Fairfax County Police Watch: YouTube Video Incites Outrage Over Man Arrested, Tased While Picking Up Kids

By Katie SolaSep 03, 2014

A Minnesota man filmed police arresting and tasing him as he waited in a public place to pick up his kids from daycare, and posted the results on YouTube. It's now received over a million views and raised more questions about police use of excessive force against African-Americans.

Chris Lollie, a father of four and an aspiring rapper, said he had just finished the night shift cleaning at an Italian restaurant in St. Paul. He said in an interview on the Filter Free Amerika podcast that he had finished work early on Jan. 31, so he took a seat in the skyway outside the First National Bank as he waited to pick up his kids from daycare.

See also: How Big Data Could Help Prevent the Next Ferguson

Lollie says a bank security officer told him the area was private and threatened to call the police. Because Lollie saw no sign saying the area was private property, he says he didn't think a police officer would mind his presence. When a cop showed up, Lollie videotaped the encounter.

The video, titled "Black man taken to jail for sitting in public area," was uploaded to YouTube on Aug. 26. (Lollie says the police department retained his phone for six months after the incident.) It quickly caused an uproar in the media, online and among civil rights groups.

In the video, a female cop, later identified as Lori Hayne, asks Lollie to identify himself. "I wanna find out who you are," the video records her as saying, which Lollie refuses to do. "I know my rights first off, I don't have to let you know who I am," he says.

In this case, he's right. Police have the right to stop and identify passersby in 24 states, but not Minnesota, according to the ACLU's Minnesota chapter. (Arizona, Colorado and New York are three states that do.) These stop and identify laws only apply to situations where the police have a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. In no state can police require a person to show an ID for no reason.

The problem is I'm black. No, that's the problem. It really is," Lollie says in the video.

Lollie repeatedly tells the police officer that he hasn't done anything wrong and that he's picking up his kids from New Horizons daycare. At that point male officers Michael Johnson and Bruce Schmidt arrive and tell Lollie he's going to jail. The video goes black as the officers restrain and tase Lollie.

"Can somebody please help me?" Lollie shouts, "That's my kids right there! My kids are right there!" The viewer can hear what sound like children's wails in the background as Lollie pleads to passersby: "Please help me! Please help me!"

Lollie calls the officers "racist motherfuckers," and accuses them of assault. "I don't have any weapons. You are the one with the weapons here."

According to St. Paul Police Department's statements on Facebook about the incident, Lollie was charged with trespassing, disorderly conduct and obstruction of the legal process. The charges were dropped in July. The SPPD's post, however, had over 2,000 comments at time of writing, mostly expressing outrage along the lines of reminding police to "protect and serve, not harass and taser."

The St. Paul police union defended the officers' actions, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune, saying Lollie was to blame for the escalation of the situation. “He refused numerous lawful orders for an extended period of time. The only person who brought race into this situation was Mr. Lollie,” the statement said.

In the podcast interview, Lollie shows a text from white reporter Kim Johnson, who says a security guard in that same skyway told her that the seats were open to the public. Citypages.com unearthed a 2009 First National Bank Facebook post inviting passersby to enjoy a "quick five" on those same seats.

The St. Paul police chief Tom Smith also defended the officers' actions. "At one point, the officers believed he might either run or fight with them," he said in an explanatory statement released by a local Fox affiliate on Aug. 26. That caused them to use "the force necessary to safely take him into custody."

The Star Tribune reports that St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman has requested a full review of the arrest. "It raises a great deal of concern, especially given this summer’s shooting death of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri," he said in a statement.

The Police-Civilian Internal Affairs Review Commission (PCIARC), which is made up of five citizens and two members of the police union, will be responsible for the investigation. Lollie has not yet filed an official complaint, though a local news station reported he was planning a federal civil rights lawsuit.

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.