Fairfax County Police Watch: I-Team: Lincoln Heights police department struggles with 'corruption'

Resident: 'What we have here is a cancer'

Brendan Keefe

LINCOLN HEIGHTS, Ohio – Police are tasked with protecting the public from crime. But the I-Team discovered some of the convicted criminals in Lincoln Heights are the ones wearing a uniform and badge.

On May 16, 2013, Michael Glover was driving along Wabash Avenue in Lincoln Heights when he saw bright headlights following him.

“The lights were so unusually bright, that I could not see in front of me," Glover said. “I pulled over, and they passed, and they worked around again, and they ran me off again."

Glover said he pulled into the parking lot of the Oak Park Apartments to confront the driver when he realized it was a Lincoln Heights police cruiser driven by Officer Angala Taylor.

That’s when things got heated.

“I realize now I walked into a trap,” Glover said.

According to an Internal Affairs review by the police department, Taylor believed Glover’s demeanor was “threatening” when he approached her outside the apartment complex. She said he was “talking in a very loud tone.”

The report states she tried to communicate with him, but Glover walked away and reentered his vehicle.

“(Officer Taylor) should have used her training to deescalate the situation,” the department's investigation stated. “When (Glover) attempted to leave, she did not have enough reasons to detain him.”

Instead of allowing him to leave, Taylor demanded to see Glover’s ID multiple times, according to the report. He refused.

“Before I could say another word, Taylor was charging me, and she had a gun in her hand,” Glover said. “The gun was dangling, and I’m staring down the barrel of a gun – and I’m just frozen like a deer in headlights."

Taylor then attempted to detain Glover, which led to a struggle, the report states. All the while, Glover asked Taylor why he was being detained.

Reviewing an audio recording from the incident, the I-Team counted Glover ask the officer 29 times why he was being arrested.

Taylor didn't have an answer, investigators said.

“Taylor was not able to exactly state what (Glover) said to her that would classify his actions as disorderly,” the report states.

Officer David Smack was then called in as backup and grabbed Glover’s hand, according to the report. As the struggle continued, Smack used his Taser on Glover and put his foot on his back, investigators said.

“I look back to see Officer Smack stomp me in the back, with full force, right over the screws that are holding my spine together," Glover said.

He said the officers hit him in an extremely sensitive spot.

“I've got a bad back,” Glover is heard shouting in an audio recording of the incident. “I had surgery."

The shouting continued:

Officer: "Would you calm down?"

Glover: "What did I do? Tell me what I did. You don't know exactly what I did."

Officer: "I sure don't."

Glover "What did I do?"

Officer "I'll find out."

Officers Laroy Smith, Mike Lowe and Justine Pile were also called in to assist in Glover’s arrest. During the struggle, some of Smith’s ammunition “dislodged from his duty belt and fell onto Glover’s back,” according to the report.

After spotting the ammunition, the officers assumed Glover had a gun, investigators said.

"(They said) ‘Look, there's bullets. He's got a gun.’ When you say that around police officers, that's pretty much death right there," Glover said.

But the bullets didn’t belong to Glover – they belonged to the only convicted criminal at the scene: Sgt. Smith.

Glover’s charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest were eventually dismissed. He later filed a written complaint to the department’s Internal Affairs unit, stating he “was falsely arrested and Tased without justice.” It was later decided the “officers could have dealt with the situation in a more tactful way,” investigators said.

The I-Team uncovered Smith was convicted in 1996 for falsification, and then violated his probation.

Lincoln Heights Police Chief Conroy Chance promoted Smith to his second in command in the past, but then demoted and fired him in 2014 after a sting operation by sheriff's investigators. Smith was arrested for felony theft while on duty.

"Within the last two years, there have been some trying times for my department," Conroy said.

Conroy said some hires at his department before his tenure were “questionable."

"Now we're actually paying the cost of those decisions that were made back then," he said.

And Conroy isn’t being figurative. The department paid $240,000 in a confidential settlement with other residents who were beaten and arrested by police in 2008 on charges that didn’t stick.

Former Vice Mayor Gary Brown and high school science teacher William Franklin said, like many, they don’t trust the police in their village.

"We are living in a sick place when we let guys like these become officers," Franklin said, before suing the department with Brown.

Both men received cash settlements after the suit and signed "non-disparagement" agreements promising not to "in any way criticize the village of Lincoln Heights" to anyone, including "the news media."

"Officer Maddox, Officer Smack and Officer Capps beat me while I had my handcuffs on,” Franklin said before filing the lawsuit.

Those officers are still on the force.

Officer Steven Maddox was once a Cincinnati police officer, but was fired in 2005 when he was convicted of sexual imposition for groping a woman while on duty.

Officer Phillip Capps was fired by Lincoln Heights in 2001, and then rehired. Since then, he's been written up for "a pattern of behavior" of flirting with female drivers, according to police documents. Officials said he also issued fake citations when the women didn't respond to "his flirtatious advances."

Capps was required to quit five biker gangs, including the "Made Men" and the "Ground Assassins" after he showed up during a jury trial in uniform to support a fellow biker charged with a felony, an internal investigation states.

One day after his arrest, Glover filed an official complaint with the department. Then later, he filed a lawsuit.

Lincoln Heights resident Marcus Simpson joined Glover’s lawsuit against the village after he was arrested on charges that were also later dismissed.

"Corruption – it's embedded in Lincoln Heights,” Simpson said. "They need a house cleaning. The only way to get rid of the cancer is to cut it out – all of it. You can't leave any of it, because it will fester and re-grow. What we have here is a cancer."

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.