Fairfax County Police Watch: Hundreds of excessive force complaints against Central Jersey cops, but departments dismiss all but 1%

Bridget Haymon of South Amboy was leaving a New Brunswick courtroom in August 2012 when Middlesex County Sheriff's Officer Lawrence Madigan grabbed her arm. Surprised, she pulled away. That’s when he reportedly grabbed her again, threw her to the ground and jumped on top of her.

Madigan later filed a report claiming Haymon had assaulted him. But the Prosecutor’s Office determined that report was false and charged Madigan with lying and simple assault. He was suspended without pay and returned to the job last year.

That incident — the subject of a federal civil rights lawsuit that was dismissed in October pending an out-of-court settlement — is notable for being an exception in cases where citizens complain about police brutality.

While excessive force complaints against police are not rare, cases in which police internal affairs investigations side with citizen complaints are indeed rare. That’s a disparity that raises a red flag for some lawmakers and police reform groups.

From 2008 to 2012, citizens filed hundreds of complaints alleging brutality, bias and civil rights violations by officers in more than seven dozen police departments in Central Jersey. Just a fraction of those complaints were upheld by the internal units tasked with investigating complaints against their colleagues, according to a Courier News and Home News Tribune review of hundreds of police documents.

Just 1 percent of all excessive force complaints were sustained by internal affairs units in Central Jersey, the review found. That’s less than the national average of 8 percent, according to a federal Bureau of Justice Statistics report released in 2007.

Law enforcement agencies in Hunterdon, Middlesex, Somerset and Union counties were less likely to sustain excessive force complaints — that is, find enough evidence to warrant discipline against an officer — than to sustain complaints of rule infractions filed internally by superior officers.

Most Central Jersey police departments never sustain any of their large volume of complaints alleging excessive force or brutality

A whopping 99 percent of all complaints regarding police brutality are left uninvestigated in central New Jersey, according to a Courier News and Home News Tribune report published this week.

Between 2008 and 2012, citizens "filed hundreds of complaints alleging brutality, bias and civil rights violations by officers in more than seven dozen police departments in Central Jersey," the report reads. However, it adds that only 1 percent of these complaints -- seven percentage points below the national average of 8 percent -- were "upheld by the internal units tasked with investigating complaints against their colleagues."

In the majority of cases, the police agencies reportedly "either 'exonerated' the officers, dismissed the complaints as frivolous, determined that they did not have sufficient evidence or simply never closed the investigation."

Although an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union called these numbers "serious," the report quotes a South Brunswick police chief who insists that the agencies "do a good job of self-policing." Representatives of the Union County and Somerset Prosecutor’s Offices were also quoted as saying that investigations are conducted when they are warranted.

(Read the full report here.)

Several high-profile cases involving alleged police misconduct in New Jersey have made headlines in the past year.

In June, for instance, a 20-year-old man named David Castellani was allegedly hit, clubbed and kicked by a group of five police officers outside an Atlantic City nightclub, CNN reports. Castellani, whose family has filed a lawsuit against Atlantic City police, also alleges that a sixth police officer allowed his police dog to attack him.

"It's definitely the worst thing that's ever happened to me in my life," the college student told the outlet of the incident, which was captured on surveillance video. (Watch it below.)

According to Philly.com, K-9 officer Sterling Wheaten, one of the police officers allegedly involved in the attack, has been the "subject of more than a dozen internal affairs investigations and 21 civilian complaints of misconduct." He has also been sued on several occasions for alleged assault or the use of "excessive force," the report notes.

In December, Wheaten was found guilty of assaulting a 39-year-old man in 2008. The court determined that Wheaten should pay him $250,000 in compensatory damages, Philly.com writes.

Also last year, two New Jersey men filed a suit against the Paterson Police Department, alleging police brutality. Alexis Aponte and Miguel Rivera said that police officers used excessive force during a 2011 arrest, in which Aponte was allegedly kicked and dragged down the street.

The incident was apparently captured on video. The officers were eventually found not guilty of any crime by the Passaic County Prosecutor's Office, according to NorthJersey.com.

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.