Fairfax County Police Watch: SC police officer suspended after concert fight goes viral

Andrew Shain and Mindy Lucas
The State

COLUMBIA, S.C. The Columbia Police officer suspended after a video posted on social media showed him punching an man on the ground outside a concert venue early Sunday morning has no previous disciplinary record with the department, Columbia Police Chief Skip Holbrook said.

Investigator Tyrone Pugh was suspended Sunday without pay pending the outcome of an internal and South Carolina Law Enforcement Division investigation, Holbrook said Monday in revealing the name of the officer.

Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin told The State on Monday that he was "gravely concerned" about what he saw Pugh doing in the video.

A 15-second video of the incident outside the Columbia Soundstage posted online shows Pugh in uniform kneeling on a man who was on the ground and laying to their side. Pugh strikes the man around his head at least five times in the video.

"Stay on the ground! Stay on the ground!" Pugh shouts to the man while punching him.

"Why are you punching him?" the woman taking the video screams at Pugh.

"Back the (expletive) up!" Pugh tells the video shooter.

Robyn Fogg, who shot the video, said the man on the ground was not involved in the fight. The man was standing near the scuffle when police arrived.

Fogg said an officer grabbed the man, threw him to the ground and started punching him.

"He said, 'I didn't do anything.' He wasn't resisting," said Fogg, who will join the Army later this month. "I think it was unnecessary. Two other cops there were aggressive but not like that."

The man on the ground, whose name has not been released, was not arrested, a Columbia police spokeswoman said. Two other 23-year-old men were arrested and charged for fighting.

Fogg said the party of about 300 people celebrating her upcoming 20th birthday was uneventful before the fight in the parking lot as everyone was leaving.

Holbrook, who confirmed Monday that Fogg's video was the same one that his department reviewed, told The State that Pugh and the person on the ground were both African-American.

Pugh has worked with the Columbia Police Department since May 2007, the chief said. He was promoted to the rank of Investigator with the Criminal Investigations Division in 2013 and is assigned to the Property Crimes Unit.

Additionally, Pugh is a first sergeant in the U.S. Army Reserve with nearly 29 years of military service, Holbrook said.

Holbrook declined further comment about the case.

Benjamin said he learned Pugh was suspended without an hour after speaking with Holbrook about the incident late Sunday afternoon.

"I know there are multiple sides to the story," Benjamin said. "(The video) left me gravely concerned as to what the possible circumstances might have been, and I shared that with the chief and he acted accordingly."

The incident involving the officer occurred after 2 a.m. Sunday outside the Columbia Soundstage on Blanding Street, Holbrook said. The venue is used to host concerts and other events.

Five uniformed off-duty police officers were working in the venue's parking lot and responded to a large fight, Holbrook said.

The incident involving Pugh that is under investigation occurred as officers attempted to control the crowd and investigate the scuffle, Holbrook said.

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.