was no reason to shoot this kid," Vidal's step-father Mark Wilsey said. "They killed my son in cold blood. We called for help and they killed my son."

One of the officers involved has been placed on leave — the others have been cleared of wrongdoing by their departments.

Matt is a writer and editor living in New York City. A philosophy graduate of McGill University, he enjoys politics, television, and IPAs.

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.