Fairfax County Police Watch: NYPD Officer Suspended After Punching Handcuffed Black Teen

by Thomas L. Scott

The New York police officer who was caught on camera punching a Black teenager who was already in police custody has been suspended while the New York Police Department Internal Affairs Bureau investigates the arrest.

“An individual that we have identified as a plainclothes anti-crime officer runs up and appears to strike the individual with a closed fist twice on the side of the body,” New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said Monday. “That officer has been suspended pending the investigation going forward.”

The NYPD announced the suspension on Friday, but they didn’t reveal the name of the officer.

In New York City and around the country, people have been protesting for months against police brutality and racial profiling. The lack of trust between police and the communities they are supposed to protect has encouraged bystanders to gather their own proof and use video to attempt to hold police accountable. A police brutality witness in Staten Island used his cellphone to record NYPD officer, Daniel Pantaleo, putting Eric Garner, an unarmed Black man, in the chokehold that ultimately killed him. Despite the video evidence, Pantaleo wasn’t indicted by the grand jury.

The Black teenager who was assaulted by the officer was 16-year-old Denzel Funderburk, according to a CBS New York. He and two other teenagers, 16 and 17, were arrested on Dec. 15 because they were suspected of assaulting someone with a cane. The three teenagers were charged with gang assault. Funderburk was also charged with assault, obstruction, criminal possession of a weapon and other charges, according to CBS New York.

The charges were dropped before the video was released on the Wednesday following the arrest, New York Daily News reported.

The video of the arrest, which was posted on Dec. 17, showed the Black teenager pinned against the hood of a car by three officers as the plainclothes cop rushes in to deliver at least two body punches.

Police procedure expert and professor at John Jay College, Robert McRie, said that police officers who attack suspects that have already been subdued are subject to disciplinary action.

“There doesn’t seem to be any legitimate reason for it,” McRie told CBS. “He wasn’t moving at the time the blows were delivered and he was in no position to escape.”

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.