Fairfax County Police Watch: ACLU: Police Used "Five Second Rule" to Arrest Ferguson Protesters at Random

By Danny Wicentowski

Officers arresting protesters the night of August 18. Nineteen people were charged with failing to disperse that day.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri argued to a federal judge Monday that St. Louis County and Missouri State Highway Patrol are enforcing an unconstitutional "five second rule" that allows cops to arrest protesters at will.

Known as either the "five second rule" or "keep moving rule," the controversial police tactic was sprung on protesters August 18, nine days after Ferguson cop Darren Wilson shot and killed eighteen-year-old Michael Brown. Police threatened protesters with arrest if they stopped moving, forcing crowds into grueling marches to avoid violating the ill-defined rule.

According to the witnesses brought by the ACLU, police used the tactic arbitrarily, harassing some protesters and letting others go. St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar admitted yesterday the rule even confused officers, who misinterpreted his orders and used the "five second rule" to arrest protesters during the peaceful daytime hours.

See also: Ferguson Arrests: Everyone St. Louis County Police Locked Up During 12 Days of Crisis

"There were pass-ons that confused the officers," said Belmar, who told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch he intended the rule be enforced only at night, when the perceived threat of looting and violence was at its highest.

"I don't think we were clear enough as commanders ... to tell (officers) if there's a different dynamic -- there's not a problem -- don't worry about it," he said.

However, the rule gave law enforcement so much free reign that it violated the due process of the protesters, claims ACLU attorneys.

On August 18 and 19, the first two days when the "five second rule" went into effect, police arrested 65 people for failing to disperse. At the hearing yesterday, Belmar said the Missouri State High Patrol specifically used the misdemeanor charge as a catch-all tool for enforcing Governor Jay Nixon's state of emergency declaration and accompanying curfew; Belmar also said police wielded the rule as a preventative measure against crowds gathering in a single spot and causing trouble.

Protesters did not take the "five second rule" well.

"They just provoke people with all this," Jacquelyn Hall told Daily RFT on August 18. "They make people angrier because it's trying to tell them they don't have control over where they live, even though this is their home."

See also: After Forcing Ferguson Protesters to March in Confined Protest Area, Tear Gas Again

The next day, August 19, Daily RFT reported that officers rushed into a crowd of protesters and media, arresting people seemingly at random.

"The protesters are peaceful out here, and all the cops are doing is denying us our constitutional rights," said protester Markis Thompson at the time.

The ACLU agreed. The organization filed a temporary restraining order against the "five second rule," but it was defeated by Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster, who argued the rule was "narrowly tailored" to address the violence on West Florrisant Avenue.

That claim, though, is hotly contested by the ACLU and multiple protesters.

"The unbounded nature of the rule has led citizens to be threatened with arrest for

activities that ordinarily would not even border on the unlawful," argued the ACLU in an court filing, which includes extensive testimony from protesters and legal obeservers. ACLU employee Mustafa Abdullah testified he was threatened with arrest for trying to pray and for walking with a reporter.

"I had been threatened with arrest five times in an hour," 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.