Fairfax County Police Watch: Temple student sues Philly cops over photo incident

WILLIAM BENDER

A TEMPLE University photojournalism student and his girlfriend are suing two Philadelphia police officers who they say wrongly arrested them in 2012 while he was photographing a neighbor's arrest in Point Breeze.

The lawsuit, filed last week in Common Pleas Court by Ian Van Kuyk and Meghan Feighan, seeks compensatory and punitive damages for assault, battery, false arrest and imprisonment, and malicious prosecution. The defendants are Officers Samuel Allen and Santos Higgins.

Van Kuyk, 26, made national headlines after his March 2012 arrest on charges of obstructing justice, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct - an arrest that he said resulted from his refusal to stop snapping photos of Allen and Higgins making a traffic stop outside his home on 17th Street near Dickinson. Feighan, 24, also was charged with obstruction of justice and disorderly conduct.

In November 2012, Municipal Judge Felice Stack found Van Kuyk and Feighan not guilty of all charges.

The arrest raised doubts about whether cops were following Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey's 2011 memo advising that civilians are allowed to record or photograph officers in public spaces. The memo followed a September 2011 Daily News story about wrongful arrests of civilians using cellphones to record arrests.

"The police, we don't think, should view someone who is photographing or videotaping their activity as an adversary," said Mark Tanner, an attorney representing the couple in the lawsuit. "If you're a public servant and you're doing your job and doing it well, then video evidence or photographic evidence can only help you."

In November 2012, Ramsey issued a directive about the public's right to record officers as long as they are not interfering with the officer's safety or ability to conduct official duties.

"All officers have been informed of this policy via roll call and other training methods, and each officer has been provided a copy of the policy," said Lt. John Stanford, a police spokesman. "We haven't seen any recent issues regarding this policy, but if we are informed of any issues then we will address those issues properly."

Mary Catherine Roper, senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, said some cops are not complying with the directive. The ACLU is suing the city in federal court for allegedly arresting people in retaliation for observing or photographing officers performing their duties.

In January, a police officer ordered a Daily News reporter to stop photographing an arrest outside a jewelry store at 8th and Chestnut streets. When asked for an explanation, the officer said that it was "police business" and that photos weren't allowed.

"We get those complaints," Roper said. "The department, I think, is slow to realize that just because they write something down doesn't mean all of the officers follow it."

Sometimes a camera is the only thing between an innocent person and a jail cell.

In Bloomfield, N.J., recently released police dashboard-camera footage helped exonerate Marcus Jeter, 30, a disc jockey who faced several years in prison for allegedly assaulting an officer and eluding police in 2012.

The footage raises serious doubts about the officers' accounts of the arrest.

After seeing video of the stop, which showed officers hitting Jeter, prosecutors dropped all charges against him. Two Bloomfield officers were indicted last month on misconduct and conspiracy charges.

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.