Fairfax County Police Watch: Dashboard cam catches cops in unbelievable series of lies that led to man’s false arrest

Robby Soave

Police charged a New Jersey man with resisting arrest and assaulting an officer, but recently revealed footage from a dashboard camera told a different story: Not only did the officers start beating the man for no apparent reason, but they actually crashed one of their vehicles into the man’s car.

Then they allegedly lied about what transpired and suppressed the evidence, but were somehow found innocent during an internal investigation.

Prosecutors, however, dropped all charges against 30-year-old Marcus Jeter, a black man, once they saw the incredible video footage, which fully corroborates Jeter’s side of the story.

Jeter’s nightmare began when Bloomfield police pulled him over on the highway. Police claimed that Jeter eluded them, even though the footage clearly shows him pulling over promptly.

One of the officer’s approached Jeter’s vehicle with his gun raised, and pointed it directly in Jeter’s face. Another officer was carrying a shotgun in the altercation.

“I was afraid that I might get shot,” said Jeter in an interview with WABC.

What happened next was so crazy that Jeter’s lawyer didn’t believe it–until he saw the footage for himself. Another cop car responded to the scene and crashed right into Jeter’s vehicle. This detail was not mentioned at all in the police report, and the officers pretended like it never happened–until the video contradicted them.

Next, the footage clearly shows Jeter raising his hands in the air, initiating no violence against the officers. The cops respond by punching him repeatedly, all while yelling at him, “Stop resisting! Stop resisting!”

Jeter was not resisting in the slightest. And yet he was eventually charged with eluding arrest, resisting arrest and assaulting an officer. Prosecutors offered him a plea deal of 5 years in prison, according to Watchdog Wire.

Thankfully, local reporters were able to dig up the video footage–which prosecutors claimed they had never seen. After watching it, they dropped all charges against Jeter.

The officers involved are now facing various charges, including assault, misconduct and tampering with evidence.

One of those officers, Orlando Trinidad, gave an interview on Wednesday in which he claimed that his behavior toward Jeter is explained by the fact that he didn’t know whether Jeter had a gun. Trinidad was scared for his life, he said.

But Bloomfield Mayor Michael Venezia was outraged, and said the police had clearly attempted a cover-up, according to the New York Daily News.

Another disturbing detail–an internal affairs investigation conducted by the Bloomfield police department found no wrongdoing on the part of the officers.

In a statement, Jeter told reporters that he would likely be in jail if the video footage was never released.

“I’m sure that if this happened to me, this could happen to a bunch of other people,” he said.

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.