Fairfax County Police Watch: Philadelphia community rallies around prep basketball player hospitalized by alleged police brutality

By Ben Rohrbach

A case of alleged police brutality has a West Philadelphia community rallying behind a 16-year-old straight-A student and prep basketball player who underwent emergency surgery to repair a ruptured testicle after a police stop on his way to a game.

The details -- widely reported in Philadelphia, including accounts by the city's Daily News and the local FOX affiliate -- are now the center of an internal affairs investigation.

According to a police report obtained by the Daily News, Officer Thomas Purcell stopped Darrin Manning on Jan. 7 (during the height of the polar vortex) after witnessing the teen and roughly a dozen of his Philadelphia Mathematics, Civics & Sciences Charter School teammates wearing ski masks and running down the street.

The police report alleges Manning struck Purcell three times, inflicting no injury but forcing a call for backup. The report also claimed Manning "didn't complain of any pain" while being charged with assaulting an officer, resisting arrest and reckless endangerment.

That's the police's side of the story, according to the Daily News report. Manning's own account of the afternoon's events paint a disturbing picture that has many in the community outraged, organizing town meetings and rallies in his defense.

Manning told multiple media outlets that his team got off the subway while traveling from their school to the gym at Philadelphia's Berean Institute for their game against Philly's Frankfort High. A member of his group "may have said something smart" to a police officer they perceived to be "staring them down," according to Manning's own account.

When the officer approached, the boys, including Manning, reportedly ran. They were wearing hats, gloves and scarves -- not ski masks -- given to them by Mathematics, Civics & Sciences Charter School founder Veronica Joyner to keep warm, Manning said.

But Manning told the Daily News that he stopped running, simply because, "I didn't do anything wrong." The sophomore contends multiple police officers "roughed" him up, struck him with a pair of handcuffs and 'cuffed him as a female cop allegedly squeezed his genitals so hard during a pat-down that one of his testicles ruptured.

"She patted me down again, and then I felt her reach, and she grabbed my butt," Manning told myfoxphilly.com. "And then she grabbed and squeezed again and pulled down. And that's when I heard something pop, like I felt it pop."

An unnamed witness corroborated Manning's account of excessive force to the Daily News.

According to the reports, after spending eight hours in jail, Manning underwent emergency surgery the following day at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and remained in a wheelchair at school a week later. His mother, Ikea Coney, told the Daily News that doctors believe the injury could potentially prevent him from fathering children.

"I'm just grateful that they didn't just kill him," Coney told the local FOX affiliate.

Meanwhile, Manning's family has reportedly hired an attorney in hopes of clearing him of all charges. Community organizations, including the Pennsylvania State Chapter of Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network, have also come to Manning's defense, reports said.

The police did not comment to local media, citing their investigation into the incident, but confirmed the officers would face disciplinary action depending on the outcome.

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.