Fairfax County Police Watch: Fla. deputy suspended for Ferguson comments

Karl Etters,

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A Wakulla County Sheriff's Deputy was suspended Wednesday after posting insensitive comments on social media following a Ferguson, Missouri, grand jury's decision not to indict a police officer in the killing of a black teen.

WCSO Deputy Richard Moon was suspended with pay pending the outcome of an internal investigation, Sheriff Charlie Creel said.

Creel said the incident is not indicative of his department as a whole.

"Very insensitive remarks have been made and we're going to get to the bottom of it," Creel told the Tallahassee Democrat. "I don't condone these kinds of actions. We treat everybody equally, and if somebody does not treat somebody equally, I will discipline them."

Moon wrote the following post on his Facebook page: "Damn cockroaches! Squashem all !!!! I say we rally for Wilson (the officer in Missouri), who's with me?"

Several other deputies, including Undersheriff Trey Morrison and Deputy Jeff Carroll, also commented in the same thread, but have not been suspended.

Carroll posted the following comment: "I'm already in tally, get it going! Haha."

Creel said he would implement another round of training on racial diversity within the department. That training is already standard.

"Expressing an opinion about something on social media is certainly the right of the individual when they are off duty," Creel wrote in an open letter, "but in no way do these views expressed in the posts reflect the opinion of the Sheriff's Office or the members of this agency."

Morrison shared a nationally syndicated political cartoon meant to comment on rioters and looters destroying their own communities. It depicts an African American male in a black T-shirt labeled "Ferguson Missouri." He's holding a gun to his head, and the gun is labeled "Violence." He has on a black ball cap with the word, "Loot" on it. The man is saying, "Back off or the community gets it."

Morrison said civil protesting is not what he took issue with, instead it was the widespread violence and vandalism following the decision.

"I'm not against anybody protesting," Morrison said. "My frustration is that one percent that always takes it too far and wants to destroy property."

Morrison added that Creel is right to take issue with the deputies' comments.

"I shouldn't be commenting on anything," he added.

Creel said the internal affairs review would include interviews with Moon to determine if the comment was "malicious or if it was intentional or aggravated," and would move forward after that.

Vice President of the Florida State Conference of the NAACP Northern Branch Dale Landry said the cockroach comment is negative and demeaning to a large number of people.

"That's a very demeaning comment," said Landry, who was a police officer for 21 years. "How many people down in Wakulla would also fall under what he calls a cockroach?"

Landry said Moon's comments and Morrison's contribution, instead of stopping the posts, reflect poorly on WCSO.

"Very seldom do you see the bad cops catch the hell," Landry said. "It's always the good cops that respond, it's always the good cops that fall behind the foolishness of the bad. This right here is so problematic because it's a direct reflection on Sheriff Creel."

Landry said the national and state branches of the NAACP are coordinating a town hall meeting in Wakulla County. The meeting is scheduled for 1 p.m. Friday at New Bridge Hope Missionary Baptist Church, 1282 Spring Creek Highway in Crawfordville.

Community members in Wakulla have been working to establish an NAACP branch there, which may be expedited by the incident, Landry said.

With attention focused on police and citizen interaction both locally and nationally, most law enforcement officials recognize the comments as not OK, Landry said.

"There's a small subculture," he said. "When it shows its head, we've got to be effective immediately to eliminate it so it doesn't continue to poison the majority that are doing a great job that are professional."

Creel said he hoped the swift action and internal review would bring Wakulla County together.

"We're going to get through this," Creel said. "We're going to come together as a community. It's going to make everybody stronger."

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.