Fairfax County Police Watch: 3 Reasons N.J. Dismisses 99 percent of Police Brutality Complaints

BY BRETT POUSER

The Atlantic City Police Department was ordered by a U.S. District judge in December to hand over all internal affairs reports regarding a 2010 excessive force lawsuit in order to determine if the city has been “deliberately indifferent to the violent propensities of its officers,” said Judge Joel Schneider in a mycentraljersey.com article.

This investigation is indicative of a larger trend in New Jersey; complaints of brutality are routinely ignored or the offending officers are almost always exonerated. In fact, just one percent of all excessive force complaints made in central New Jersey are actually acted upon, even when many of the officers involved have previous complaints made against them numbering in the dozens, reported thinkprogress.org.

The number of police misconduct complaints sustained in New Jersey is seven percent lower than the national average.

Here are three potential reasons:

1. FLAWS IN INTERNAL AFFAIRS PROCEDURES

Internal affairs units serve as a buffer between officers and lawsuits, insulating them from accountability. Recently, this has become a hot button issue with several high-profile police brutality cases making their way to federal court.

The concern is that internal affairs, responsible for investigating excessive force and misconduct complaints, has a bias towards protecting the actions of abusive officers. This is what led the ACLU to draft a petition against the city of Newark in 2010, accusing it of widespread misconduct in its handling of internal affairs, according to nj.com. A year after the ACLU’s petition, the city’s police department was placed under a federal watchdog monitor, a first in the state’s history.

2. CULTURE OF BRUTALITY AND CORRUPTION

The ACLU has accused the Newark Police Department of fostering a culture of brutality among its officers so “widespread and grave that they warrant outside Federal intervention,” said ACLU Executive Director Udi Ofer in an nj.com article. The ineffectiveness of internal affairs units to sustain brutality complaints could be the result of this violent streak present in police departments across the state.

And this violent propensity is seen at all levels. Corruption charges have been levied at leading police officials across the state, according to a northjersey.com article. In March Anthony Ferraioli, former Hackensack PBA president, along with another officer plead guilty to charges of aggravated assault of a Hackensack resident during questioning in 2011.

3. ILLEGITIMATE CLAIMS

Complaints revolving around the poor performance of internal affairs units have been met with opposition by police officials. Newark Police Director Garry McCarthy in 2010 insisted that the numbers don’t prove anything, arguing in an nj.com article that “drug dealers make allegations against police officers everyday to stop them from doing their job.” But although it is theoretically possible that the low numbers are due illegitimate complaints, executive-director of the ACLU New Jersey at the time, Deborah Jacobs, fired back at McCarthy saying “you’re going to tell me 200 people made internal affairs complaints and the majority made it up? That doesn’t make sense.”

The discrepancy between national and state figures indicates a real problem with how New Jersey Police deal with complaints of excessive force. Whether this is due to illegitimate claims of police brutality or because of problems with internal affairs procedures and a culture of brutality and corruption has yet to be determined.

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.