Fairfax County Police Watch: The uncheked epidemic of mentaly unstable cops in American continues

Baltimore cop suspended after video shows him punching man

By Michele Richinick

Baltimore police have suspended an officer after he was caught on video repeatedly beating a man earlier this year.

Lawyers representing Kollin Truss, 32, said their client exchanged words with Baltimore City Police Department Officer Vincent Cosom on June 15 at 1:30 a.m., just before the cop repeatedly punched him, according to local WBALTV11. Cosom now faces a seven-count lawsuit from attorneys Ivan Bates and Tony Garcia, of Bates & Garcia, who claimed their client is the victim of police brutality.

“The pattern is all too clear, these types of police take a person’s dignity, force their submission, assault a person then charge the person with assaulting them. This is not justice,” attorneys wrote on the law firm’s Facebook page.

Cosom has been placed on administrative leave. The video footage of the incident was captured by police surveillance cameras.

On June 15, Cosom said he saw Truss, who was “very intoxicated,” “loitering” in front of a liquor store, and asked him to leave the premises, according to the officer’s account obtained by msnbc. The two apparently exchanged words. In his report, Cosom wrote that Truss and his woman friend began to argue, and Truss pushed her once they left the location. Cosom reentered the scene, and the two entered into a physical altercation, as seen in the video, before police arrested him and charged him with assaulting an officer.

The charges against Truss were later dropped once the state attorney’s office viewed the footage.

Baltimore City Police Commissioner Anthony Batts expressed his anger at a news conference on Tuesday.

“Much like the public, I was shocked, I’m outraged, I’m disgusted by what I saw by an employee of the Baltimore Police Department,” Batts said. “Nothing that I saw on that video is defensible, nor should it be defensible. And most importantly, it’s unacceptable and will not be tolerated within this organization.”

Police brutality recently has been highlighted in news headlines since the shooting death of black teenager Michael Brown on Aug. 9 in Ferguson, Missouri. The jury has until Jan. 7 to determine whether or not Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson should be indicted on criminal charges in Brown’s death. Wilson, who has been on paid administrative leave since the incident in the St. Louis suburb, appeared in public for the first time in more than a month on Tuesday to testify before the grand jury. Protests and violence broke out in Ferguson following Brown’s death, and the community continues to demand justice.

In Kansas City, Missouri, the FBI is investigating the case of a police tasing that put another cop’s son in critical condition and a medically induced coma. Officer Tim Runnels pulled over a vehicle that 17-year-old Bryce Masters was driving after the officer ran the car’s tags and discovered a warrant linked to a female driver, msnbc previously reported. Police said Masters “physically resisted” officers’ demands to step out of the car and that at some point Runnels used his stun gun to restrain the teen.

A New York Police Department officer was also suspended this week after video footage surfaced of him apparently kicking a man on the ground at a street fair in Brooklyn.

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.