Fairfax County Police Watch: I was going to say "Fifty to 1 he gets away with it" but I don't want the Fairfax County SWAT team to kill me for gambling

Cop caught berating Uber driver in xenophobic rant is NYPD detective, police sources say

BY Jason Silverstein , Thomas Tracy , Joseph Stepansky

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

The angry lawman who was caught on camera belittling an Uber driver during a bias-fueled tirade in the West Village is an NYPD detective assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, police sources confirmed Tuesday.

The NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau is investigating the video, which shows Det. Patrick Cherry lambasting the Uber driver during a traffic stop and mocking his broken English.

“I don't know where you're coming from, where you think you're appropriate in doing that; that's not the way it works. How long have you been in this country?” Cherry, who is white, barked at the driver after pulling him over in an unmarked car with flashing lights, according to video of the encounter.

The roadside rage erupted after the detective tried to park the unmarked car without using his blinker, and the Uber driver went around him and gestured to him to use his signal, according to Sanjay Seth, a passenger in the Uber car who posted the video clip.

The car Cherry drives in the video does not belong to the NYPD, according to a police source.

The angry cop yelling at an Uber driver and mocking him, is NYPD Detective Patrick Cherry, police sources said.

Moments before slamming the car door and storming away, the hot-headed Cherry, who is based out of Federal Plaza in Manhattan, shouted at the driver: “I don't know what f---ing planet you're on right now!”

The detective repeatedly mocked the mild-mannered driver's accent and pronunciation of English words, cursing at him. The driver responded calmly, saying “okay” during one point in Cherry's tirade, the video shows. The driver's ethnicity was not immediately clear.

The driver filed a complaint with police, which prompted the NYPD to assign the case to the Internal Affairs Bureau.

“IAB will look at the circumstances and determine if a duty status change is required," a high-ranking police source said, referring to the process that will be followed to determine if Cherry should be punished.

The incident will be handed over to the Civilian Complaint Review Board, cop sources said, because it was determined that Cherry committed no other wrongdoing besides being discourteous, the sources said.

Seth wrote on the video's YouTube page that the incident happened in the West Village.

Cherry was on his way to work after visiting Detective Harry Hill at NYU Langone Medical Center when the interaction occurred, a police source said. Hill is in critical condition after going into cardiac arrest during a procedure on his elbow on Thursday, the source said.

Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives Endowment Association, said Hill's medical condition has led emotions to run high on the Joint Terrorism Task Force, a unit that combines NYPD and federal anti-terror investigators.

"The past five days have been emotionally draining for the members of the JTTF dealing with their fellow detective's health," Palladino said. "Despite what some people think, cops have feelings, too."

An Uber spokesman, Matt Wing, confirmed the driver filed a complaint, but said he was not issued a ticket. Wing declined to name the driver.

Two passengers in the backseat assured the Uber driver that he did nothing wrong, and said the detective who pulled him over was on a "power trip."

According to the video, during the brief moments when Cherry backed off his harangue, Seth and a fellow passenger assured the driver he did nothing wrong.

"It's not your fault; this guy's just a d--k," one of passengers says on the video, adding that the detective was on a "power trip."

The shell-shocked driver kept offering apologies, but Cherry did not stop browbeating him.

"You don't let me f---ing finish! Stop interrupting me!" Cherry tells him.

At the end of the three-minute tirade, the man tells the driver the only reason he's not getting arrested is because he's "not important enough."

Seth posted the video to his Facebook page Monday afternoon, identifying the driver as "Humayun" and titling the clip, "Police Abuse of Uber Driver in New York City."

"Our Uber driver, Humayun, was abused by a police officer today in New York," Seth wrote. "The unending rage, door slamming, throwing items into the car, threatening arrest without cause was bad enough — but the officer's remarks at the end really took it to another level."

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jsilverstein@nydailynews.com

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.