Fairfax County Police Watch: 2 journalists sue Oakland over tickets

Henry K. Lee

Two independent journalists have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Oakland police, saying they were wrongfully detained and ticketed for minor infractions because of their critical reporting on the department.

In a suit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Monday, Jacob Crawford and David Morse said the tickets they received were "in retaliation for their attempts to document police actions in connection with political demonstrations against police brutality."

The city has not responded in court to the suit, which seeks unspecified damages.

Crawford said, he was given a "groundless" citation on July 19, 2013, for jaywalking on the 500 block of 14th Street after he took photos of Oakland police monitoring demonstrators at a downtown rally who were protesting the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin. He also asked for the officers' names, Crawford said.

Sgt. Darrin Downum told Officer Melissa Baddie to write Crawford the citation, said the suit filed by attorney Rachel Lederman. Crawford was handcuffed for several minutes, the suit said. The ticket was eventually dismissed in traffic court, the complaint said.

On Jan. 13, Crawford and Morse said, they were riding their bicycles home from a demonstration - which never materialized - that had been called to protest the acquittal of two Fullerton (Orange County) police officers in the beating death of a homeless man.

Oakland Officers Kristina Tikkanen and Joseph Fong, acting on orders from Officer William Bergeron, gave each of them a citation for "supposedly running a red light" at San Pablo Avenue and Thomas L. Berkley Way, the suit said. Those tickets were also dismissed.

"Neither plaintiff had violated the Vehicle Code or any other law, and there was no probable cause to detain or cite plaintiffs on either of these occasions," the suit said. "Rather, the citations were given pursuant to an Oakland police policy to selectively ticket demonstrators, journalists and 'copwatchers' in order to gather personal information and deter participation in demonstrations and documentation of police misconduct."

Crawford is a videographer who has produced videos dealing with Oakland police misconduct, and is employed by a law firm that represents plaintiffs in police misconduct litigation, the suit said.

Morse, a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center, or Indybay, received $162,500 in 2012 to settle a lawsuit in which he claimed that UC Berkeley police had wrongfully arrested him and seized photos he took during a protest at the on-campus residence of then-Chancellor Robert Birgeneau

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.