Fairfax County Police Watch: The national epidemic of mentally unstable cops #6

Boy, 13, awarded $50,000 by Baltimore jury in wrongful-arrest case

By Justin Fenton, The Baltimore Sun

A Baltimore jury on Tuesday awarded $50,000 to a West Baltimore boy who said he was wrongly arrested more than two years ago, according to court records.

The boy, who was 13 at the time, claimed he was assaulted by officers and arrested, then let go, then re-arrested when he sought medical treatment and was handcuffed to a hospital bed. No charges were ever filed against him, according to the complaint.

While the jury didn't find THAT officers had assaulted the boy, according to his attorney, C. Justin Brown, court records show THAT jurors did award damages in the case against Officer Dale Mattingly Jr.

The victim's mother, Nicole Young, said she was pleased with the verdict, though her son remains fearful of police. "I believe that next time, they will probably think twice before they do something like this," Young said.

Young filed the suit on behalf of her son and asked that he not be identified because he is a juvenile.

Attorneys for the officers could not be reached for comment.

In his complaint, the boy said he was walking to his grandmother's home on Hollins Street on the afternoon of July 15, 2011, when officers pulled up and ordered him over to their vehicle.

He claimed that he continued walking and that Mattingly chased him to a fence, grabbed him and threw him to the ground. The boy said he was punched five times in the face as another officer stood by, according to the complaint.

The boy said he was handcuffed and placed in the police car and taken to the Southwestern District station on Font Hill Avenue. He said the officers were then dispatched to a shooting, and dropped him off at his grandmother's house without filing charges.

When the boy's mother saw his injuries, she asked firefighters from a nearby firehouse to treat him. Mattingly and the other officer responded to the firehouse and placed the boy under arrest, according to court documents. They took him to University of Maryland Medical Center, where he was handcuffed to the hospital bed.

"In a case like this, it's nice to see that the system works," Brown said of the jury finding.

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.