Fairfax County Police Watch: Jury selected for western Pennsylvania officer charged with wrongly stunning handcuffed man

By JOE MANDAK

PITTSBURGH — A jury has been selected to decide whether a western Pennsylvania police officer violated a suspect's civil rights by repeatedly zapping him with a stun gun, even after he was handcuffed — an encounter recorded on another person's cellphone.

The attorney for Millvale Officer Nicole Murphy doesn't dispute she used the stun gun on Thomas Jason James Smith after his arrest for public drunkenness in September 2012. Rather, he contends the 30-year-old officer was justified in using it because she was trying to stop Smith from banging his head.

"This guy was out of control. They believed he was on some other kind of substance," defense attorney Robert Stewart said after Murphy's arraignment in June. "She had a choice of Tasering him to subdue him or letting him split his head open." Stewart didn't immediately return a call seeking comment following jury selection Wednesday.

Opening statements in the case are scheduled to begin Monday morning in federal court.

The FBI began investigating after someone leaked a 52-second cellphone video of the incident to Pittsburgh-area media outlets in early 2013.

The video shows a shirtless Smith, then 28, sitting on the floor of the police station while he banged his head on the edge of a desk. Murphy then zaps him with the stun gun. Murphy reported in a criminal complaint that she used the stun gun to subdue Smith when he became violent, but Smith isn't seen attacking her in the video.

The video also shows some emergency responders smiling and laughing at Smith's behavior.

The prosecution and defense haven't specified who took the video. Court documents filed in recent weeks suggest the case will boil down to the testimony of Murphy — who remains on unpaid leave — and another officer, part-timer Casey Bonincontro.

Prosecutors have asked the court for permission to raise issues relating to Murphy's character if she testifies.

According to pretrial motions, prosecutors want to ask Murphy about a 2011 drunken driving arrest and about a man Murphy allegedly befriended or dated "who was known to her to have a drug-related criminal record." Stewart has argued neither is relevant.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, are concerned that Stewart plans to use Bonincontro's personnel files with the borough and other departments to allegedly show she violated various on-the-job rules.

The judge has yet to rule whether any of that can be used at trial.

The charge Murphy faces carries up to 10 years in prison and, because it's a felony, would end her law enforcement career even if she avoids incarceration.

Jerry "opps dearie" Hyland won't stand up to the cops

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.