Fairfax County Police Watch: Two Enfield officers suspended following police brutality case

By Kaitlyn Naples

ENFIELD, CT (WFSB) -

Last week an Enfield police officer was fired in a department brutality case and now two more have been suspended.

An Enfield police officer who was accused of using excessive force during an arrest in April has been fired.More >

This all stems back to an incident in April where a video showed a man being repeatedly punched by a police officer.

In a 35-page report the investigation concluded that the man was beaten up and did nothing to provoke it.

After the investigation determined there was an act of police brutality, one Enfield officer was fired and two others were suspended.

Mark Maher has a scar above his eye after being beaten up by a police officer. Maher and three others were in a car parked at the town's boat launch when they were approached by police.

A dash cam inside of the police cruiser captured pictures of Maher being punched several times by officer Matthew Worden, even though Maher was being restrained by two other officers.

Maher was arrested for assaulting an officer, but the charges were dropped.

“All of them that were there - they did nothing to stop it - they stood there and let it happen. They are there to protect and serve and they didn't,” Maher said.

Enfield's police chief said the officers were justified in questioning Maher and the others in the vehicle, but not in their use of force.

Officer Jaime Yott has been suspended for 60 days for neglect and inattention to duty. The investigation found that her police report lacked details and that she failed to write her use of force in the report based on her own observations.

Officer Michael Emons has been suspended for 90 days for violating ethics codes, conduct unbecoming of an officer, using unnecessary force on another person in the car and for turning in a report containing inaccuracies.

"I know there are good cops out there - it's just that when something like this happens it really makes people concentrate on all of the bad,” Maher added.

Enfield's police chief said that out of 150 calls for service over the past three years, the department has only investigated 16 internal affairs complaints.

Maher is suing the department.

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.